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Susan Nix, Recruitment Business Partner in Financial Services in Morgan McKinley Ireland, talks about her journey with Morgan McKinley to date.

When I started in recruitment it was with Premier Group, a very successful Irish national recruitment group with offices in Cork, Dublin, Limerick, Waterford and Kilkenny. Within three years, after a large acquisition made by Premier, I was working for the global brand of Morgan McKinley and before I knew it I had colleagues in London, Sydney, Toronto, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. I had a good feeling exciting times were ahead and 12 years later I was not wrong and still love what I do everyday.

I would love to share with you three reasons I believe the Morgan McKinley global brand has been key to my success as a leading financial services recruiter in Dublin.

Increased Client Exposure

As a financial services (FS) recruiter, having market access to London and Asia in particular has been key to the growth of our market in Dublin. Perhaps my favourite success story came last year when my colleague in London asked me to meet his client, the EMEA Global Head of TA for a leading FS group. This client had some great relationships with my London colleagues, who in turn told him about me and based on this this client was keen to see how I could support their brand with some key leadership hires in Dublin. The rest is history and I was delighted in 2017 to recruit some of the top movers and shakers in the funds admin world in Dublin.

Access to Global Candidates

Let me get straight to my exciting story around accessing candidates overseas. This summer I got a call from an asset manager to talk about hiring senior risk professionals. Now we all know the more senior and specialised the risk roles get, the more difficult it gets to find these candidates but I did not panic as I had a plan. After the call I was going to call Singapore and London to talk about candidates on the move back to Dublin - music to my client's ears and within three weeks the offer was over the line and a super candidate who was very keen to relocate back to Ireland had his dream job.

Accessing global talent and expats has never been more relevant for Ireland's financial services. The IDA continue to do an amazing job in ensuring Ireland is a very strong consideration for new and expanding financial services groups but we need to make sure we have the talent to impress these companies, so between our excellent talent domestically and access to overseas talent and returning expats Ireland really is a force to be reckoned with and the Morgan McKinley global network makes this very easy.

Recruitment Trends from Overseas

So when I took up my most recent role in Morgan McKinley, on the senior executive financial services, I had more than a hunch that project and change management was going to be an expanding market. We were already servicing this market but in my opinion there was too much going on in FS between remediation work, regulatory change, system implementations, digitisation and automation for this market not to huge.

In addition to my own due diligence I looked at our top global performers in Morgan McKinley and guess what ... a number of them were working the project and change recruitment desks. Some late night calls to Morgan McKinley Australia and Asia were fun and insightful. Very quickly I knew the pitfalls to avoid when growing this market, the best approaches for business development, the associations to be aligned with and key screening questions to make sure you are engaging the best candidates. Rapidly this market has grown for Morgan McKinley and I attribute key leanings from my colleagues as helping us with a running start.

I nearly finished up this article without mentioning perhaps one of most exciting facts about working for a global recruitment group which is the opportunity to travel and work abroad. I clearly have not gone abroad seen as I am only mentioning this now.... yikes all of a sudden I feel very boring . In truth I feel so connected to the Morgan McKinley global offices and colleagues I don't need to move and I am also so excited about the financial services senior executive recruitment market that I don't want to leave Dublin!

#lovemyjob

Susan Nix, Recruitment Business Partner in Financial Services in Morgan McKinley Ireland