The I.T. recruitment game is changing

I posted recently here http://www.tinyurl.ie/2u about how Verify Recruitment is changing how IT recruitment is undertaken in Ireland. They have launched a Panel, of specialists from the IT sector who will analyse and verify their candidates before they sent onto clients.

It’s easy to see why this is needed. It’s hard enough for recruitment consultants in other sectors to verify whether a candidate has the necessary skills for the vacancy. This is why recruitment consultants are constantly being criticised for the quality of people they recommend to companies.

For instance, take PR: it is very difficult for a recruitment consultant to gauge the quality of media contacts a PR has, the level of their involvement in previous PR campaigns and what levels understanding they have of new media ,such as social networking, and whether they can combine the two traditional and new methods of PR, which is vital these days. Things are moving fast enough in PR so I dread to think how fast the IT sector moves, it must be nigh on impossible for recruitment consultants to keep up.

The term IT sector is a bit of a misnomer reallybecause it is so broad, taking in anything from telecommunications, gaming, software and hosting. With some many areas of specialism a new method of recruitment was essential to fill IT jobs. Cathal Grogan has, very wisely, appointed a pool of experts, who are currently working right across the board in IT, that he can call on whenever he has vacancy in their sector. They provide added industry insight at a level that would take Cathal months or possibly years of working in sector to acquire. It also means that his clients can talk to their peers with their sector about potential candidates in a language they understand. If you put yourself in the client’s position, who’s opinion would you value most, that from a recruitment consultant in a competing agency or the recommendation from an industry professional with similar experience and background as yourself. The answer to that IT people, is obvious?

http://www.verifyrecruitment.com

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Want to save €62,000 in electricity and software costs?

I attended a seminar last week organised by the National College of Ireland in the IFSC entitled ‘Intelligent Cost Cutting’, where my client, Jon Mulligan of software company Openplain, made a presentation outlining simple measures that businesses can use to easily cut up to €62,000 in costs for a medium-sized business.

Openplain supply software that allows companies to analyse their computer usage. They can monitor what software companies do and don’t use, what hardware is used and how often, and can even tell you what websites employees use, including social networking sites. They monitor 10,000 users in Ireland and 80,000 overall worldwide, so they have a significant rare insight into our working habits.

As well as the obvious boosts to productivity that results from employees knowing their computer usage is being monitored, their Officemetrics software allows companies to save money by telling them which software they don’t use and, therefore, can get rid of.

Jon said that when companies are attempting to reduce costs, instead of making sweeping cuts, such as staff redundancies, there are simple measures that can save businesses thousands of euro.  Two of the biggest culprits are in relation to IT – companies need to turn off their computers and stop buying software they don’t use.

Computer Usage

Openplain’s software has found that almost two thirds of Irish workers needlessly leave their computers on when they leave the office.  This results in a huge wast of electricity and, of course, much higher electricity bills – not to mention the untold damage to the environment caused by all this extra carbon be pumped into the atmosphere.

On average a desktop computer uses  1750 kWh of electricity per annum, this is 13 times the power use of the average domestic oven or 4.5 times the average fridge freezer – a huge amount of electricity. What a waste.

With Irish electricity charges some of the highest in the world, ESB charges 14.8c per kWh, which means the cost of running each computer is €259 per year. Whereas if they were turned off when staff leave the office it should only cost €50 per year. This is an average saving of €20,000 for a medium-size company of 100 people, which can be achieved just by turning off a switch.

Buying Too Much Software

In tracking software usage Openplain has found that most companies only use 70% of the software that they have bought. This is a huge over subscription, which costs businesses thousands of euro each year in software licences.

Garnter research show that the average software expenditure in medium and large sized companies is over €1,400 per employee. By removing all unused software companies could make savings of €420 per employee. That equates to a cost saving of €42,000 per annum for a company with 100 staff.

And?

