You're Not Hired

One of the issues that raised its head at the launch of the TV3 Apprentice show was the fact that candidates for the show risked damaging their credibility as business people by appearing on the show.

I have only watched bits and pieces of the show because parts of it are so cringe inducing and yes, I do believe that at least half of those who have taken part will struggle in the long term to achieve anything of note as an employee of another company. I honestly believe that those that go it alone and start their own businesses may have a better chance of long term success.

Damaged credibility was always going to be an issue with this show as we live on such a small island where everybody knows everyone. I am by no means the best connected man in the world but I have friends who know two of the contestants and I discovered that without any modicum of investigation.

What has amazed me is that contestants seem to be oblivious to the camera and have no problem bitching and back biting even though they know that it will end up on screen.

In short, The Apprentice is not really a job interview, it's a 12 week career suicide note.

I would be amazed if this show was commissioned again given the apathy towards it by the viewing public and the fact that it has lacked punch and any level of dynamism.

Forgotten Town Pt.2

A former teaching colleague of mine (it was a short lived career believe me) Joe Ryan is cutting a swathe in local politics in my hometown of Wexford. He is the breath of fresh air that the Labour Party has needed in that town for a very long time. He also blogs regularly here

His latest blog posting echoes a lot of the opinions expressed in my initial Forgotten Town posting, but he backs it up with some very frightening statistics. In short, unemployment is running at 3% of the population on a national average. Unemployment in Wexford county is 11% of population. That is shocking.

Regardless of your political hue I would encourage you to check out the latest posting on Joe's blog and see the facts for yourself. Naturally, as a Labour councillor he is giving the government parties short shrift and if you are a supporter of any of the three (soon to be two) parties in government you may find it uncomfortable reading.

Forgotten Town?

For those of us living in Wexford town in the 1980's there was a general sense that we were in a 'forgotten town'. There was widespread unemployment and opportunities were rare. Whenever new jobs presented themselves employers were usually swamped with applications and canvassing was rife. That was the 80's and the country that we live in now is vastly different to what it was a generation ago. I have just spent the weekend in Wexford visiting family and everyday life now in the town is unrecognizable to what it was like in the doom and gloom of the 1980's. Or is it?

To the naked eye it would appear that there is a town in the south-east with a bustling economy. But if you look closer you will see a town that has been abandoned. There may be a cornucopia of delights on offer in the restaurants and bars in the town but the industrial heart of the town is dying. Whereas many counties, including Tipperary, have lost and gained companies in the ebb and flow of economic life it appears that Wexford has continued to lose valuable jobs only for them to be replaced (in a fanfare no less!) by lower paying less skilled jobs.

It hit home with me when I saw that parts of the industrial estate, a 1970's initiative, were being redeveloped as the second phase of a retail park. Waterford has multinational companies such as IVAX, Genzyme, Glaxo and others. Tipperary has Johnson &Johnson, Boston Scientific, Abbott, Stada, Merck, Taro and many others, Wicklow has Takeda, Servier, Dell and Schering to name but a few. Wexford on the other hand has Waters, PFPC, ABS Pumps, Carl Zeiss and few others. The first two mentioned came to the town in the last 15 years, the latter two have been there since the early 1970's. They are the main employers in the county. I can't help but feel that the IDA or whoever is responsible for sourcing new businesses for this country has looked at places like Kilkenny and Wexford and decreed that they are tourist towns that don't need industries whilst judging Tipperary to be the opposite.

Colm O'Gorman, the activist, whilst running his ill fated general election campaign last year highlighted that the average County Wexford worker has the lowest take home pay in the country. That's because of the lack of high paying roles in the pharmaceutical and medical device sector. It seems foolish to me that there are huge shortages of staff in certain parts of the country because of the concentration of companies therein whilst a place with excellent transport links and a highly educated workforce such as that in County Wexford has but the bare minimum granted to it in the IDA lottery. It's an issue that has burned at me for quite a while and I'd be interested in your comments on it. Of course there are other areas in a similar situation. Some may argue that Kilkenny is in an infinitely worse situation. As they used to say on the exam paper – Discuss.

The Curse of Facebook (and Bebo)

A former colleague of mine in a London recruitment company has had a bad week. He had been representing a star candidate for quite some time. They had met on several occasions and had reached a decision about the types of job that the candidate wanted and the companies that he would like to work for. Over the course of four weeks the candidate met with a small number of companies and eventually decided to accept an offer from one, a prestigious consultancy firm. Everything was going swimmingly until they decided to do a little internet check on the candidate. A simple Google search brought up his Facebook page and with it hundreds of photo’s of the candidate ‘wasted’. To use an American phrase -he was ‘bombed’. In every photo! The client took one look at the page and decided that they didn’t want this individual working for them. It was a huge pity because his references were excellent, his work rate was top notch. But the client didn’t want someone representing them who behaved like that.


The truth is that there is a sizable proportion of the population who behave like that each and every weekend and it doesn’t prevent them from getting and holding down very good jobs. The difference between this candidate and the rest of the people who do this all the time is that he committed the cardinal sin of being indiscrete. It’s akin to what was said of Charles Stuart Parnell at the time of the Kitty O’Shea saga; his greatest crime wasn’t having a relationship with a married woman, it was getting caught.


