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Regional Report organisation employs more than 3,000 people in Dublin, but an overwhelming 80 per cent are non-nationals. "People born outside Ireland now make up more than two-thirds of the population of Dublin city centre," notes O'Connell. "And 76,000 people left Ireland in 2011 for job opportunities in English-speaking countries in the U.K., Australia, and Canada. Currently, 55 per cent of high-level information and communications technology skills are being met through inward migration, but state agency Forfas warn that continued levels of inward migration are 'unsustainable' and will come at a cost to the economy." It equates to a simple formula. "We continue to face high unemployment rates as we have a skills mismatch," Campbell says. Henry Cullen, senior manager of Accenture, agrees. "Counterintuitive though it may seem, about a third of employers worldwide are experiencing critical challenges filling positions due to a lack of available talent, and almost three-fourths of employers are affected by talent shortages to some degree. The people are there, just not the right people—those with the knowledge, skills, and abilities companies need, right now." So the recent campaign to sell the country's appeal, Brand Ireland, is producing two effects, says Campbell. It certainly has attracted more organisations to establish Europe-Middle East-Africa (EMEA) headquarters in Ireland, like Google, Dell, etc. Conversely, it has persuaded some talented candidates to cross shores in order for sought-after job opportunities. "We have seen this very recently locally in Dublin, where large multinationals who have announced expansions in Ireland have conceded that they will need to recruit a significant amount of their workforce from abroad, due to a skills shortage in particular areas, such as emerging information technologies and languages," notes Cullen. Enter, RPO and MSP The overall situation presents challenges for providers of both recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) and managed service programmes (MSP). Nugent reports that the Open Ireland forum—an advocacy group raising visibility on Ireland's economy and it's path to success—noted a shortfall of approximately 5,000 high-tech workers. This could also be attributed to competitive organisations making aggressive moves to ensure talent retention. "The war for talent remains fierce, which has resulted in IT companies having to increase compensation packages, pay retention bonuses, and significantly invest in training and development programmes to support high levels of graduate intake and retain its top talent," explains Lucy Krigstein, RPO operations at Kenexa. This talent dichotomy has played a large part in the changing role of recruitment in Ireland. "RPO is a segment of HRO where we are [10] HRO TODAY GLOBAL | SUMMER 2012 seeing growth due to its ability to add real value whilst reducing costs," says Zain Wadee, managing director of hyphen. The imperative of cost savings for global organisations has been fueled by the economic uncertainty over recent years. Outsourcing talent acquisition comes into play. "The recent European difficulty may be the igniter for greater RPO adoption," notes Karen Browne, president of Advantage xPO. "The continued stress of the economy and acceleration of the downturn within the Euro zone this summer has sparked the need for companies to truly engage RPO partners that can bring scalable talent acquisitions to the forefront. Companies will look to RPO providers for broader services and the value ad components of RPO will gain position as headcount comes under further scrutiny." Workforce demographics—full-time versus contingent workers— are causing more administrative headaches than ever. "With the change in recruitment dynamics in Ireland, organisations are now more heavily reliant on RPO and MSP providers to manage the upward need of contingent workers and retention of staff," says O'Connell. "The provision of an outsourced solution is allowing an organisation to flex and scale their contractor needs and bring in the recruitment expertise to attract the talent that is so hard to find. This is certainly being realised by the IT and telecom sectors." Our experts report that the financial services sector and pharmaceuticals are also increasing their usage of RPO. For RPO to have a great and lasting impact, it will have to go beyond simple cost savings, warns D. Zachary Misko, vice president of workforce strategy for Kelly Outsourcing and Consulting Group (OCG). "If companies outsource their recruitment, they need consistency and genuine stewardship of their brand from their RPO, and they need to see value beyond the basic function of filling vacancies," he says. "To do this, providers can—and should— identify inefficiencies in the recruitment process. They should help to create better or standardised processes across locations, assist clients to scale up or down as needed, and track important metrics, such as the quality of hires." Outsourcing might continue to see growth here, but organisations can seek other options. "Local recruitment agencies have had to catch up quickly and change their focus from sourcing locally to sourcing globally," Campbell explains. "New technologies and resources such as social media have massively helped them, as they have also helped the companies directly, but there remains a knowledge and skills gap within most internal and external recruitment teams on how best to service these new demands when they have traditionally relied on their local contacts and databases. Increasingly hiring companies are looking to in-source their recruitment function or else completely hand it over to an external provider that has global reach."