Irish Financial Pros: Please Come Home!

State employment agency Fás is trying to entice Irish émigrés back to the motherland. Fás is focusing on Irish people who emigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s, and is holding a job fair in New York's Manhattan later this month.

The Irish Times reported the Irish Funds Industry Association will be among the many exhibitors at the New York jobs fair, hoping to entice recruits to work in Ireland's rapidly expanding funds industry.

David Hannon, divisional manager at recruitment agency PPG, says Fás' efforts may be useful when it comes to filling market risk analysis and equity derivative analysis roles, which Irish employers are finding particularly difficult to fill. These positions require individuals with a high aptitude for math, a finance degree and possibly a double degree or Ph.D. in math.

David says individuals working in the U.S. financial sector - and earning very large salaries - once had to take huge pay cuts to relocate to Ireland, but that's not necessarily the case today. "A lot of people" are making in excess of $125,000 annually in Ireland, he says.