That’s a saving of €62,000 per year for medium size business just by turning of computers when they are not in use and not paying for software that that you don’t use. It seems obvious and you’d think businesses would do this anyway.  But, it seems that when people aren’t paying for electricity they don’t seem to care who is. I had an old boss at a PR company in London who used to go around the office turning them off a night, I thought he was being pedantic, but now I work for myself I can see myself doing that in few years too.

The over subscription of software seems to come from companies fearing an audit of software licenses by companies like Microsoft who appearing to clamping down on licence evaders  as a way of generating extra revenue to compensate for other areas when it is dropping. But why have 50 licences for a software that only 5 people use at any one time. Simply logic really.

At a time when companies look to reduce staff as the easiest way to cut costs , €62,000 is the equivalent to two junior members of staff, or one senior staff member, which would you have? So turn off and wise up.

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Here’s some background on Openplain

Openplain is a privately held Irish company based in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC). Founded in 2006, with the support of Enterprise Ireland and the AIB Seed Capital Fund, it is the only Irish provider of IT software to track and analyse employee productivity and computer activity.

Openplain is an award winning Irish IT company: in 2008 the company was the winner of InterTradeIreland’s All-Ireland Seedcorn Business Competition; in  2007 it won first prize at the Docklands Innovation Park Awards.

It currently has 80,000 users of its software in 89 countries including the USA, Japan, Brazil, Russia, China, UK and 10,000 in Ireland alone.

Openplain’s two main products are OfficeMetrics, which tracks employee performance and productivity through computer usage, and also LicenseMetrics, which analyses a company’s usage of software and licensing. For more details please see: http://www.openplain.com, http://www.officemetrics.com

Verify Recruitment Launched

Media Release

Experience is the key to unlocking the recession, says Verify Recruitment

Ireland’s newest recruitment agency has appointed an exclusive panel of industry experts to source and vet their candidates.

16th November, 2009 – Dublin, Ireland: The middle of a recession may not seem like the most obvious time to launch a recruitment company but Verify Recruitment, the new Dublin agency aims to make a name for itself by leading a major shift of recruitment practice in Ireland’s burgeoning IT sector.

With the growing complexity of skills needed for ever more challenging technology, and the sheer pace of change in IT, recruitment companies simply do not have the level of knowledge to truly understand a client’s requirements, outline those needs to potential candidates and to accurately match candidates to roles.

Verify Recruitment believe’s a new approach is needed in order to meet the increasing demand for individuals with a wider range of expert IT skills, coupled with business acumen. The Dublin-based company has found a unique solution to this problem, they have appointed an independent panel of industry leaders from the IT sector who will provide expertise to the firm in sourcing, assessing and reviewing each candidate before they are referred for a client’s vacancy. Verify will also only specialise in filling positions that require candidates with more than ten years’ professional experience.

Cathal Grogan, Managing Director, Verify Recruitment, says:

“The IT sector is crucial to the future success of Ireland, it is one of the few sectors of the economy that is still expanding and it is the engine that will drive the country out of the recession. For this to be achieved we need to have experienced individuals with a track record of success in establishing, growing and expanding cutting edge companies and driving efficiencies in order to ensure Ireland can compete on the world stage.

“The concept behind the Verify Panel is to ensure we always have access to industry expertise. This is crucial in the IT sector where there a multitude of skills and sub-sectors that are changing all the time. The Panel will review candidates from their own area of expertise in order verify the skills and experience of everyone we recommend, thus ensuring they are the exact fit for our clients’ requirements. Expert skills can only be assessed those who are experts themselves.”

Each member of the Verify Panel has been chosen on the basis of their experience and knowledge of a particular area of IT, so that Verify has a broad range of skills to call upon. This includes people from the financial services, telecommunications, retail and software sectors. This allows every candidate to be vetted by a member of the Verify Panel with similar experience to the candidate and position on offer, therefore allowing a much thorough selection process.

Meet the panel

All the Verify Panel are true industry leaders that have a track record setting up and managing successful IT businesses in Ireland. These include:

Fergus Donohoe MBA has over twenty years experience in senior management positions. For the last 10 years he has been helping companies update their business practices. Notably Fergus was also one of the founders of Smart Telecom, where he was Chief Operations Office and Company Secretary until 2004. Prior to this he founded ECHO S.A.; with operations in Belgium and France.

