Easynet seeks new recruits overseas

Telecoms provider Easynet is looking overseas for new recruits because of a shortage of networking skills in the UK.

The rapid adoption of broadband has led to increased competition for suitably skilled staff, forcing the company to broaden its search for new employees.

‘The development and rollout of new DSL and local loop unbundled services has put particular pressure on our need for professional engineers,’ said Easynet human resources director Julie Partridge.

‘Field engineers, network development, design and strategy skills are very scarce. Qualifications in Cisco and Juniper technologies are important, followed by project management skills and Prince 2 accreditation. So we have widened our approach.’

The company is looking to European countries with advanced telephony services, such as Spain, Italy and Greece, to recruit specialist broadband networking professionals.

Easynet is also supplementing traditional recruitment methods by running a graduate recruitment programme for only the second year.

‘A good example is of a particular graduate going into our network engineering team,’ said Partridge. ‘He did a computer science degree, but he also had some network strategy and security experience, too. He’ll fit straight in and start to specialise in six months.’

Partridge says recruiting skilled graduates is a good way of ensuring that new staff quickly fit in to the company’s culture.

‘Candidates from larger organisations with more established procedures often struggle to fit in and be flexible,’ she said.