Careers 2018: Growing your own talent is best way to ensure quality pipeline

To create a pipeline of new talent, recruit the right candidates and develop future team leads, Fastnet — The Talent Group has launched a unique ‘Grow Your Own’ Talent Programme to produce graduates.

To create a pipeline of new talent, recruit the right candidates and develop future team leads, Fastnet — The Talent Group has launched a unique ‘Grow Your Own’ Talent Programme to produce graduates.

As an innovative end-to-end talent and recruitment consultancy, the Fastnet Graduate Programme sees graduates embarking upon a two-year training courses, developed to ‘grow’ talent for the company’s team over the short and long term.

The programme incorporates a six-month on-boarding plan, covering all aspects of the Fastnet business, including: creative use of social media, facilitation of client recruitment processes, HR consultancy training, client and candidate partnering, relationship management and ultimately sourcing talent and executive search.

All of the candidates spend Year 1 in the Talent Acquisition division focused on Quality & Laboratory and Year 2 on Engineering.

“Given the growth in demand for talent that we are seeing, we are leading by example and implementing our own talent acquisition strategy through our ‘grow your own’ talent programme,” said Dave Barry, director of Fastnet’s innovative new Talent and Transformation division.

“Ensuring that employees are hired, managed, developed, engaged and retained in the best possible ways will have positive knock-on impacts for every aspect of the business including performance, productivity and ultimately, profitability. We have established the Talent & Transformation division to partner with companies so that they can perform better and are more successful in the future.”

He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, current chair of CIPD Ireland, Southern Region and a graduate of University College Cork in HR, Economics & French.

Having previously helped companies like Eli Lilly and Trend Micro to attract and retain key resources, he now leads the division designed to exclusively service the role of talent management within multinational and indigenous companies. The division was created not just as a response to counter the growing challenge faced by companies to attract, but also to retain, the services of valued employees.

“The main inspiration for this is the clients that Fastnet has been partnering with over a considerable period of time, but what is particularly innovative about it is mirroring the approach in SME’s and the recruitment talent space — something I haven’t heard of being done here before.”

With offices in Dublin and Cork, Fastnet — The Talent Group is already a leading recruitment provider, and whose new division is reflective of its strategic focus and consultative approach.

“Over recent years, the company has grown exponentially, and we are certainly back in the war for talent, so to speak, and often in sectors where the available pool of such talent is quite small,” he said.

“Bringing in and growing our own talent to meet the needs of clients just made sense time-wise to formalise it through our Graduate Programme,” he added.

Over the last number of weeks, Fastnet has welcomed two graduates to the Grow your Own programme, with Ryan Malone joining the Fastnet team from DIT, where he graduated with a BSc in Chemical Sciences with Medicinal Chemistry. He is now specialising in recruiting Quality and Laboratory professionals for clients in the Pharma, Biopharma, Medical Device and the Food Agri sectors.

Sanathan Govender, a graduate of UCC and WIT with a Masters in Work and Organisational Psychology. joined the Engineering Talent acquisition team this month.

“Over the course of a number of talent workshops that Ryan attended, he has already found suitable candidates for Fastnet clients — a represented a tangible outcome of the programme already being seen. Sanathan has only joined very recently, but will hopefully contribute in a similar fashion. There are plans for similar additions like them in 2018.”

Fastnet has experienced significant growth over the last number of years and continues to expand its teams across the Cork and Dublin footprint.

“One of the biggest challenges facing the industry is the skills shortage, and retention of employees has become key to growth. The challenge for employers is to optimise talent management outcomes in how they attract, manage, develop and engage their people. The company’s re-branding in 2016 from Fastnet Recruitment to Fastnet — The Talent Group came about from trends during the downturn, where, even though there wasn’t that much recruiting going on, clients were keen to tap into more ‘end to end’ talent management more than just acquisition. Now, with the economy clearly back, it is not just about attracting, but about retaining.

“This is where initiatives like the Talent & Transformation division and the Grow Your Own Graduate Talent Programme emerged from — designed for a longer term perspective other than just recruitment, but accompanying our clients on the whole journey.”

More in this section

FILE PHOTO The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission has cleared the purchase of Goodbody Stockbrokers by AIB END Goodbody Stockbrokers fined over €1.2m by Central Bank over rules breaches
Nottingham City Centre Stock Irish staff at the Body Shop wait for wages as retailer shuts stores in the Republic
Ryanair comments on Norwegian Ryanair boss O'Leary's spat with Transport Minister over Dublin Airport escalates
IE logo
Devices


UNLIMITED ACCESS TO THE IRISH EXAMINER FOR TEAMS AND ORGANISATIONS
FIND OUT MORE

The Business Hub
Newsletter

News and analysis on business, money and jobs from Munster and beyond by our expert team of business writers.

Sign up
ie logo
Puzzles Logo

Play digital puzzles like crosswords, sudoku and a variety of word games including the popular Word Wheel

Lunchtime News
Newsletter

Keep up with the stories of the day with our lunchtime news wrap.

Sign up
Cookie Policy Privacy Policy Brand Safety FAQ Help Contact Us Terms and Conditions

© Examiner Echo Group Limited