The latest HRchat episode features Derek O’Rourke, Morgan McKinley Technology’s Manager of Tech Recruitment in Canada. Bill Banham and Derek discuss motivations and job requirements of today’s top tech pros, market trends and the upcoming InnovateWork Toronto event.
Derek, originally from Cook Island, has been living and working in Toronto for the past six years. He previously spent over three years as a lead account manager for Hayes IT and also worked for Salesforce as an account executive.
Derek works closely with the tech communities in Toronto. His skills include an innate ability to understand what his clients’ IT needs actually are and a diligent, knowledgeable approach.
Read the HRchat Interview Transcript:
Bill Banham: Derek O’Rourke, welcome to the HRchat Podcast.
Derek O’Rourke: Thank you very much for having me. It’s great to be here.
Bill Banham: Now, firstly Derek, please introduce yourself. Tell us a bit about your role and the work done at Morgan McKinley Technology.
Derek O’Rourke: Sure. I manage technology recruitment here in Canada for Morgan McKinley Technology. My own background is pretty much exclusively serving the technology sector from various different angles from recruitment right now and previously as well, I’ve worked in software product sales in the past.
Just a bit on Morgan McKinley. We’re actually a global recruitment company. I think we have offices in 10 countries worldwide right now. We only set up in Canada already last year, so I think maybe March last year, 2017. Things have been really exciting, really busy so far, so it’s really going well for us.
Bill Banham: Perfect, thank you. What does an average working week, if there’s such a thing, Derek, look like for you?
Derek O’Rourke: Yes. Well, I think most people probably can relate to this, what is an average work week. Recruitment’s definitely a funny one in this regard. You might start out with one agenda any given morning and probably by 8:30 that morning, it’s probably turned upside down.
Recruitment is very, very much time sensitive and we often need to be ready to act when requirements come in for us, but that being said, I spend most of my week working with our clients, a lot of meeting people. I try to spend as much time as possible out of the office meeting people as I can.
I’m a little less hands-on in the recruitment of the candidate side of things, but depending on how busy we are, I get involved in that, too. I guess any given week, I’ve met with maybe five to 10 people, worked on three or four different roles for our clients, spent a number of hours developing business for us, and some interviewing candidates, strategic planning.
I think most of my time is actually spent trying to sink a mini basketball into the mini net we have in our office, but I never seem to get the thing in there, so there’s a lot of hours spent doing that.
Bill Banham: Morgan McKinley, it’s pretty new to Canada. You mentioned a moment ago that the company is in about 10 countries right now, which is awesome. Why did Morgan McKinley decide to expand into Canada as opposed to other markets?
Derek O’Rourke: Yes. I think it was quite a natural decision, really. The technology sector in Canada is absolutely booming right now, and that’s what we’re focusing on here with Morgan McKinley in this market. I think when you look at going into North America, there’s probably less barriers to entry in the Canadian market than the US right now, but not only that, Toronto’s become such a hotbed for emerging technologies, as well, artificial intelligence and deep learning, for example. It was really a natural choice for us I think in terms of stop one for North America. I think it really has got the market. It’s growing and it’s an exciting place. It really is.
Bill Banham: From your perspective, so you’re going to be wee bit biased I guess, but how is Morgan McKinley adding value to this exciting Toronto tech community?
Derek O’Rourke: Yes. Well, we are getting involved in a lot of events, be it through sponsorship or even just attending them and checking them out. We’re actually going to host maybe one or two of our own this year, as well. We’ve seen the priorities events, and if you can get the right people into a room, it really, really helps everyone that attends. We want to bring this unbelievable tech community together and help people leverage from their peers however they can.
I guess on top of that, doing what we do, it’s also quite rewarding, our day to day, right? We’re finding there’s a huge skills gap in the technology sector in this city, right? Software developers are in huge demand right now in Toronto, Canada wide actually in fact, so it’s really rewarding not only to help our clients find excellent people in a very, very difficult market or difficult landscape right now, but it’s also great to help amazing candidates or amazing talent find the jobs that they really deserve to.
Bill Banham: You just mentioned that there’s a huge demand at the moment, a very healthy tech economy within the GTA, the greater Toronto area for those who are listening from outside of Toronto. What are these awesome developers, software professionals, other types of tech folk, what are they looking for in terms of compensation? What’s most important to tech job seekers that you guys are seeing?
Derek O’Rourke: Oh, yes. Like always, conversation in terms of your financial take home is always important, but we actually recently conducted a bit of a survey on this, and gone are the days where money was everything. There’s so much more in play these days, right?
Actually, from our results, we asked many different questions – “What’s most important to you? What do you look for when you’re looking for your new job?” We found that working for a good manager was the number one priority for software developers right now, which is very interesting.
I think the surprising thing about it we found really was that you’re seeing such a buzz around artificial intelligence and taking away the human touch in the technology sector right now, but working for a good manager, so that human touch is still really important for people, for software developers right now.
I think other aspects we found, as well, were being competitive in terms of the health benefits you offer, if you’re a startup and if you can offer stock options. Vacation days are always an important thing, but more so than just one thing, it really is the whole package, what you offer today. Every candidate we speak to, the company that’s hiring has to do the sale almost, so it has really turned on its head really a little bit the last couple years.
Bill Banham: Okay, thank you. You’ve touched upon a couple of things I just want to explore a wee bit more with you,
Derek. That’s kind of around the idea of without generalizing, I’m guessing that a lot of the folk that you guys help get into the right positions are maybe millennials, maybe in their 20s and 30s. I’d like to talk to you a bit about what their particular motivations are.
Are you, for example, seeing more desire from millennials to work in smaller companies, you mentioned startups a moment ago, maybe because they think that it’s a better career education and maybe they can make a bigger splash, and of course, you said that share options is something that you might not get in larger organizations. Are you seeing that, or am I way off the mark?