Jayne McTiernan was formerly Operations Director with Merrill Lynch in Dublin. An experienced financial services operations manager she specialises in implementing shared services centres and redesigning business processes to drive efficiencies throughout an organisation

Derek Hardiman is a technology leader with a track record in delivering sophisticated technical solutions to a broad range of industries. Previously CTO with ZeroTouch, Head of Technology at Daiwa Securities and Director of Client Technology at SmartForce.

For more information please contact Simon Palmer of Republic Public Relations on: +353 (0) 1210 3520; email: simon@republicpr.ie; or Twitter @simonprepublic

Notes to Editors

Verify Recruitment opened in Dublin in May 2009 and is led by Cathal Grogan.  Cathal has 20 years experience in the IT industry, and has held senior positions in Program & Project Management, Product Management, Management Consulting, and Change Management in local and multi-national organisations, within Enterprise  Software, Financial Services, Contact Centre and Automotive industries.

Sunday Business Post covers the launch of Verify Recruitment

Irish Independent covers Dubai action group against Larionovo

Today’s Irish Independent carried a full page on the plight of the Dubai Action Group who are commencing legal action for the return of the funds they paid overseas property agent’s Larionovo and parent company Profile.

Here are the links to the Irish Independents own website, but I have also copied the full articles below.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/investors-in-dubai-dream-fear-836420m-lost-1939242.html

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/give-me-back-my-8364440000-life-savings-1939188.html

Investors in Dubai dream fear €20m lost

By Fiach Kelly and Shane Phelan

Wednesday November 11 2009

A GROUP of small Irish investors who bought into a dream property scheme in Dubai now fear that as much as €20m of their money could be lost.

The Concerned Dubai Sports City Investors Group, which hopes to recruit hundreds of members, bought off-plan apartments through the now defunct Larionovo property agents. They are worried that as much as €20m — cash many hoped would fund their retirements — is caught up in Dubai.

The group is building up a war chest to help fund a campaign to retrieve their deposits.

Since Ennis-based Larionovo went bust last year, investors in the scheme, believed to number as many as 1,000, have had trouble trying to find out what has happened to their money.

SSIAs

The investors, described as sales people, doctors and farmers, have paid as much as €200,000 each — many from their SSIAs — but do not know whether their money is still there or at what stage the developments, originally supposed to finish in 2008, are at now.

The investors bought into the Sports City scheme, part of a massive 2 billion sq ft mixed theme park, which developers said would “dwarf Disneyworld”. It promised golf courses, indoor and outdoor stadia, various academies — including a Manchester United soccer academy — as well as swimming pools, health spas and many other facilities.

A meeting of the group last week in the Citywest Hotel in Dublin heard that they have no idea if building work has even started on some apartments, such is the difficulty in getting information from developers. Some recently received letters telling them the project had been put “on hold”.

However, they fear the developments have been cancelled and believe the term “on hold” is being used to avoid refunding them.

The group has 180 people on its email list and believes hundreds more who invested in the scheme are not yet aware of the action group. It is hoping for €200 from each investor to establish a fund supporting a legal effort in both Ireland and Dubai. Over €7,000 has so far been collected.

The group first became concerned when Larionovo went bust last November. The company’s liquidator, Grant Thornton, says it is providing as many answers as it can.

Merged

“The best we can do is point them in the direction of the guys they did the deal with and ask them what is happening,” said liquidator Paul McCann. “The sales people are gone.”

Before Larionovo went bankrupt, it merged with a Dubai-registered company Profile, and traded as Profile Ireland. A section on the Profile website, which is designed to give updates on four of the specific developments, is now down.

Profile says it does not own the properties and only managed them. It maintained it was a management company and its deals with developers may have expired. “It is therefore the responsibility of the developers and owners of the projects to report updates of construction and the relevant information that customers are entitled to in order that they can discuss their investment.”

