The regular way of getting a new job is to search through newspapers or through jobs websites, then finding ones that could potentially fit you and send your CV off to some faceless company, and subsequently waiting. If you are looking for a job, there can be a lot of waiting around for feedback. Companies generally have multiple other things on their plate than just hiring you. There are alternative ways (and possibly smarter ways) to get that job, and while you are waiting to hear back why not try out one or two of them.

Employers are looking for top class candidates to interview, and with the unemployment rate in Ireland at 13.8% there are potentially hundreds of people applying for the same job as you. And because of this it’s that little bit harder to stand out, the chance that your CV will be rise to the top is that little bit lower. Our tips will help you to be that little bit more outstanding that you already are. How do we know you are better than the average candidate ? Well for a start you are reading this !

Step Zero

Before we talk about our ideas on alternative ways to get a new job, you should remember that there still is no excuse for being ill prepared. Make sure you have an organised  CV which is tailored to the type of  job you are applying for. Remember that you should research each and every company you are applying to, know more than just their name !

Employers hate it when their candidates turn up and waste their time, as we mentioned before they are already busy enough. If you do a phone screen for example, take detailed notes about the questions you think you didn’t do so well. For subsequent interview rounds you can be sure that they will re-ask you about those areas that you missed, so do your research !

When you’ve worked so hard to get an interview, to get your feet in the door, you should then spend the time preparing for each and every interview. One regular feedback we get from disappointed applicants on how they did in interviews, is that they didn’t prepare as much as they would have liked to.

1) Network

Simply ask people, get the word out that you are looking for a job.  The more eyes and ears you have looking for a job for you the better. Use friends, relations and anyone else you know, and casually let them know that you are looking for a new challenge. Having these people looking for you will increase your chances of finding a job.

Also remember that many jobs are gotten via contacts, it’s not always what you know, rather it’s about who you know.  Many employers who advertise jobs, have already picked a person for the job. Because of legal requirements they are required to advertise their jobs, and they are required to interview. Now this fact is not to make you disheartened about applying for a job, rather it’s more to show you that you need to network and edge your way in somehow.

If you don’t know any CEOs or managers, that’s okay. Start with neighbours or friends of your children,  and get talking to someone new. Most of these things take a little bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it you will be expanding your network before you know it.

2) Get creative and draw attention to yourself

Feross Aboukhadijeh from Stanford University created little web app that grabbed the attention of the creator of YouTube, and subsequently he was offered a job at Google. Feross wasn’t actively looking for a job, but he used his spare time constructively and drew attention to his greatness. This is something you can do too, again the challenge here is to be creative, but it can be done.

If for example you don’t have all the qualifications you need for a job,  then this is what you should be doing while you are waiting for that job to turn up. Studying at night or during your holidays might be the necessary

Recently we advised a customer, who had just graduated with an MBA, and he wanted to work more on business strategies and plans. His current role was more a coordination type job for a multinational organisation, and left him little opportunity to develop these types of plans. But because your current company doesn’t offer what you are looking for, that’s not the time to stop your search in your area of interest. We advised him to talk to startups, specially internet startups, and to offer his time with them. Here he gets away with working around 4 hours a week with them. Because it’s not a paying position, he is flexible to work when he can, and this internet startup gains the knowledge of this MBA graduate. In the end both parties win.

3) Apply pro-actively

Research companies that you are interested in.  Just because they don’t have a job listed on their website or with a recruitment company, it doesn’t mean that all the jobs in that company are spoken for. To keep the finger on the pulse you can use tools like Google Alerts to get notifications on news on your target companies.  What we recommend is to stalk a few companies for a few months, and follow what they are up to in industry. If there is something that they do which you particularly like, put pen to paper and contact them directly.

Mention that you have been paying attention to what their company does, and mention why you would be the right person to help them along their journey to achieve their goal. For a hiring manager this gives many positive signals about you and your pro-activeness, and maybe, just maybe it will be enough for them to invite you for an interview.

Final thoughts

While you can go the route of leaving your CV with recruitment agencies, or head hunters, it’s been our experience that they don’t always have your best interests in mind. They rarely will design a CV for you or give you career advice, their interest is to place you in a job to collect their commission. While you can use them as part of your search for a new job, we would only use them as one of the prongs in your search.  Take control of your own job applications, talk to companies directly and in the end you will be successful !

Best of luck in your search !

More statistics like the one below can be found in their Quarterly National Houshold survey . This graph shows the increase of long term unemployed (unemployed people without work in 1 year). This value is now 5.3% compared with 2.2% last year. These trends do give a rather grim view to the employment market in Ireland.

Airtricity is owned and operated by Scottish & Southern Energy (www.scottish-southern.co.uk), a UK based energy company.

Break Entitlements Chart

• Under 4.5 hours : there is no legal requirement for employees to be provided with a break if they are only working a short shift
• Between 4.5 – 6 hours : you are entitled a 15 minute break (unpaid).
• Over 6 hours : you are entitled to a 30 minute break (unpaid).

Further to these legal requirements for breaks during your working day there are also rules for time off outside work

• Between 2 shifts / working days you should have at least 11 hours of a recovery period after your last shift.
• In a 7 day period there should be 24 hours between shifts (after the above recovery period of 11 hours).

