The Irish National Pensions Reserve Fund is growing, and it’s looking for staff at both junior and senior levels, says investment director John Corrigan.

Corrigan has been with the Irish NPRF since its inception in April 2001. “I came with the furniture,” he says. “I had a blank sheet of paper and €6.5bn in the bank. The task was then to get the team on board and develop an investment strategy.”

The fund has since swelled to €21.25bn, which easily dwarfs local competitors. As a sovereign fund, the NPRF won’t see any cash outflow until 2025 – by which time Corrigan estimates it will have grown to a mighty €140bn – and this affects the type of people it hires.

“We want to capture equity risk premium, so people with experience in risk management and portfolio modelling are the type of staff we want to attract,” he says.

For such a big fund, the NPRF has a relative skeleton crew of 16. However, they are currently recruiting for a head of property, and Corrigan says they want someone with experience of indirect property investment through limited partnerships.

The NPRF team, he says, boasts a wealth of experience, consisting of people who have cut their teeth both locally and abroad: “There’s a large contingent of Irish expats working in London and Edinburgh who are keen to come back. That has been an important turning point in terms of recruiting staff. We’ve also looked at Scandinavia and the Netherlands for talent.”

Though the firm’s graduate recruitment is a little ad hoc, Corrigan says they are always looking for new junior recruits, particularly if they have quant skills.

“Our overall emphasis is towards risk and quantitative analysis so it is an area we are interested in recruiting for.”