It’s a mixed bunch today for jobs in Cork.

Corden PharmaChem to Close in Cork

97 employees from Corden PharmaChem (www.cordenpharmachem.com) heard about their sad fate last Friday. The jobs in the manufacturing end of Corden are due to be phased out by the autumn this year. Corden produces active pharmaceutical ingredients, which are used in generic drugs for thing s from pain management to respiratory problems. The company had been in operation since 1976, and now after 23 years due to a recent review of important business factors, it will need to close. Senior management said that due the high costs of a required investment in keeping the plant up to date that there were force with no other alternative but to cease operations. Also the current market climate was another exascerbating factor in demise of the manufacturing plant.

Corder are located in the Little Island industrial estate in Cork.

Nualight to add 80 jobs over 2 years

On a lighter note (pardon the pun) Nualight (www.nualight.com) has just announced that they will be creating 60 jobs in Cork. The company is responsible for the manufacturing of highly energy efficient LED light for shops. They specialise in refrigeration lighthing, where the challenge is to have the minimum amount of heat emitted from the lights as it would counter the effects of the refrigeration process.

Their list of clients include Tesco & Marks & Spencer. The ESB has recently announced plans to invest up to €5 million in the company to aid with it’s growth.
Nualight are located at the Cork Business Park, located on the Model Farm Road.

Current Xilinx employs over 400 workers at the European Headquarters in Dublin, which is the location of their main customer care offices. Xilinx are supplies of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) technology, which allows for customisable logic circuits to be configured, and subsequently reconfigured. This helps companies with prototyping before an actual digital is produced.

website screenshot:

Common CV Mistakes

Now a days it is common for employers to request your CV in electronic form, but this doesn’t mean you don’t do as many checks as you previously did when you were sending a paper copy of your CV/Resumé. Here is a run down of some common CV mistakes :

• Basic spelling and grammar mistakes 
  • Use spell check and get more than one review from a friend. Bad spellings can show your prospective employer that you are not taking the whole process as serious as you can.
• Errors when printing out your CV
  • Employers will print out your CV eventually. So make sure you actually print out your CV to make sure that boarders line up and the CV is visually appealing. Things like tables in MS Word should be avoided if at all possible, use tabs.
• Incorrect font used (Comic Sans MS, should never be on a CV !
  • Make sure you use only one font in the whole document. Recommended Ariel , Verdana, Trebucht MS
• Break your CV into section with headings
  • State that this is a Circulum Vitae, at the top of your page. List Work Experience first and then Qualifications/Education.
• Send your CV in the appropriate file format.
  • Normally employers will want your CV in WORD format, but some employers prefer PDF or even plain text. Make sure you listen to their wishes and make it as easy as possible for them to read your CV.

Also the length of your CV is very important. If you have enough past jobs or experience to fill 5 pages, please don’t add them all in. This is something that you can explain at an interview. At most your CV should be 2 pages, and include 3 to 4 previous job roles. Prospective employers’ time is limited, and when face with reading a twenty 2 page CVs or twenty 5 page CVs you can guess  as to the most appealing choice. The first page is very important, to have your contact details i.e. name, email, phone, mobile phone in one easy to access place.  If the employer can find the keywords they are searching for in your work experience earlier on, then you are much more likely to get an interview. 

Remember a CV is like a business card, its job is to get you that first interview. It doesn’t need to be particularly flashy, it just needs to explain your background as easy as possible and it should be easy to read. By avoiding the CVmistakes above you will be on the way to increasing your chance of getting that interview.

So what is in store for Ireland ? Will we reach record levels again ? Some analysts say that we will reach double figures and we could go as far as 15% in 2010 ! A recent report from the CSO show that the live register numbers are up right across the board. The live register is not the number of unemployed, it includes people who work up to 3 days a week (part-time), seasonal and casual workers who are entitled to Job Seekers Benefit or Allowance. Dublin had the overall highest number increase (over 7,000), while Carlow had the highest percentage increase (10.7%). The number currently on the live register is over 350,000 , with 280,000 being Irish nationals, 15,000 from the UK. Of the 350,000 job seekers, 68% are males with 239,000 and just under 50,000 (20%) of these are under the age of 25, while females make up 32%, with 115,000 and 26,000 (22%) under the age of 25.

