Serving the needs of the online recruiters in Ireland for the last 5 years I got to know a number of the web design companies in Ireland. There is quite a large pool of excellent web design and/or web development companies. The fact that there used to be over 600 registered recruitment agencies on average during the last 5 years generates a need for a hundreds of recruitment agency web sites. On average a recruitment agency (or any other) web site needs to e replaced every two years. That defines the size of the recruitment agency web site market in Ireland of about 200 to 300 web sites per year!
So no wonder the web design companies in Ireland had it good over the last number of years. The average budget was about €25 000 per the recruitment agency web site and a number of big players got their site done for over €50 000. And then the Celtic Tiger got a bit tired, and could not sustain pricing structures implemented in the Irish recruitment industry. As a side effect the web design in Ireland was and still is hit badly. The web design was the industry where huge sums of money have been changing hands for many years between gentleman. Today, when the market is almost gone completely, there is this bitter taste in the mouths and the solicitors are getting involved to untangle the complex contracts and unfinished projects.
The number of the new job boards in Ireland is greater than the number of the new recruitment agency web sites being published in the last 6 months. The job boards owners are forgetting that it is the recruitment agencies who are supposed to be paying their fees. And the Recruitment agencies cannot even invest in their own web sites?
It seems that the online recruitment is the industry that is disappearing from the radar of the web design companies in Ireland. And that is the same industry that up until the last year had a few hundred new web site releases. The size of the market is not smaller, but the market almost do not even exist for the recruitment web site design.
We all had it good for many, many years now. In the same time we become extremely expensive and therefore uncompetitive on the international web design (or any other) market. Foreign companies are running away, since our tax breaks cannot justify our costs any more. It simply does not pay to do business in Ireland any more. Irish web design companies should rethink their strategies and pricing in general. Otherwise very few of the web sites will actually be made in Ireland any more. We all know it would really be a pity, simply because there is and there is quite a few really good web design companies in Ireland. If we loos them, the internet based businesses like the online recruitment will suffer as well.