Anyone interested in the group is advised to contact spokesperson Simon Palmer on 01 2103520. The group is also online at www.tinyurl.ie/dubai/

-    Fiach Kelly and Shane Phelan

Give me back my €440,000 life savings’

By Fiach Kelly

Wednesday November 11 2009

FATHER-of-three Alan O’Neill remortgaged his home and ploughed his pension, personal savings and money set aside for his children’s education into the Dubai scheme.

The ice salesman, from Ballycullen in south Dublin, travelled to Dubai before committing his money. He liked what he saw and hoped the investment would yield cash for his family’s future. But now he has no idea where the €440,000 he put into the scheme four years ago is, or what it has been used for.

“I read about it in the papers and it sounded interesting,” he said. “I went over and I was just sold on the Larionova idea and the concept.

“I’ve invested in four different properties with Larionovo. The first one was International City, which is now completed and I still don’t have deeds or keys for it. I’ve seen the end product, the site. I’ve bought in Sports City — Westgate is 60pc paid, again through Larionovo and Profile. The third property I bought was Snowdome through Larionovo and Profile and 32 group, which is 50pc paid.

“I’ve a €10,000 deposit paid on another one — the Waterfront — to Larionovo. I have no idea where that has gone.”

He returned to Dubai again last year to see what progress had been made on the developments.

“I was over there twice last year and they were just up to sub-floor level. There were no problems at the start and all the indications were fantastic until Larionovo disappeared overnight.

“The last contact I had was around nine or 10 months ago and I’ve been trying to email them and had people email on my behalf but there’s been no joy.

“I’m planning to go over there in December to find out for myself. I don’t think it will be completed. I’d like my money back at the moment because I really need the cash at home.”

- Fiach Kelly

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Thank you to Fiach Kelly and Shane Phelan for their assistance in helping raise the profile of the Group.

Dubai Action Group appoints Dublin legal firm Anthony Joyce & Co

Dubai Action Group has appointed Dublin legal firm, Anthony Joyce & Co, to undertake litigation on behalf of the purchasers who are chasing funds used to buy property through Irish agent’s Larionovo and parent company Profile Developments.

The Group is currently recruiting new members before instigating legal action. Developments in which investors bought property include: Eagle Heights, Bermuda Views, Stadium Point and Profile Residences, all developments with landmark project Sports City. Other developments include: International City, Snowdome Residences, 050 Waterfront and the Island of Ireland in the famous World development.

Anthony Joyce  has experience in recovering funds for overseas property owners; he is currently involved in a high profile legal action against Irish overseas property agent’s Kuvera and a development in India. In July, after only eight weeks since injunctions were issued by Anthony in the Commercial Court on behalf of the Kuvera Action Group.  He successfully secured propety assets, company shares and cash for the Group. A legal action is currently on-going against the indemnity insurance that covered Kuvera’s legal adviser, Seymour Major’s. Action in India is also progressing.

Any other people who purchased property through Larionovo are asked to contact Dubai Action Group as soon as possible, either by calling Anthony Joyce on 01 454 000 or registering via the following website www.tinyurl.ie/dubai.

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Larionovo (Profile) Sports City Investors Meeting 3rd November, 2009.

The next meeting of Larionovo’s and Profile’s Dubai investors in Sports City will take place tomorrow at 7.30pm at the City West Hotel in Saggart, Dublin. As many of the investors as possible are asked to attend.

This meeting will clarify the Group’s actions and will be attend by prominent Irish solicitor Anthony Joyce from Dublin legal firm Anthony Joyce & Co. He will present to the Group and outline potential legal options.

Anthony has a great deal of experience in litigation and recently undertook another high profile case involving another overseas property company, called Kuvera; only eight weeks after instigating legal action he had secured money and compensation from the Irish agents for the investors. This case is continuing with legal action being taken against Kuvera’s legal adviser, Seymour Major, and also on the ground in India.

Please let me know if you cannot attend and I will ensure you will receive an update.

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