The point is this – whilst Bebo and Facebook have revolutionized how we use the internet they can damage your reputation in a number of ways if you are not careful. Sure, your friends might know that you are the local embodiment of Stifler from American Pie, but prospective employers needn’t know. All of the leading social networking sites offer the facility to lock down your pages and to only make them available to friends or signed in members. If your social network of choice has that option, use it. In the job search there is no point having a first class honours degree and experience in a top class multinational if a potential employer can see embarrassing photographs of that weekend in Kilkenny just by searching on Google.

Pay attention.

One of the unfortunate issues surrounding the job hunt since the onset of the recession is that more and more people are 'spamming' their CV's out there for any job that vaguely matches their skill. That I can understand. What I can't understand is the fact that so many people at the moment are sending their CV's for roles that they have absolutely no qualifications for. In the ten years that I have been in the recruitment business this has been an on and off problem and it typically happens in really busy times - but lately I am receiving three or four applications every day from people who have no discernable skills for the job that they are applying for.

What that actually does is it affects the candidates credibility with the employer or agency. It's not something that is just happening to me, I have spoken to several recruiters who are having the same problem and it is affecting their perception of their candidates. That is the downside of the times we live in.

So the advice is this - read the spec on line and see if you are a match - then apply. There is no point throwing the CV in just for the craic. What I would always suggest at this stage is that if you feel that you might have something in common with the job is to ring up the recruiter and have an initial chat. It may mean that you aren't the right candidate, but it may uncover another role that the recruiter hasn't advertised.

Will this catch on?

This is just a little something to consider if you're reading this over the bank holiday weekend. It's a new service from an American company called Visual CV!. They have created a number of examples on their website for potential customers to review. Two of the most interesting examples are the CV's of Barack Obama and John McCain. Interesting - have a look!

I’m No George Lee But.....

We are in economically straitened times. I believe (and I have to stress this is a personal opinion) that we as a nation talked ourselves in to the recession and as a result it happened a lot sooner than in other countries. When I say ‘WE’ I mean everybody - politicians included.


If you look at the UK at the moment they are on the cusp of a recession and will announce that they are in one on Friday. Ireland on the other hand allowed a number of events to happen that brought the economy to a halt sooner than it should have. Firstly the speculation on stamp duty on property before the election in May 2007 meant that nobody bought a house on the off chance that they would make a saving after the election. Then the introduction of new VRT and car tax measures meant that the annual rush to register new cars became a crawl as people waited to buy in July. Then when July came around most people decided to hold off until January 2009.


That dithering caused a knock on effect for thousands of businesses and they had to rein in their spending. Those events coupled with consistent warnings that the recession was just around the corner meant that people began to err on the side of caution.


The net effect of all of this was that the economy screeched to a halt instead of the anticipated soft landing that we were promised.


Outside events played their part, but within the national context we have ourselves and the Irish media to blame for some of the fix we are in now.
The media seem to be taking great delight in the unfolding events – after all it is their bread and butter. What all that reportage is doing is creating a cloud that scares people and creates a culture of fear.


At the coalface of recruitment I can tell you that very little has changed since last year. The amount of roles that are being offered by clients hasn’t changed dramatically. Our company has a strong pharmaceutical and medical device base of clients and they are working away oblivious to the doom and gloom. What has changed is that candidates are being scared away from moving because like Chicken Licken’s friends they have been led to believe that the sky is falling down.


Sometimes I think that nobody thinks these things except me. This time I am glad to have been proven wrong. I spoke with a senior HR specialist at a large multinational earlier this week. As we were shooting the breeze she said pretty much what I was thinking that the media had walked us in to this far earlier than was necessary. She like me said that she wasn’t advocating burying our heads in the sand, but was advocating balanced reporting.

The Elevator Pitch

Most readers at this stage (if there are any!) are wondering what an elevator pitch is. Those that do know what one is are probably wondering why I am writing about them on a careers and recruitment blog.


The truth is, whilst they may be typically the preserve of business owners and venture capitalists, candidates can learn an awful lot from them and give themselves a head start in an interview by perfecting an elevator pitch.

So what is it?

It is a fifteen or thirty second overview of a person, a product or service that can be delivered to a boss or a venture capitalist as they ride the elevator to the 200th floor of their luxury skyscraper. The person on the receiving end knows nothing about the offering when he or she gets in but knows enough when they get out to make a decision to invest or not. That is what they are in a nutshell.

So how do they relate to the interview process?

The most common question used at the start of an interview by a client is 'Tell me about yourself?' It may be an old chestnut of a question and it is sometimes used just to break the ice, but I believe that it is the ideal time to deliver the 'elevator pitch' or as my collegaue Paddy O'Flaherty calls it 'the news headlines'.

Over the years I have heard hundreds of nightmare interview stories and the opening few minutes are a minefield. I have had heard of candidates regaling clients with tales of under age GAA successes, gap year escapades and more and completely forgetting to mention anything remotely of interest to the client.

