News has come today that the 47 employees at the design and innovation centre at Freescale (formally part of Motorola) are to loose their jobs. Freescale, who designs products for the mobile phone market, have offices located in the Cork Airport Business Park. The employees of Freescale were highly skilled, with over half of them having Master Degrees and 1/10th of them with PhD. So far no reason for the sites closing has been disclosed, but it is expected that the increased cost of operating in Ireland is one of the factors.

Today the 47 staff were informed by the management that they will be looking to close the plant by September this year, after a consulting period. This comes just over 14 months after Motorola decided to pull out of Cork. So after last week’s bad news about Hormann Electronics, electronic jobs in Cork just look like they are harder and harder to find. Freescale opened in Cork in 1998 with just 2 employees, and reached 40 employees in 2001 [source].

The receivers said that there will be a redundancy package, but the details were not available at the time to be disclosed.

Medtronic specialises in medial technology for chronic diseases. They manufacture products and therapies and services to alleviate pain and enhance peoples lives. Each year over 6 million people world wide use Medtronics services in the treatment of heart disease, diabetes and vascular illnesses.

So with all the doom and gloom in Ireland, and the apparent stagnant housing market in Ireland, it seems like the economy is starting to slow down. Now that unemployment is up, more redundancies are happening than previously and less people are selling their houses, the Celtic tiger is truly asleep.

The website was suspended within 24 hours of going live after an official complaint from the Italian’s privacy watchdog. The reason for publishing the details according to the Italian Finance department, well it was supposed to increase the country’s transparency. This has come just days before the administrational change in the government to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Some say the website was a way of getting back at the incoming government. More from the BBC.

These redundancies have been announced in a period where DELL have experience double digit growth world wide, but they still need to cut costs. It is not yet clear whether DELL will reduce numbers further in Ireland, but with the current economic climate we can only speculate that it will more than likely happen. Dell has said that they will reduce their numbers by more than what the announced in May 2007. Last year we heard that the figures for losses of DELL in Ireland were to be around the 450 mark.

Good news comes for Xilinx (www.xilinx.com) who say that they are increasing their customer support division in Dublin. It should result in about 20 new jobs for the site. Their Dublin site is their European headquarters and is host to 400 employees.

An estimate from the Galway City Tribune [1] says that there has been almost 500 redundancies in Galway since the start of the year. It cites that the hardest hit is the construction industry. The SFA (Small Firms Association) is quoted as saying that on average there has been 613 jobs lots per week in Ireland. This pattern of increasing unemployment is starting to look worrisome for the economy.

Last week DELL announced that they were cutting jobs in the US. In fact almost 1000 jobs were lost with the closure of a desktop PC factory in Texas. So far DELL has already cut 100 Irish jobs from their staff of 4,500. Last year DELL looked for voluntary redundancies at their plant in Limerick.

And another multinational Google, announced job cuts. This time it’s in their recently aquired advertising company DoubleClick. Again it is not likely that any Irish Jobs will be lost, in fact Google are looking to hire up to 150 staff at it’s European headquarters in Dublin right now.

It now seems that the initial 52 jobs increase, will look more like 170 jobs (over 300% more than we reported). The plant will then employ around 600 people, who are responsible for manufacturing various pharmaceutical drugs like Renagel used in chronic kidney diseases.

Pharmaceutical Jobs

So if you are looking for a pharmaceutical job in Waterford, it’s time to dust off your CV.

Dell Job Cuts

In other job worries, DELL are planning on closing their Austin, Texas plant, with almost 1,000 job losses. This is part of the plan by DELL to reduce global numbers by up to 10%. To date there has not being a menion about about DELLs Irish operations in Limerick & Dublin, where they employ roughly about 4,000 staff.

These CVS would be of great interest to criminals who steal identities, as there are plenty of personal details on a CV. This is not the first such attack, recruitment websites have been targets of previous hacking attempts, last year Monster.com was hacked. There is an announcement on Jobs.ie website which states:

Dear Jobs.ie Customers,

This notice is to bring to your attention a security breach that took place on the Jobs.ie website on Thursday evening.

If you have not received an email from Jobs.ie then your details have not been affected but we urge all our Users to follow the following safety tips:

1. Do not disclose personal banking information
2. Don’t share your passwords with anyone.
3. Don’t open suspicious email attachments.

I would like to extend my sincerest apologies to all our Customers who have been affected by this and assure you that we are taking every measure to insure that this won’t happen again.

A dedicated 24 hour customer helpline has been set up to deal with any further questions or concerns you may have. Please call +353 (0)1 680 8699 or email info@jobs.ie

Yours sincerely,

Huw Taylor
Jobs.ie - Recruitment Made Simple

Jobs.ie has also offered a helpline support for the people effected by this. Brian Honan from BH Consulting (www.bhconsulting.ie) commends Jobs.ie for being so upfront and honest about the whole situation. It is good to see that they had a quick turn around from detecting it, and letting their customers know. Don’t worry about our sister site JobsInIreland.ORG, doesn’t store the CVs, rather it sends the CVs directly to the employers, and none of your personal details are stored on our server.

For more, read the Jobs News report from Silicon Republic.

