HAYS IRELAND BLOG

THOUGHTS ON THE WORLD OF WORK

Thursday 31 October 2013

Is Returning to Work After Maternity Leave a Trick or a Treat?

Anne-Marie's son Harry the Dinosaur

Anne-Marie Walsh shares her experience of maternity leave and coming back to work in Hays as an IT Business Intelligence Consultant.

Almost a year ago, I went on maternity leave from Hays. I was like a kid leaving school for a very long mid-term break.  I was ready to go. Although planning a business intelligence event to coincide with my last day of work, (while being approximately 36 weeks pregnant) was not in fact one of my more einsteinien ideas!


I looked forward to maternity leave, my mind conjured up idyllic scenes of baby massaging, long lazy lunches with other mummies and general bonding bliss with my baby.   I did have some appreciation at that point of the nappies, feeds and late nights but I preferred not to dwell on that. 

Eleven months later and maternity leave is now a distant memory.  What was a bump is now a healthy hearty boy, a little man in the making.  Six months went by in what felt like four weeks.  I remember getting asked if I had to go back to work. I did, but I also wanted to. 

I love my new little man unconditionally.  Weekends are a newfound treasure where all I want to do is chill out with him (sometimes he gets annoyed and insists I let him go to bed). But the working week is great, my head needed it and I needed it. 


You'll be seeing plenty of Halloween masks tonight. But I think we all use masks on a daily basis to differentiate work from our personal lives.  The thing with going on maternity leave and then returning to work is that, for a while, it is confusing as to which mask you should be wearing. 

I wear the work mask and get motivated by getting the right people for the right job.  I also get energy from my client and candidate interaction and finding out about the market changes in the last six months.  They hadn’t changed too much - Oracle and Microsoft business intelligence experts were still highly in demand.

I also get to actually drink a warm coffee (new mums understand a sup of warm coffee while handling a new baby is the Holy Grail) and socialise with colleagues once more.  But in the evenings there is a change.  It is no longer ‘Oh I have worked a very long day I deserve to put my feet up…or do yoga…or some such thing’. Now it’s like a military operation… pick up your baby, make a gazillion bottles for your baby, make other food for your baby, clean up after your baby, bath your baby and try and play with your baby.



A discourse on ‘mindfulness’ is pervasive in health and psychology media at the moment.  It comes from eastern traditions and involves paying conscious attention to experiences as they unfold, so your head is neither caught in the past, or the future, but in the present.  Having a baby taught me to be more mindful.  Instead of wondering what I should be doing now or what I would be doing in ten years I had to be present and attending to a hungry, sleepy and at times, smelly little creature.  This was no time for daydreaming.  Equally, with the return to work it has struck me that one way to negotiate the work life balance is to be more mindful.  So when you are at work focus fully on that and when you are with your little person, give that your full attention. I suspect this may be more difficult than it sounds but a good thing to strive for nonetheless. 

I also figure this can’t be all bad for my little man.  He has a relatively competitive mum.  If I wasn’t chipping away at my own monthly plans I would be monitoring his developmental milestone and putting in some performance improvement measures. I suspect Crèche may be a breather for this baby! Some people choose to be working mums, some choose to be stay-at-home mums, others don’t have a choice.  I want to be a happy mum and for me that involves trying to balance home and work life.  It helps to be working in Hays, an organisation that supports that. 

Coming back to work has had its challenges, yes I am super busy and yes I have had the odd maternal pang of guilt, wanting to extend the weekends….  But I like being busy and I think it makes you value the time you have with your little one all the more.  I also value work more. Being a stay-at-home mum would actually have been a very bad career choice for me.   I always was a nerdy child so I identify with those kids that enjoy leaving school for the mid term break but really are secretly ready to go back next Monday morning.  

Anne-Marie Walsh

IT Recruitment Consultant
HAYS Recruiting experts in Information Technology

2 Dawson Street Dublin 2
 T: +353 1 6190505
E: anne-marie.walsh@hays.com

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Wednesday 23 October 2013

Life as a CoderDojo Mentor

I have been mentoring in DCU CoderDojo since May 2012. I heard about DCU CoderDojo from a friend on Facebook who was mentoring in Kilkenny.