The general consensus with the public servants is that this is totally unacceptable. From the 13, 000 workers, over 11,000 returned ballots (almost 85%) and 83% of these (about 9,000) vote in favour of strike action. The Department of Finance already stated on Monday that they will not be in a position to pay workers for this striking day.

The levy increase was set to increase from 3% to 9.6% in an effort to save some of the exchequer losses in the region of €2 billion. There is also the deferral of the national wages increase, which is the equivalent to a 12% wages cut.

So does striking make things better ? Is the Irish economy already under fire enough, without more problems ? The average wages of a clerical officer grade is €30,000 , which is higher than then national average wage, and there is research stating that our civil servants wages are some of the top in the world.

By the way you can find Public Sector jobs on http://www.publicjobs.ie/, there does seem to be some openings.

Update 15/02/2009 : Via Damien apparently these jobs are more commission based jobs, as apposed to full time positions.

Glanbia owns such brands as Avemmore, Yoplait, Kilmeaden, Premier Milk and CMP Dairies.

Glanbia Ireland

Glanbia have failed in one of the most important rules in laying off workforce, namely, “cut once, cut deep”. The probelm with continiously making more and more of your workforce  redundant is that it demotivates staff more, than if one single cut was announced. 

Their share price dropped to €2.61 today after this news.

It’s good to see that the managers are leading the way and giving the staff a good example. Granted these guys probably get paid significantly more than the average ESB worker. But to the workers it shows that they are at least making some effort.
For the average ESB worker things start to get a little more as they have just recieved a 3.5% wage increase as part of the national wages deal. And the further 2.5% is due in June. But if the pay freeze comes into effect then this might come into question. The ESB union released a statement saying that they still expect the National Wags Agreements to be honoured and keeping the ESB inline with what the Social Partnership agreed on last year.

One thing to remember is that because of the recession, many companies might start to introduce some cost saving measures, under the guise of the down turn in the economic situation. And of course people are now starting to realise how lucky they are to have jobs, compare with those guys at DELL, Kostal and other companies around the country. Having a job that pays less over 2 years is better than having no job at all.  Right now the employment market upperhand lies with the employers, and I’m sure that they will use it to their full advantage while it lasts.

For your money you do get to show off your product to a significant portion of the US adult population. Monster and Careerbuilder both bough spots. In fact Careerbuilder opted for a double spot, a 1 minute advert costing over $5M ! Recruitment agencies are seeing the recession as an oppertunity to get even more people’s CVs in their system. 
Monster.com

CareerBuilder.com

It’s not the first time that DELL had layoffs so fingers cross for everyone this morning. Other bloggers are mentioning it too

EDIT :  an unconfirmed update says that DELL are ceasing all manufacturing at their Limerick plant.

Businesses are either actively trying to reduce their staffing overheads due to reduced orders, or they hav hiring on hold. For the past 6 years the unemployment rate has been consistantly under 5% but this year it will be closer to 6% and the current rate is hovering around 8%. In November 2008 it was 7.8% (seasonally adjusted).

With this sad and slighlty depressing news we would like to wish you a happy and properous new year. Thanks for yet another year of reading our Irish Jobs News.

On Semiconductors, formally a part of Motorola, is a semiconductor company specialising in energy efficient silicon. They will be establishing a new research and development centre in Raheen Business Park, Limerick. It is expected that they will have up to 49 new employees there.

Mentor Graphics Ireland, who provide software tools as well as consulting for electronic design, will be expanding their operations at the Shannon Free Zone. They will add another 35 employees to their existing operation where they currently employ 80 workers. Mentor Graphics in Shannon mainly provide logistic and distribution services from Shannon.

PAFS Ireland, will create 15 new jobs in the business service industry for aircraft leasing.

via Donncha

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.