Derek O’Rourke: No, no, you’re right. I would say it’s kind of a yes and no answer. I sound like a politician, right? With millennials, especially with new graduates, a lot of the top university programs almost have monopolies on some of the graduates. They’re coming right out of college and they have their job already organized I guess, right?
A lot of the millennials do kind of want to start out and work for your Google, your LinkedIn, your Sales Force, these large multinational companies to work for where there’s an amazing working environment, but they learn the ropes there, they get exposed to really smart people, and the office environment, work process is you name it.
I see people doing that for a couple years coming out of these programs and then making a change to a startup, because they kind of that grounding, that education now in the workplace, and then they feel they can really make a mark then somewhere a little bit smaller and obviously get suitably rewarded for it, too.
I think even on top of that, the culture of the city is just incredible in terms of how it encourages entrepreneurs. Millennials are becoming their own successful entrepreneurs in their own right as well right now. There’s very few barriers to them and they’re encouraged to go and pursue what they believe in.
I guess it kind of goes back to my other point. It’s a very candidate-driven market right now, so people have so many options and routes they can take and they can go with their careers even at an early stage now.
Bill Banham: One of the institutions, certainly in Toronto, which helps startups, it helps all these clever young folk who are looking to create brands and software and technology from scratch, Mars, the Mars Discovery District. That’s my lead into, one of the reasons, only one because you and I have a good relationship, but one of the reasons why we’re doing this interview today is you guys are again a sponsor of the Innovate Work Toronto event, which is happening at Mars on April 16th.
Please check them out. Get your tickets if you haven’t already done so. It’s awesome. Loaded question for you, Derek. Why did you guys decide to get involved again with Innovate Work Toronto?
Derek O’Rourke: Yes. I’m glad you asked this one, because it does give me a chance to bring you guys up, but it will be a very honest one, as well. We attended a couple of events probably the middle of 2017 last year, and we absolutely loved them. The speakers were great. The networking aspect was fantastic, as well. I think it was always very relevant. The people that were in the room were very relevant for us, as well.
I’ll be honest. It was probably mostly because I enjoy your dad jokes a bit more than most people, and I have to be around you. I have to hear those again. That’s the real hook for me. No, to be serious, it gives us a great platform ourselves as a sponsor to speak and network with great people and getting some great brand exposure, as well, and again, as I said, to the right audience for us.
Bill Banham: Did you hear about the jumper cables that went into the bar?
Derek O’Rourke: I didn’t.
Bill Banham: The barman says, “You can stay, but don’t you dare start anything.”
Derek O’Rourke: You get me every time. I’m going to write that down.
Bill Banham: I promise never to do another joke on this show. Okay, a little bird tells me that there’s some big news at Morgan McKinley. You guys have got a new CEO. Tell me a bit about that.
Derek O’Rourke: Yes, we sure do. Pat, who’s been our CEO for I think the last 30 years, he’s still in the business, just stepping aside into a board role as chairman. Aldagh McDonogh has recently taken over as the new CEO, which is really exciting news. Aldagh was the Head of Transformation in the business up to now.
I guess for myself, I haven’t really worked too closely with Aldagh over the years, but Ian, our director here, says amazing things about Aldagh. He’s one of the most forward-thinking leaders that he has ever worked with, so it’s really exciting times ahead for Morgan McKinley.
We’re quite proud of a few things here, but one of them is our diversity and leadership here as well at Morgan
McKinley and on a global scale for that matter, and I think Aldagh as our new CEO really reaffirms that, as well.
Bill Banham: Morgan McKinley leadership, if you’re listening to this, I think Derek’s answers so far very much warrants a little bit of a pay raise… Okay, so apart from that exciting news, what are the other plans for the next 12 months? You mentioned that you guys might be doing some events. Are there any other releases, initiatives in the works? Are you expanding? I believe you got a new office. Tell us about it.
Derek O’Rourke: Yes. I know we’re a global business, but we’re kind of a startup ourselves here in Toronto. Next 12 months are going to be exciting no matter what happens, really. We have just recently moved into a new office, so we’re at a place called Spaces, which is this amazing shared space office space on Queen and John, downtown Toronto. I’m loving life here at the moment.
We’re actually going to be launching our contract business here very soon as well in Canada, so up to now, we’ve been focusing on permanent full-time recruitment, but we now have the contract wing of our business open as well, which is a big addition for us. It also kind of goes in line as well with our growth for the year, so we’ve been growing quite quickly up to now and we’re going to hire roughly eight to 10 more people before the end of 2018 here in our Toronto office.
On top of all that, I’m sure there’s going to be plenty of other things pop up over the next 12 months that weren’t planned, but I’m sure they’ll be exciting one way or another, as well.
Bill Banham: Morgan McKinley Technology is the place to be right now! Okay, one last question for you, Derek. How can our listeners learn more about Morgan McKinley Technology, and also, how can they connect with you?
Derek O’Rourke: Yes. You can visit our website I guess first and foremost. It’s MorganMcKinley.ca. I think probably more relevant for a lot of listeners might be checking out our open jobs or maybe getting in touch with the individual consultants here, as well, which can all be done through our LinkedIn page. Again, go to Morgan McKinley on LinkedIn and if you’re looking for jobs in the Toronto area, there’s a button there. You can check them all out. If anyone wants to get directly in touch with me, find me on LinkedIn. Always happy to catch up. Always happy to talk, so please do.
Bill Banham: Well, I always enjoy talking to you, Derek. That just leaves me to say today, Derek O’Rourke, thank you very much for being the guest on the HRchat show.
Derek O’Rourke: Thank you very much for having me, Bill.
Bill Banham: Listeners, until next time, happy working.