I wanted to check out what it was all about but had no intentions of mentoring for several reasons. More than anything I felt I wouldn't have the confidence or the ability to teach. I decided to bring my nieces along to see if this would be something they'd be interested in. While there I got chatting to Stephen Howell one of the mentors about CoderDojo and I changed my mind. If I could help my nieces, I could help other children.  As I was on maternity leave, I felt mentoring would be a great way for me to keep in touch with programming. 

It has been an amazing journey working with the young people attending @DCUCoderDojo. We teach gaming and then move on to what is called CoolestProjects.  CoolestProjects is where young people use what they learned in CoderDojo to develop their own projects for a competition.

In DCU Chris (15) and Chloe Burke(16) worked on a project called Theorem App for the competition and Caitriona Carrigan (15) worked on a website where the user could play the guitar, drums or piano.

Noel King, the lead mentor in DCU and Paul Phelan from Intel devised CoolestProjects and an accompanying awards ceremony which is held annually to showcase the creativity and talent of the young people attending CoderDojo.

I was blown away by the talent for the Coolest Projects Awards 2012 and very inspired. The excitement on the day was palpable and the projects were incredible. Maciej
Goszczycki (15) the winner wrote his own programming language!

Since CoolestProjects, Chloe has spoken at the Dublin Web Summit “a global gathering of the world's leading thinkers and doers in technology”. While Caitriona's website has inspired a game which is making its way in the UK GCSEs. 

Parents play a huge role in CoderDojo and with their help extraordinary things happen. Mike Kehoe is one of those extraordinary parents, as he helped DCUCoderDojo visit the IBM campus where we had a brilliant day coding and getting tours of the campus, organised by Mike. Since then, Fred Raguillet and an amazing team of mentors have started a CoderDojo in IBM Dublin and plans are afoot for one in IBM Galway.  

I was lucky enough to help start up CoderDojoGirls. This came about after a chat with Noel where it was observed that while girls start CoderDojo they tend to drop out a few weeks later. Noel asked myself and another mentor, Sarah Doran, if we'd be interested in starting up an all girls CoderDojo. We loved the idea! CoderDojoGirls@DCU now has an amazing team of girl mentors and roughly 30-40 girls attending every week. 

I have seen changes in the group. I can remember when the class started, the girls were quiet, now they're more vocal - they'll look for help when they feel they need it. I am even seeing more girls now attending our mixed classes.

Dublin City University (DCU) hosted the second Coolest Projects event on at the end of August with amazing prizes sponsored by Intel.  We had over 300 visitors and over 50 projects on display, this was a fun packed inspiring day.

CoderDojo members like Lauren Boyle, (8) created an app that teaches you how to bake cakes. Mitchell Dey (13) built an impressive stand-alone ‘arm’ that can articulate and grab, and it even has a light. Niamh Scanlon (11) created a website for people who want to learn how to code, or improve their coding skills. With such an array of talent on display who could not be uplifted.

In addition to all of this, we had flying drones and security demonstrations and amazing guest speakers, Joe Hogan (Openet), Con Moran (Crainn), Harry Moran (PizzaBot) and Shane Curran (Libramatic), were the order of the day. I was so proud of all the members who contributed, to see their work and to see so much talent in one room was so exciting. All I can say is roll on Coolest Project 2014. 

Life as a CoderDojo mentor is full of creativity, inspiration, positivity and innovation. James Whelton and Bill Liao, the co-founders of CoderDojo, have created something so special which nurtures goodwill amongst the volunteers. As a mentor I work with an incredibly supportive group of people, who make amazing things happen. There are so many exciting things coming up in CoderDojo. We'd love it if you could join us. 

If you’d like to become a mentor go to www.coderdojo.com. Check out this year’s entrants in the CoolestProjects Awards.


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Friday 4 October 2013

What makes Hays a great place for me to work?

Why Hays is a Great Place to Work
Hays Ireland are endorsed by the Great Place to Work Institute as a 'Best Workplace 2013', so I thought I’d let you know what makes Hays a great place for me to work.

I've just passed the sixth anniversary of my first day in Hays. Do most people remember the date when they started a job?  Up until then, I wouldn't have had a notion of the dates I started in other companies, but I guess I subconsciously knew this one would be special.