Here is a typical nightmare one that I have heard:

'My name is XXX XXXXXX, I've just returned from India and South East Asia, before that I worked in my uncles pub at weekends, I play the guitar and support the Munster Rugby team and I'm here because I'm looking for a job'.

To me that is the interview equivalent of nails being dragged down a blackboard. As preposterous as it seems it really is a true indication of what happens at interviews.


On the other hand here is what I would suggest:

'My name is XXX XXXXX and I've just graduated from UCC with a 2.1 degree in chemistry. As part of my placement I worked with The Acme Chemistry Company and worked as a QC Analyst testing raw materials. I'm originally from Waterford but I'm hoping to secure a job here in the Galway area'.

Just like the news headlines there is the promise that those key points will be touched on again. Straight away the interviewer is going to have a much better idea of the person sitting across the table. It also sets an agenda for the following 45 minutes or so.

It may be a brilliant concept with a silly name but I believe that it works well every time. It is a great way to open an interview and it shows that the candidate is serious about the endeavour, which is not always the case as any interviewer will tell you.

You're Barney Bracked!

Would I love to be a contestant on ‘The Apprentice’? Yes! Would I really take a chance and possibly destroy my career all for a few weeks on a moderately successful TV show? No!

Let’s face it. We live in a very small country. Producing a show like ‘The Apprentice’ is going to be a tough job when you’ve only got a talent pool of 4 million (including kids and OAP’s). What is as worrying is that applicants were running the risk of hitting the self destruct button on their careers if things went bad for them on the TV show. The UK version is different in that they have a myriad of media outlets coupled with a very diverse range of industries to subsume failed candidates. We in Ireland don’t have that and my worry for Avril, Ronan, Orla and the others eliminated thus far is that they will struggle in the long term to establish credibility having been associated with something that is nothing more than a 60 minute game show.

I will admit that there will be the initial whiff of celebrity from the candidates, but long term it may do more harm than good for all but the winner and one or two others. That’s a hell of a risk to take on a programme beamed to a small island with a population no bigger than Manchester.

On another Apprentice related note – have these people every heard of the concept of ‘self awareness’. To date I’ve seen people go in to the boardroom and tell Bill Cullen that they worked their hind legs off on a task when the cameras have shown something completely different. Surely it would be better to put your hands up and say that you were sorry and that the task didn’t really suit you and that you would try harder next time. Obviously not!

Finally, I love the way they all refer to Bill Cullen as ‘Bill’, as in ‘thanks Bill, sorry Bill etc etc’. It reminds me of teenagers who are finally old enough to call their friends father by his first name. It’s kind of thrill to do so and you keep on waiting to be corrected. Strange, the things that get me...

Teach Your Children....

There seems to have been a slew of articles in the press and online in the recent past about the growing trend of parents taking an active part in the job search for their kids. I am not talking about a mother or father putting in a good word for little Jimmy to help him get a summer job or that oh so Irish matter of canvassing for favours with family friends. This is the totally different issue of parents ‘interviewing’ the clients and assessing if the companies are good enough for their off spring and then playing an active role in the negotiation of a job offer.


This is not a far flung U.S. based trend. It is happening in the UK and Ireland and it has crossed all sections of society. I have had parents call me and attempt to grill me about the opportunities available to their sons and daughters because their child couldn’t be bothered. Call me a stubborn fool – but when I left UCD in 1995 the thought of my father or my mother having any interfering hand in my future plans would have appalled me. In fact, I remember my father ‘strongly advising’ me to apply to the local multinational. The company had never crossed my mind until then and from that moment on I placed them on a blacklist of companies to avoid. Why? Because I believed then and still do that personal pride and belief are priceless traits and the thought of having my well meaning parents direct my future career was just unthinkable.

What worries me is that we have a generation leaving colleges and universities with world class qualifications but they need their parents to help them function in the real world. Part of the reason that they ‘need’ them is just plain laziness. On one occasion I had a mother tell me (quite sincerely) that her son couldn’t come to the phone because he was too busy playing his Xbox.

In 1995 when I graduated the concept of parents taking part in the job search was unthinkable. There was no internet to speak of, no text messaging and most of all unemployment was a vast multiple of what it is now. Regardless of that all of my friends and I found jobs. The economic boom in this country created another breed of casualties – those unwilling and unable to do anything for themselves. These types of people want jobs handed to them, transport provided and the Rolls Royce treatment straight away. My big fear is that in the economy that we currently find ourselves in these people are sinkng in a heap and are utterly useless in getting themselves back on their feet. Why? – because they don’t know how to do anything for themselves.

The days of big bad old companies trying to trick employees into a life of servitude are gone. Ninety nine per cent of employment contracts are the very same. If in doubt ask an expert such as a recruiter or a member of the Citizens Advice Bureau. Don’t allow yourself to be swayed by non-experts who just have your best interests at heart. Most of all ask your potential employers lots of questions and make an informed decision.

So the message to the graduates or soon to be graduates amongst you is this: have a backbone and know what you want from your life and go for it. It might be easier to have the first start on the career ladder handed to you, but it will not help you in the long run. Finally, if you’re parents try to butt in and negotiate contracts or salaries have a quiet word.