Across Connacht and the Midlands, the roles proving hardest to fill this quarter span a genuinely wide range - tax managers and advisors, online web sales managers, and marketing assistants; permanent office administrators around Galway; and quality engineers and managers within medical device manufacturing more broadly. What connects them isn't sector, but a shortage of candidates who combine the right technical background with reliability and staying power - a theme that comes through consistently across the region's more people-facing roles.
Demand Is Shifting Toward Judgement Roles, and AI Is Quietly Reshaping the Rest
Brand management, FP&A, and tax manager roles are the clearest hot spots this quarter, alongside a growing need for strong employee relations skills within HR functions. For office and admin-heavy roles specifically, the deciding factor is increasingly personality rather than a specific skill set - employers are prioritising reliable, well-communicating candidates with genuine job stability over technical breadth. At the cooler end, accounts receivable and collections, accounts administration, and graphic design roles are comparatively well supplied. Within medical secretary roles, dictaphone typing has also faded as a required skill - a small but telling sign of AI tools being absorbed into administrative workflows as a scaling and integration phase, rather than a dramatic disruption, quietly retiring one specific legacy competency without displacing the role itself.
A Two-Speed Salary Market Is Emerging
Salaries across the region are rising roughly in line with inflation, but not evenly. Multinationals are increasing pay more readily, while many SMEs have left salary bands untouched despite having access to the same market data and benchmarking tools. Creative perks remain rare - culture, not allowances or compressed hours, is what candidates cite most often as the deciding pull toward a business. Office admin roles illustrate the pressure point clearly: with salaries capped around €32,000 and only basic perks attached, employers are increasingly struggling to attract quality candidates and turning to agencies for roles they'd previously have filled themselves.
Flexibility and Process Speed Are Now Bigger Barriers Than Pay
Hybrid and remote flexibility is the single most common source of candidate pushback in the region, and fully onsite roles routinely put candidates off outright. Career progression carries similar weight - candidates are wary of roles with no visible path upward, and commute friction compounds it further: city-centre roles are proving especially hard to fill, as candidates won't cross the city at rush hour for a salary in the low thirties with minimal benefits, though free parking measurably helps. Candidates returning from abroad add another layer of friction, often surprised that local salaries sit below what Ireland's cost of living would suggest.
Process speed is its own risk. Clients are frequently slow to decide, and a preference for reviewing multiple candidates before progressing to second interviews has stretched hiring timelines considerably - one candidate waited several weeks between rounds and was only kept engaged through regular, proactive communication. Separately, some clients remain unaware that agencies can employ staff on critical skills visas, adding needless risk-aversion to otherwise suitable technical hires. The sharpest example of adaptability paying off came from a growing manufacturing facility in Athlone: restructuring shift patterns to offer more consecutive days off unlocked a passive talent pool that wasn't previously job-seeking, filling three niche technician roles in two weeks. A similar pattern played out with two regional organisations - a well-known Galway events venue and a private Galway hospital group - that had never used a recruitment agency before and came to us this year after struggling to fill office admin and medical secretary roles directly; both were filled, and both clients were glad they made the call.
The Takeaway
Across Connacht and the Midlands, the roles that get filled fastest aren't necessarily the best paid — they're the ones where employers have adjusted structure, flexibility, or process speed to match what local candidates actually need. Get in touch with our team for custom regional benchmarking on the roles proving hardest to fill in your area.