“We have established this sales and customer support operation to provide a better service to our international customers, and Dublin offers an ideal location due to its excellent infrastructure, multi-lingual capability, highly-skilled workforce and ease of doing business.”

EyeWonder produce online rich media and video advertising  since 1999. They already have some open positions on their careers section for  jobs, like a Rich Media Coordinator.  And there are plans to have up to 30 people working in their Dublin offices, mostly in sales and customer care positions.

Here mascot for the site, it’s a cute little red haired fellow. One of our goals is to keep the site as simple as possible, and using it could not be easier.

Advertise Irish Jobs for Free

Here is a run down on how it works:

• Job Seekers :
  • Browse or search the site, and find a job that you like.
  • Click the apply link at the end of the job advert.
  • enter your name / email address and write a quick introduction about yourself
  • click browse and locate your CV.
  • and hit SEND

You application will be sent directly to the employer and they will get back in contact with you. No need for a middle man !

If you are an Employer you will need to follow the following steps:

• Employers :
  • Click the “Post a New Job”
  • Fill out the details for the Job
  • enter your name / email address and company website
  • and verify your advert
  • if it is your first time advertising, your first job posting will be checked by someone.
  • All further job postings will happen automatically, without the need to be verified.

So there you have it ! Click now to visit Jobs In Ireland . ORG

Tips for Tech Interviews

Nothing here is revolutionary, rather it’s some advice based on my own experience of attending a number of technical interviews for embedded jobs.

1. Be on Time

Although this is one of the more obvious points regarding interviews it is still worth re-stating. Allow plenty of time to find the correct location, taking into account possible traffic delays. Also make sure you know where the interview is actually taking place. One recruitment company sent me to the offices of the company instead of the hotel where the interview was being held. Fortunately the hotel was near the office and I had enough time to make the short trip and still be on time. On a related note don’t show up too early. It may make people uncomfortable to have you sitting around for a long time at reception.

2. Make a Good Last Impression

The old saying regarding the importance of “making a good first impression” also applies to “making a good last impression”. I’ll always remember a test the BBC carried out. They showed two different versions of the same interview. In the first instance the interviewee started well but finished poorly. In the second instance the interviewee started poorly but finished well. One half of the viewing public saw the first version and the other half saw the second version. The public were then asked if the interview went well for the interviewee. It turned out based on the public votes that leaving a good last impression is more important than making a good first impression.



3. Avoid Technical Jargon

Although it’s a technical interview avoid using too much jargon. The person will be more impressed with your ability to describe the work you’ve done in a clear and concise way than trying to dominate the conversation with obscure technical waffle. Remember that you may know more than the person interviewing you in a particular area but you won’t score many points by trying to show off.

4. Can I Work With This Person?

One of the key questions that both sides to an interview should be asking is “Can I work with this person?”. Ticking all of the experience and educational boxes is rarely enough to ensure a successful working environment. An interviewer will be wondering what it will be like to work with you on a daily basis. Ensure that during the interview you don’t loose sight of what the day to day working conditions will be like. Think of a couple of questions in advance that will highlight a typical working day. Is it high pressured or relaxed? Do people tend to spend lunch together or do most people just grab a sandwich and eat it at their desk? Try to relate to the people at the interview as they may end up being co-workers in the near future.

5. Do Your Homework

The most obvious aspect to this is to research the company you are applying for. However if you can find out the name of the interviewer(s) better again. It’s amazing the amount of detail that can be found these days on the Internet. Google is a great starting point, but consider searching more specialized sites such as linkedin or zoominfo If they have a relatively common name that throws up numerous results trying narrowing the search based on the company name or the geographical area the company is located in.

6. Be Prepared to Address Salary

One of the hardest questions to address in an interview can be that of salary. This is especially the case for new graduates, for whom this is probably their first experience of interviewing for a job. Make sure you’ve done your salary research. If your using a recruitment company they are often in a position to negotiate on your behalf and should have a good idea of how far a potential employer is willing to go in terms of salary.
One way of shifting the discussion and giving a potential employer more scope is to discuss the overall renumeration package. Salary is one aspect (and of course the major one) but things like pension, health insurance, gym membership and even additional holiday entitlements all add up. Recognize that taking on a new employee is a risk for the company and they want to make sure they don’t start you off on a bloated salary as it is hard to roll back from that point. If salary is becoming a major sticking point consider offering to prove your worth over a 6-12 month period. At the end of an agreed period if you’ve lived up to your own hype then the company should be willing to reward you appropriately. If not then do you really want to work there anywhere?

Tech Interview Links

• An great article from the other side of the fence, how to recognise a good programmer during an interview.
• Although some of the suggestions are, in my opinion, a little over the top i (I can’t see a HireMe book taking off in Ireland) Nailing Your Technical Interview does have some great advice on areas most of us wouldn’t naturally consider.
• Finally for those just looking for more C programming related interview questions then apparently these are some of the interview questions that Microsoft ask.

Credits :

This article was originally posted here and is republished on EirJobs.com with the permission of the author. For more about the author see his profile on LinkedIn :

If you are trying to contact me about CV Reviews do accept my apologies and I will get back and help you out once I get back home.