Recruitment firm sucessfully reset sights after global economic crisis

With business declining by 35 per cent between 2007 and 2008, and a further 25 per cent the following year, Hilarie Geary knew she would have to make some drastic changes. Her firm, Executive Connections, specialised in recruitment for the banking and financial services sectors, both of which were under severe pressure as a result of the global economic crisis.

“We were banking- and finance-focused and these sectors took some of the biggest hits. We had to develop new services and commenced a strategic plan to expand into Europe and beyond.”

Geary established the Dublin-based business in 1991, not long after the International Financial Services Centre was established. She noticed the IFSC was beginning to take off and saw an opportunity to help the firms locating in the area recruit staff.

“I had been working in a recruitment firm but they were very general, and I wanted to be specialist,” she says. “I set up a firm specialising in recruitment for the banking and financial services sectors. I went on a marketing campaign to get a lot of firms in the IFSC as clients. I got around 62 per cent of them.”

Despite establishing the business in a recession, the company made a profit in its first year of operation and quickly expanded. Seven years later, she bought a building on Baggot Street to house an ever growing workforce.

“By 2007, we had 25 staff. Then everything hit the fan and banking and financial services recruitment crumbled,” she says. “In 2008, we put an action plan in place. We had to make some redundancies. We decided to expand our service into other countries. We also established a C-suite recruitment side to our business, in 2010.”

The new venture, Principal Connections, runs alongside the existing recruitment business and looks after the recruitment of senior level executives for major clients. This part of the business now accounts for one quarter of the company's overall revenues, she says. The company also expanded its offering.

“We would mentor people let go by companies. This was an additional service we offered. We also went in-house and managed appraisal systems for companies which didn’t have HR departments.”

She established marketing and HR divisions, which allowed the business to expand its services to existing customers and secure new clients, not related to the banking or finance sector.

“Today we have clients in the UK, China, Canada, Jamaica, Switzerland, Germany and Burma. We recruit for firms in those locations.

“We have historic relationships which we leverage. Some people we placed into positions such as financial controller have now become the CEO and relocated.”

She says the most recent recession was not the first difficult time her business has had to endure. Back in 2001, when the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened, financial services and banks suffered in the aftermath. I am thus hardened at this stage.”

However, one thing that the recent recession has changed is the nature of roles. Her business used to recruit predominantly for permanent roles. Now, contract and interim jobs account for 45 per cent of positions.

She says university degrees are still important but employers are placing more emphasis on experience and attitude than they did in the past. The recruitment sector has had to adapt enormously to cater for the growth of social media, with job alerts, searching on the move and LinkedIn profiles taking over traditional CV formats.

“Technology and Skype have allowed us to be a global business. Technology has also given us lots of mechanisms to test a candidate to show whether they are a strong fit for a business.

“We have to work around the clock, on different time zones now. Some people have had to work through the night on projects and sleep during the day.”

However, Geary doesn’t think the digital arena will replace the need for recruitment firms. “There is no substitute for knowledge and personal connection – we can let people know if they are right for the company and not just the paper description of a job; we can prepare them for each step towards their new role and offer counsel as they go through the challenging processes.”

The company has an annual turnover of €4.5 million and 25 staff. Geary says she hopes to add another eight staff by January.