Learn about some of the opportunities announced for jobseekers this week, from roles in Cork, Dublin and Sligo to a new Government upskilling initiative.
The positive jobs news kept coming in Careers this week. Monday morning kicked off with an announcement from Tánaiste Leo Varadkar that 206 new jobs are on the way in Cork, Dublin, Kildare and Sligo. Seven IDA-backed companies will be rolling out new positions in sales, software development, tech support and more across the technology and business service sectors.
In Dublin, Munich Re Automation Solutions also announced a major investment of up to €16m in an R&D programme and the creation of 60 new skilled jobs. This investment will help the company develop a cloud-native digital platform and business process optimisation that will enable it to scale its customer base from hundreds to thousands.
Dublin-headquartered eShopWorld is also growing. With Covid-19 driving a surge in online shopping, the e-commerce tech company is adding 160 new people to its team. It has already filled 120 of the positions across technology, logistics, product and finance. The company is currently looking to hire for approximately 40 further roles, which will bring its total workforce to more than 480.
In Northern Ireland, Belfast will also get more than 100 new jobs after two companies announced plans to expand. Packaging company MSO Cleland is investing £5m in its manufacturing business as demand for non-plastic packaging grows, and will be hiring 35 new people.
IT firm Version 1 is also growing its Belfast base. The company announced plans for a new digital development hub, where it will recruit 70 new staff members by October 2021. Vacancies will include cloud-native software developers, engineers across site reliability, data and DevOps, test automation specialists, product managers, service designers and scrum masters.
Graduate season is still here
As companies across the country keep searching for entry-level recruits, we also continued our conversations with graduates this week. Fintan Naughton spoke to us about his journey from electrical engineering to a job in automation at Amgen through the pharma company’s graduate programme.
And computer science graduate Oluchi Anyabuike spoke about her route through the Leap programme at Fidelity Investments. The friends she made on the programme and the opportunities she saw at the company made her decide to become a full-time software engineer at Fidelity after college.
Matters of mental health
Tomorrow (10 October) is World Mental Health Day. Ahead of this date, we spoke to Aware’s Dr Claire Hayes to learn more about how we can manage stress while we work from home.
According to Hayes, acknowledging how we’re feeling is a key first step in looking after our mental health. After that, it’s important to “manage our thoughts, question our beliefs and to deliberately focus on doing actions that are helpful”.
Something that could be giving you anxiety at the moment is the fear of losing your job. Job security has been a concern for many people since the pandemic began, so it’s important to stay aware of how these worries could impact on your mental health. In this guest article, Hays’ Alex Fraser shares six steps you can take to help manage that anxiety.
Workers who have already lost their jobs because of Covid could benefit from a new Government initiative launched this week. The Skills Connect programme aims to help people reskill for new roles in sectors with employment potential, including cybersecurity, software programming and digital marketing. More than 300 companies will offer work placements and mentoring, with around 2,000 people expected to take part by the end of the year.
Our connections to other people can also contribute to our wellbeing. This can be harder to maintain when we’re working remotely, but technology can help. Here, Paylocity’s Steve Beauchamp, who leads a HR tech company that was 50pc remote before the pandemic, offers some advice.
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