Jobs firm employs new approach to recruitment

UNDER THE RADAR:  Ronan Colleran, Accreate

HOW DO you re-engineer your business when you’re not simply in the middle of a recession, but smack bang at the heart of one of the sectors worst affected by the economic downturn – recruitment?

That’s the question Ronan Colleran faced last year when he decided to relaunch Accreate Executive Search & Interim, a company he founded in 2001, built to a staff of 33 and a turnover of €1.5 million by 2007, and whose future he needed to secure.

“During the boom, recruitment was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel,” says Colleran (35), a chartered accountant and son of the late Galway GAA legend and TV pundit Enda Colleran.

“But when all that changed, we realised that, to compete against both online and offline companies, we’d have to offer something very special to our clients and that, we also realised, meant changing the business completely.”

So that’s what Colleran did, focusing on executive search, the high end of the recruitment business used largely by multinational corporations. The majority of the positions he fills now are in the €100,000-plus salary bracket.

“The difference today is that we’re totally research-focused. We have a full-time research team working with our consultants, constantly identifying people at a senior level in Ireland or Irish people living overseas who may be suitable for new assignments.

“So if a chief executive has a vacancy at boardroom level or at senior management level . . . we have an enormous database of more than 350,000 candidates which we’re constantly updating, and that’s what blue-chip clients expect.”

But something else about Accreate makes it different. Although founded by Colleran, who remains its managing director and retains a shareholding, it is now owned by Premier Group, which has 18 offices in Ireland and Britain, with others in Amsterdam, Tokyo, Sydney, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong.

In 2005, Colleran sold Accreate to Imprint plc, then a cash-rich UK company on the acquisitions trail. He stayed on at the helm after the earn-out period was completed in December 2007, only to find that, the following May, Imprint was swallowed up by Premier Group, bringing Accreate back into Irish ownership.

“It’s been an extraordinary nine years since I sent up in a small office in Westland Row with five phones around me,” says Colleran. “Happily, the combination of Accreate and Premier Group has worked extremely well. We now fill a particular niche between top-end UK executive search firms that don’t have a presence in Ireland and well-established Irish search firms that don’t have an international footprint.”

But the transformation of Accreate has not been without substantial pain, he acknowledges. Staff numbers have been reduced to 15, and that 2007 turnover of €1.5 million was slashed by as much as 50 per cent in 2009.

“Is it frustrating? Absolutely. But the fact is that there are market forces at play which make it impossible to achieve 2007 figures today no matter how early you get up in the morning or how late you go to bed at night,” says Colleran. “Also, the approach we’re adopting now is much more labour-intensive. Whereas we used to be placing 10 people a week, we’re now placing two at board or senior management level.”

He says this means the firm’s new approach will take time to develop. “We’re trying to ignore the figures we’re doing today and working on the basis that, by 2011 or the London Olympics in 2012, the market will be more buoyant and we’ll have achieved sufficient scale to make us the best executive search firm in Ireland,” says Colleran.

“That’s our Olympic goal.”

On The Record

Name:Ronan Colleran.

Company:Accreate Executive Search & Interim.

www.accreate.com

Job:Founder and managing director.

Age:35.

Background:Graduated from NUIG with a B.Comm in 1994, followed by a master's in accounting from the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School the following year. Qualified as a chartered accountant with Arthur Andersen in Dublin in 1999. Was a member of the governing body of NUIG from 2004 to 2009.

Set up Accreate in 2001. Sold to UK company Imprint plc in 2005, but remained as managing director. Imprint bought by Irish- owned Premier Group in May 2008. Again, Colleran remained as managing director, with an interest in the company. Relaunched Accreate in May 2009 with a focus on high-end executive search.

Challenges:"To engage our research team, we have to have a financial commitment from clients. Getting that commitment can be very challenging at the moment given that companies . . . are very price-focused. Nobody likes to turn down work, but we've had to turn down work because of that."

Inspired by:"My late father Enda Colleran, teacher, captain of the Galway three-in-a-row All Ireland team in the 1960s and the first GAA pundit on the Sunday Gameon RTÉ television. He taught me to get the most out of every day, which is something I always try to apply to business."

Most important thing learned so far:"Cash is king. That's one of the harsh lessons my generation has learned over the past two years, especially anyone earning their living in a cyclical business like recruitment."