We’ve had some tough economic times and our best and brightest seem to be leaving in huge numbers, but is there a reversal in that trend?
As the economic crisis hit and began to squeeze businesses and jobs, an educated and talented workforce began to leave our shores in search of opportunities elsewhere. For some, the grass has proven to be greener abroad, and it was assumed that, with things being so dire, it would be a long time before they came back home, if they ever did. The term ‘Brain Drain’ was coined to describe this mass exodus, not just of young graduates but also of young professionals or experienced workers with long careers behind them who moved themselves and their families to try and find a better life.
However, it’s possible that the trend might be reversing, as many Irish people who left in previous years are coming home, and may be setting down their roots here again now that they have realised there are opportunities available. Declan Fitzgerald, of Hubspot, an ‘inbound’ marketing company based in Dublin, has been looking at this trend over the course of last year, and seen that Irish talent all over the planet are looking back home.
Hubspot specialise in software and services that help people generate sales leads in a way that’s different to traditional marketing, creating compelling content for people to come to your company instead of you going to them, and with 700 employees already, they’re looking to expand again in the near future. Firstly, they need to find the right talent to bring the company forward, with particular skills in sales and marketing. Declan has reached out to Irish living abroad in the UK, Canada and Australia in particular, as well as those still here at home, and nearly 15% of the workforce already at Hubspot have returned from abroad to a position in Dublin, demonstrating the success they’ve had at reversing the trend of emigration.
“Putting my patriot hat on for a moment, I’m quite proud of that, and it’s not just us, there’s a general trend in this sector at the moment”, Declan said, adding “These are people who are successful in what they’re doing abroad, they’re very skilled in say, software development or sales and could be employed in lots of different places around the world. For whatever reason, they’ve decided to get new skills abroad and a lot of the time they’re just waiting for the right opportunity to come back”.
It’s not just workers in those two areas either. According to what he’s seen, many of the people who’ve gone abroad and have transitioned from one industry into another. They may have left as tradesmen or graduates with no work experience, but they’ve come back with specialised skills in different areas. From people selling luxury airline tickets for nearly £7,000 an hour in London to successful software engineers in Australia, there is a huge variety of people with different type of experience who have decided that the time was right to come home.
The questions is whether or not those people are here to stay, or is this going to be another stop along the map for these returning people? “The majority are coming back for good, but some of the younger people would probably be open for another move”, stated Declan, and added that so far “this trend is just in Dublin, as they seem focused on the jobs that are in the tech sector there”.
So while there is a trend in the software and information and communications technology sector, it hasn’t yet spread to other areas in the country or other industries. However, that’s at least a positive note amongst what has been an almost constant stream of bad news. “For people who are abroad thinking that it’s doom and gloom across the board, that’s not the case. The ‘Brain Drain’ is isolated to a couple of sectors, and we should be turning our attention now to bringing talent back home. In fact, we have negative unemployment in the ICT sector, we can’t fill the jobs, and we need to bring in people with language skills, with particular skills that are not so common in Ireland, and we want to do that by bringing home Irish people from abroad”.
The longer that the trend continues, the better for Ireland and our economy. In the past few years, there have been missed possibilities for growth and expansion as we might not have had the right people with the right skills in the country. For Hubspot and for other companies, there’s an important role for education to play in this. “We need to produce more people with computer science degrees and maths backgrounds, as well as language skills, and the government have done some good work on this front. However, people who come out of university with those strings to their bow will definitely be able to find something”.
While we have a way to go yet before we can say that we have recovered, and the likelihood is that we will never reach the level we were at in the hay day of the Celtic Tiger, there are some signs that things are beginning to take a better turn, and move towards a brighter future. What remains to be seen is whether the rising tide in those sectors that are experiencing growth can lift all boats.
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