These are of course guidelines, and in certain jobs you may be ask by your employer to take longer or more frequent breaks. Depending on your job this might reduce the risk of RSI (Repetitive Strain Industry) or other occupational injuries.

The development will be done by O’Callaghan Properties.

Not all good news for hospitals

This news today comes just as Beaumont hospital has announced that with 2 weeks it will close up to 52 beds. They cite budgetary reasons as the cause for this closure.

Current open positions at Intune Networks can be found on their careers page (www.intunenetworks.com/site/jobs/). Right now their website says they are looking for Senior Software Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, and Senior Software Test Engineers, but sadly this information states that these jobs are their recruitment effort for September 2009.

Note: Working more that legal limit a day or week could have potential issues with insurance should you perhaps have an accident in work, so pay attention !

The average working week is not allowed to exceed 48 hours of “working time” a week. This might sound strange, but breaks are not counted in this 48 hours of work. This is what has been outlined in Organisation and Working Time Act 1997 . If your employer is asking you to work longer hours than this, then you need to refer them to this act. And if necessary take further steps.

One common mistake is that people calculate this 48 in either a 7 day period, or if they sometimes work that many hours. In the above mentioned act it outlines that this average should be calculated in 3 different ways.

1. The average should be taken over 4 months for most business areas.
2. The average should be taken over 6 months for security personal, prison officers, workers at airports or docks, staff in hospitals, seasonal workers who have peaks (i.e. Christmas production at a factory) and farmers and other agricultural workers.
3. The average can be taken over 12 months when there has been a special agreement approved by Labour Courts. This has to be a consensual agreement between employers and employees.

Your employer should also keep detailed records of your working hours should you need to calculate your average hours.

Exceptions to the Rule

Of course with every Irish employment rule there seems to be an exception, and this one is no different. If you are self-employed or you work for the government (Gardaí and defense forces) the above rule does not apply. This rule also does not apply to interning or trainee doctors or employees at sea (fisheries, ferry and cruise-lines workers). If you are a trainee doctor you should read this in the Irish Statute Book.

Rules for Sunday work

If you are scheduled to work on Sundays, you need to have an agreement with your employer about extra renumeration for your work. If there is no allowance for working on a Sunday, then there needs to one of the following as a type of compensation :

• a type of reasonable compensation.
• a reasonable compensation in time off in lieu.

In both cases it is mentioned “reasonable” and this is something that needs to be clarified between employee and employer.

Rules for working overtime

The definition of overtime is stated to be work that is performed outside your normal working hours. Employers are not required to pay you extra for overtime, but they must at least maintain your current wage level.

Talk to a professional

The world of employment law can be a mine field, and there are many exceptions to these rules and rules for specific industries (and for certain areas in Ireland. See this decision from the Labour Court which covers hairdressers in Cork). A Registered Employment Agreements (REA’s) might exist for your industry which would cover you. If you have a serious question about your working hours and conditions of employment you should contact the NERA (National Employments Rights Authority) or an employment lawyer.

Today it has been reported that the existing 300 jobs at Chorus NTL at the Limerick Enterprise Development Park (LEDP) are to be expanded with a further 50 new jobs. The recruitment for these new jobs has started since November 2009 and is expected to continue until the middle of this year.

These jobs are mainly in the support area, with customer support and technical support jobs on offer. Other general areas are also being recruited for including sales, human resources and finance

• The American paper manufacturer Georgia-Pacific (www.gp.com) have announced a global restructuring plan , and their plant in Finglas, Co. Dublin will be effected to a tune on 77 job losses. GP produce tissues, packaging and pulp and employ over 45,000 people worldwide.
• Bausch & Lomb (www.bausch.com) announced that they are cutting up to 500  jobs in Scotland, which comes as a bittersweet relief to the 1,000 employees in their Waterford plant. These job losses also come as part of a so called “global restructuring plan”.  Bausch & Lomb are leading producers in the contact lenses market. In Waterford they produce their daily contact lenses products.
• But it’s not all good news for Waterford. This time Teva Pharmaceutical (www.tevapharm.com) , are letting go 315 of it’s 730 staff. At their Waterford plant they produce inhalers and generic medicine tablets. In a press release from the management it mentions the losses are “due to the challenges of operating in a high cost and difficult economic environment in Ireland”.
• Irish no frill airline , Ryanair are increasing their baggage again. From the 1st of October 2009, passangers can check in a 2nd bag and get an extra 15kg baggage allowance, but there are extra charges for the privilage. Checking in your first bag when done online will be €15, up €5. The second bag will cost €35, up €15. Things start to get expensive if you check in your bag at the airport, where it will now cost you €30 for your first bag, up €10, and €70 for your 2nd bag, up €50. Ryanair says they are increasing the fees in a way to ‘encourage’ people to only bring hand luggage.
• Homebond (www.homebond.ie) , a provider of structural cover for new homes, says that home registration rates have dropped 50% from this time last year. Last month only 50 homes were registered with the service in Dublin, while no homes were registered in Roscommon or Longford.

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.