Irish Job News – News on Jobs for Ireland

After watching this old video on youtube, it got me thinking about how happy people are in their jobs, and are they really doing what they intended.

Are you doing the job you always expected you would do ? Are you better off or worse for doing it ? If you are not doing the job you wanted to, tell me what is stopping you get there ? I would love to hear from people with their thoughts on these things.

With all the negative job news in the press recently, we thought we should start to highlight more and more positive news. And today we can do so!

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

Here is a quick round up of what is happening in the Irish business scene at the moment :

• 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.

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.

News is coming today that an expected 100 jobs are to go at Xilinx’s (www.xilinx.com)plant in City West, Dublin. There is a planned staff meeting where the management are expected to outline the companies restructuring plans and expect job losses.

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.

Great news today from Big Fish Games (www.bigfishgames.com) who have announced a new European Headquarters in Cork. The Seattle based online games company deliver free and premium games for mobile and computer users. They call their games ‘casual’ games, where the typical user doesn’t need any particular skills and will play the game in short bursts.

The majority of the 100 new jobs will be in games testing and in customer support, and will be located at their site in Mahon, Cork. With the help of the IDA this jobs will introduced over the next 3 years, and it’s understood that the recruitment drive for them has already started.

website screenshot:

Working with recruiters, employers and applicants, we see many CVs every week. It’s sad to say that a high percentage of these CVs tend to have the same problems. Remember that when you are sending a CV to apply for a job it needs to be the perfect CV for the person who will be reading it. You can, if you wish get a professional cv review from us, or you are get a friend to look over it. Find someone you know who regularly looks at CVs as part of their job. Having a good, professional CV is key to getting a new job. Without one you will struggle to get interviews, not to mention a new job !  Remember : Your CV will make the difference between you getting an interview and not.

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.

The United States of America is an accurate barometer for the rest of the worlds economies, and especially Ireland where out economy depends greatly on large multinational US companies in Ireland (DELL, Pfizer, Intel, etc). Last months US unemployment figures have broken another psychological barrier, they have broken through the 8% rate, and now stands at 8.1%. The current slow down in the US economy meant that in February alone, over 651,000 jobs were lost. And now the US has the worst unemployment rate since 1983.

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.

Late last night it was announced that up to 13,000 Irish civil servants will be going on strike next week. They are doing so because of the Government’s newly enforced pension levy. So it’s planned that next Thursday (Thursday 26th Feb 2009) that the public sector administrative and clerical workers will go on strike. Most government departments will be effected, including the extremely overworked social welfare offices, tax and passport offices.

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.

A news bulletin today mentions that there are 50 new jobs being created by the online business directory WhatsWhat (www.whatswhat.ie).  WhatsWhat are similar to the goldenpages (even looks a little like it), in that they list companies contact details, phone/address etc.  They are unique in the fact that they offer website design and SEO consultancy to these business listings. Currently they have over 60,000 companies listed, and claim to have 4,000 visitors per day. WhatsWhat was founded in 2002 by Barbara Gordon, a Wicklow based business woman, who wanted to get Irish companies online. Their directory offers 3 levels of listing, from €200 /year- €100 /year to free listings.
More via the Irish Times

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

Another week, and another round of layoffs from Glanbia (www.glanbia.ie). Last week they announced 50 jobs were to go at their City West facility, and now today they announce a further 210 job cuts. The company who had €2.2 billion worth of revenue in 2007 now say they need to introduce this cost savings plan. The job losses are part of Glanbia’s €16 million restructuring plan for 2009.   The company has said that they hope the 210 jobs will come voluntary from their staff of just inder 5,000. 

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.

News came today that ESB (www.esb.ie) want to introduce a 2 year pay freeze for it’s 8,000 staff members.  They have approached the trade unions, and leading by example with  management wage cuts. CEO Padraig McManus is taking a 10% cut while other senior mangers are taking a 5% pay cut, and this is also along with having the 2 year pay freeze.

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.

Last Sunday the 43rd Superbowl took place between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals. It is one of the most watched TV programs in the world (after the Olympics), with an estimated 1/3 of all Americans tuning in to see the big game. So with 98 million US adults watching, it’s a great way to target some advertising at them. In fact the US Superbowl is well known for it’s ads, some organisations create specially theme ads for the event. And these advertising spots down come cheap. For a 30 second spot you will need to pay USD$3M , which is up 10% from last year’s rate. So running at $100,000 per second, it is the most expensive TV ads out there.

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

In just under 30 minutes there will be meetings held at the DELL offices in Raheen, Limerick. Meetings are scheduled for 9am and 10am to announced the fate of the company in Limerick. DELL , in their latest restructoring plans, want to reduce costs by up to $3 billion. The rumours around Limerick say that DELL are could axe up to 2,000 Irish jobs due to a proposed plan to move manufacturing  away from Irealand and towards Poland and Asia. Currently there are around 3,000 employees at the Raheen location. 

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.

Today there has been a report from KBC Bank (www.kbc.ie) stating that over half of all Irish companies have left some staff go since October 2008. In the survey they also found out that 10% of firms are still hiring, and two thirds are actively seeking to trade down. These figures while are surpising, do not come as a shock (to us anyway). THe survey continues to say that 30% of the firms polled expect their operating costs to decline in 2009. Typically Janurary is a strong month for new jobs, across Ireland, but we expect that things will be significantly slower.

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.