Jobs fair gets start-ups and students connected

Dubstarts is designed to connect willing students and graduates with the best start-ups and has proved a runaway success so far

He may be just 24, but tech entrepreneur Vincent Lyons has made it his business to find jobs and internships for the young people of Dublin.

Along with his friend Phil Fogarty, he founded Dubstarts, a series of jobs fairs designed to connect willing students and graduates with the best start-ups.

“We had lots of friends who were looking for jobs, having just graduated from university. At the same time we noticed start-ups often didn’t have the funds to pay professionals with 20 years experience, as they would require a huge salary, whereas recent graduates couldn’t demand the same high salaries,” Lyons says.

The duo organised a Dubstarts pilot event in May, after discovering a huge demand among start-ups for young developers, graphic designers, marketing professionals and sales personnel.

“More than 300 people turned up and we had a long queue stretching out the door. More than 20 people got jobs out of the event and most were paid positions. Some people were even hired on the spot at the event,” Lyons said.

Lyons, who played a pivotal role in bringing Dogpatch Labs to Ireland, is also heavily involved in the Startupbootcamp accelerator programme.

Following on from the success of the first Dubstarts event, he organised a second in Dublin last week.

Among the start-up companies participating in the event were activity booking site Birble, school administration platform VSware, online accountancy firm Bullet, online news aggregator NewsWhip and golfmiles, which is a global loyalty platform for the golf industry.

Brendan Casey, CEO of swiftQueue, a start-up which provides online appointment software for the healthcare industry, said he was at the event to recruit new members to his team.

“We have more than 100 clinics signed up ranging from dentists to doctors to physiotherapists and we have recently engaged with the HSE. A patient can either go to our website or the clinic’s website, see what appointments are available and make a booking. We are getting very busy with more and more clinics signing up, so we’re here to find front-end developers and marketing executives, both interns and paid positions.”

Casey co-founded the business in 2011 with Declan Donohoe after identifying a need to allow patients book their healthcare appointments online.

“If you are sick late at night you can make an appointment for first thing the next morning. You don’t have to wait for it to open to phone/call in.”

Casey hopes to launch the service in the UK “as soon as possible” with the software already being piloted there.

Morgan Lynch, CEO of online invoicing company Senddr, said his company had been trying to recruit people since August.

“It’s a pity this event didn’t happen in August. It’s near impossible to find/recruit tech people in Dublin. There are lots of them about, but it’s difficult to tap into the talent pool.