Career Zoo goes wild!

It’s been a couple of weeks since the third and most successful Career Zoo, the job fair for professionals. It was amazing! Firstly, the standard of the companies who participated rose considerably, check them here. A full range of industries were represented – healthcare, IT, telecoms, pharmaceutical, finance, manufacturing, management consultancy and retail. And there was an excellent choice of education establishments.

A big draw was the skills conversion courses offering new career opportunities for professionals. In just 6-12 months these courses allow individuals to retrain, free of charge, into a growth sector like software development, cloud computing or pharmaceuticals. I think these courses would offer a fantastic opportunity for those who are coming from the toughest industries like construction, architecture and engineering. Interestingly, we just did our own survey on skills conversion in the IT sector, which produced very good news for jobseekers (IT Skills Conversion Survey Results)

With such a stellar line up it was no surprise that the attendees went through the roof. It’s estimated over 10,000 people turned up over the two days. To be honest it felt like all 10,000 were there on the Saturday. There was a queue from the Mansion House all the way down Dawson Street late into the afternoon! I felt bad for the people who had to queue, but for health and safety reasons the staff at the Mansion House needed to manage the numbers. I hope that everyone got some value at the event after patiently waiting. Our stand was completely packed with a wide range of professional s offering their CVs and asking for advice. It fact it took a week just to get through the hundreds of CVs we received and contact the applicants.

The Career Clinic we hosted on behalf of Career Zoo was again a huge success and the walk-in slots were snapped up within the first hour on both days. I personally dealt with five, very talented individuals who welcomed the advice on their CVs, interview preparation and career strategy. However, I was surprised at how some of the attendees prepared for Career Zoo. It’s not very often you get a chance to have a face-to-face conversation with a potential employer before application. It’s a fabulous opportunity for people to make an impression and let all the great employers attending know that they should seriously consider them for a job. Nonetheless, it was only a minority who dressed formally. In fact there was one gentlemen with “Who’s your daddy” emblazoned across a t-shirt. You could argue it’s perfectly fine in the IT sector to dress casually to meet potential employers who might want to interview you, but I personally would have erred on the cautionary side and dressed conservatively.

In addition, it was quite common to meet people who did not bring CVs or who had ran out of copies. It seemed strange to me, that people would be content to queue for 20 minutes to get into the event, but not have carried out prior preparation. There can’t be too many events that gather companies of that calibre into one room wanting to hire people. I received CVs with addresses scribbled out on them, some missing numbers and one even missing a name! You can be sure, that the attendees who did their homework beforehand – researched the companies attending and the jobs available, produced well prepared and tailored CVs, dressed for a proper interview, tried to make an impression on the employers attending – would have been the first to get a call, or might even have secured an interview on the spot.

Overall, I think most people - exhibitors and attendees- got some real value out of the event and I believe there have already been hires. Credit to the organisers who have been able to build a bigger and better event than they had previously. Here’s looking forward to the next Career Zoo!

Stephen is responsible for the marketing and communications for Hays Ireland including the website, PR and social media. He is a member of the Marketing Institute of Ireland and is passionate about the development of marketing through new technologies.

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Ireland is still a great place to do business

Ireland is still a great place to do business. There. I said it.

Don’t believe me?
You don’t think that our country is a great place to do business?

Well, let me throw some statistics at you – some you may have seen before, but they’re worth dusting off. In fact, I might write some of these up on big posters and put them up around my office, they’re that impressive:

·         Ireland is home to almost 1,000 foreign companies, including:
- 8 of the World’s Top 10 Pharmaceutical companies
- 15 of the World’s Top 25 Medical Devices companies
- 8 of the World’s Top 10 Technology companies

·         Ireland has more US investment that the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India & China) countries…combined

Earlier this year we saw Intel commit to a €500m investment in their facility in Leixlip as well as other leading international companies such as HP, PayPal, Merck and Facebook making additional job commitments. So, all these companies think that Ireland is a great place to do business.

I happen to agree with them wholeheartedly. And I also think, more importantly, that Ireland should continue to be a great place to do business and that conditions will improve over the next few years. The main issue is that this outlook, which I share with others, is lost in the negativity – all we seem to hear in the media is the bad news…the doom and gloom…the blame game. It seems amazing to me that we have to rely on overseas media to talk up our prospects and the future for the Irish economy. We need to spread the word that there are fantastic things going on right now in the Irish economy and that things will continue to get better. In fact, I’m bringing a group of well-informed business leaders together to promote this positive message…but more about that later.


Now, although I’m a huge optimist (I have to be in my line of work), I do completely understand that it is still a tough place out there for a huge number of people. I see it everyday when I meet and talk to highly specialised and experienced individuals who have been out of work for many months. And, given enough time, I could easily bang on about all the bad things that still exist in the Irish economy and what we’re not doing right.

However, I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to focus on the things that we do well – in fact, the things that we do brilliantly – rather than the things we aren’t doing.

Lets take two articles recently published on FT.com and CNBC and see what positive messages they’re espousing about Ireland and our economy.

A recent FT.com article clearly shows how Ireland is in a completely different space to other European countries that are undergoing a financial crisis.

• We’re quickly restoring a competitive edge (see Goodbodys’ Dermot O’Leary’s report on Ireland’s competitiveness for more info
• We are getting the public debt under control
• The banking sector is gradually being brought into line and hopefully a solid base will be established soon in order to provide the necessary capital for the SME sector.

I know there are flip sides to all these arguments, but let's focus on the positives for once and give ourselves a chance. We can do this!

Wilbur Ross (just the Chairman of one of the world's leading turnaround groups) told CNBC that Ireland will be the first economy in Europe to recover. He says that our fundamental economic structure is still present and this will give us the platform to recover from this crisis. Great news!


There are plenty of other reasons to be positive – if you have time (in fact, make time!), check out the fantastic videos on the IBEC and Failte Ireland videos on Ireland - stirring stuff I think you’ll agree.

It is more important than ever that we have a positive outlook on things. In my opinion, one of the major threats that the country faces is not default, or the end of the Euro, or even further unemployment. For me, it is the departure of our best talent – our best young people who don’t believe that they have a future in this country. There must be a real threat that if we don’t reverse this trend of negativity, the great people we have will keep leaving and the multi-nationals will stop coming. Then things WILL get bad. If we can all start to develop a more positive outlook and focus on the things that Ireland is great at and that we’re doing brilliantly, we can paint a bright picture of the future for the young people coming through school and college and make them stick around to complete the recovery.

I mentioned a get-together earlier – we’ve organised a breakfast seminar on 8th September taking place at the Chartered Accountant’s House on Pearse St. The theme is all about why Ireland is a great place to do business and we’ve brought together a great panel of speakers to debate this very point. It's going to be a great opportunity to debate all the points above and even more. Come along and talk to the Chief Executive of the Irish Exporters Association, the Partner for Internal Tax from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Chief Operating Officer of one of the latest US Multi-nationals to set up in Ireland and the Chief Economist from Goodbodys. I’m sure you’ll agree, they’re a powerful list of speakers who will certainly provide excellent insight into why Ireland is a great place to do business.


Come along and find out.

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