Six years is a long time to stay in a company in today’s culture. Up until that last week in September 2007, the longest I had spent in one job was two years. For a number of reasons, including freelancing, I was like the ‘Littlest Hobo’, turning up somewhere for a while, then moving on. I worked in a wide variety of marketing roles in all sorts of companies and was fortunate to have only one bad experience. However, I had a good feeling about Hays from the moment the consultant rang me about my application.

Even my two interviews, with the MD and another director, were enjoyable experiences. And I must add this was not something I usually felt in interviews. On my first day, throughout my first week and through what I call ‘the full bedding in period’ (six months), everyone was really friendly and supportive. I was waiting for the catch - the horrible department or the nasty colleagues who had been putting on smiley faces because I was new – it didn't come.

I’m lucky, in that I really enjoy what I do as a career. In Hays, I got a chance to put all my skills to the test, which was great. I also have a boss, the MD, who really values marketing as a function and values my input, to the point I was invited to join the senior management team a few years ago. Couple this with the friendly, supportive staff and you have an environment where I was looking forward to get back to work after my honeymoon. And that is in no way a reflection on the relationship with my lovely wife!

As I mentioned before, I've worked in a lot of companies and one thing I've learned over the years is that the salespeople are always the kings and queens of the company, as they bring home the bacon. In my view sales is completely complimented by marketing, but I’m pragmatic enough to know which one most companies prioritise.

To be honest, my biggest fear when I was deciding on whether to join Hays, was working in a company comprising 80% sales staff. I had worked with sales people before and my friends and family had told me some interesting stories from their own companies about these brash, rude, ego types. That’s not my experience with Hays. Maybe it’s because it’s their mission to find the right person to transform an organisation and the right job to change someone’s life, that our sales people are incredibly warm and friendly, whether juniors just learning the ropes, or directors with over a decade in the job.

But yet they are still sales people, which means they need a certain environment to thrive – targets and rewards. I've always understood this, which is why I never had an issue organising prizes for incentives schemes that included exotic safaris and the US Open tennis final in New York. The way I looked on it was, if I wanted those types of prizes, I’d need to do that type of job.

Nonetheless, other non-sales staff had a different view, some felt as though they were inferior members of the company. When the task was set by my MD to analyse this view and how we could rectify it, I put my hand up for the project team.

So a team of marketing, finance and administration staff set about devising a survey to understand the needs of people who worked outside the sales function and began the journey to rectify it.

For just over a year now, we have been running the ‘Hays Ireland Ladders Programme’. Devised for all non-sales staff, it is a scheme for recognition and reward. It is available for all members of the company to say thanks to someone in HR, administration, finance, facilities or marketing, who has went above and beyond the call of duty to help them out.

It comprises a Ladder of three Steps. It starts with the process of making a nomination. For example, I can nominate a member of any team, including my own. The proposal is then reviewed by a non-biased party for suitability. Upon approval, the nominee receives a mail informing them they have a Step on the Ladder, the mail includes why the nominator thinks that person deserves a Step and the nominee’s manager is cced on the mail.

On Step 2 of the Ladder, the process above is replicated, but the recipient gets a treat of their choosing, worth up to €25. On Step 3 of the Ladder, there is the added bonus of a luxury meal with other staff members and entry into one of the incentive scheme draws, in this case, a glamorous trip to Paris for the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe horse-race. After Step 3, it reverts back to Step 1, where you start building for your second ticket into the draw.

There was much excitement when the six names were pulled from the tombola in June and since then I have been beavering away, organising the trip. Then one of the lucky winners had to pull out at the last minute, so we got the opportunity to draw a new name.

This is where it gets a bit awkward. I am eligible for the Ladders Programme and was fortunate enough to get three nominations that were approved. However, with my involvement on the organisational side of the Ladders Programme and the prize, I didn't feel right putting my name into the hat.

And sure wouldn't you know, my name got pulled out of the blooming hat! I felt incredibly uncomfortable with it all, but that was eased by the fantastic support of people throughout the company. It would have been easy to shout ‘fix’ but they cheered my name and sent me congratulations - staff across the company, from junior to senior. And that to me is what makes Hays a great place to work!

Anyone have any tips for Sunday??                                                                                                  

Stephen Flanagan
Senior Marketing Manager
Ireland

HAYS Recruiting experts worldwide
16 Fitzwilliam Street Upper
Dublin 2
T: +353 1 619 0580
F: +353 1 670 4738
 
E:
stephen.flanagan@hays.com

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