FROM SEPTEMBER 2014’s RECRUITER MAGAZINE

High profile crisis hot spots in the Middle East and West Africa are affecting recruitment and business operations in those regions.

Nathan Byrne, regional director at Michael Page Africa, said companies were banning travel to and within West Africa including Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, where the Ebola virus outbreak is having a devastating impact on the general population. 

Byrne added: “This will have the usual effects — a slowdown in business and a decrease in consumer sentiment on products made in West Africa and exported out. However, I also believe that Africa has a ‘get on with it’ mentality and for the people within West Africa, they are continuing with their jobs and daily lifestyles.”

However, he told Recruiter: “Not much expat recruitment occurs into West Africa (as it does with Eastern and Southern and Northern Africa).”

Richard Putley, a managing director of Executives in Africa, said he was currently unable to present candidate shortlists to clients looking to expand in places like Liberia and Guinea. 

He told Recruiter that some UK candidates don’t want to relocate to Nigeria at the moment but added, “it hasn’t had a significant impact on the quality of individuals prepared to look at that location”. 

At executive search firm Carmichael Fisher, Paul Twine, head of practice, financial services and Africa, told Recruiter that some clients operating in the worst affected areas like Liberia were being advised to postpone recruitment plans. He said: “[Ebola] adds to people’s perceptions of the risks that already exist working in Africa. It is not as if it’s a region without its political and economic challenges anyway.”

Carmichael Fisher recently opened a new office in Lagos, Nigeria. Day-to-day business and hiring processes, said Twine, were largely unaffected in Nigeria. 

As the extremist group Islamic State continues to wage terror in Iraq, UK authorities recommend against most travel to the region. Lisa Scarlett, business development manager for specialist energy recruiter Earthstaff, has stopped her monthly visits to the firm’s base in Erbil, Kurdistan. She told Recruiter there was only one Kurdish staff member out there at the moment.

She said: “There are a number of operators that are still in country and it’s business as usual; they’ve mobilised their contractors and carried on. Then you have got others that have evacuated [staff] and the contractors are on standby. They are playing it by ear.”

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