STUDENTS AND graduates eager for jobs came in their thousands yesterday to the gradireland.com careers fair in Dublin’s RDS.
An estimated 3,900 posts were being advertised by a variety of companies with some 6,000 people thought to have attended the one-day event.
Event organisers said a concerted effort had been made to make the fair relevant for all students and graduates, especially those coming from degree courses where there wasn’t a clear career pathway. “If you are graduating as a computer developer, people are killing to have you, everyone knows that,” said Mark Mitchell, head of publishing at Gradireland. “It is important to get across the message that there are jobs out there for all disciplines
“These companies still need you. They need the diversity and human beings with creativity in there.
“They wouldn’t be much good if all they did was hire 200 accountants.”
This was reflected around the fair, as many stalls reported that they were looking for graduates with certain core skills but not necessarily specific expertise.
Ken Carney, head of graduate recruitment at betting company Paddy Power, said its fastest growing area was mobile computing, and that it would be unrealistic for the company to seek only graduates with specific mobile computing degrees.
“The mobile sector is new and people just don’t have five, six years’ experience in it,” he said.
Stephen Drumm, an intern working at the Colgate stall, said many students he had spoken to were surprised they did not need an IT degree to work there.
“They have to have an interest in it, but if they understand the business project behind what they are doing they can learn the IT through our mentoring programme,” he said.
In addition to the 133 stalls featuring a variety of companies and universities (offering postgraduate courses), seminar classes discussing topics such as CV tips and boosting your employability were held.
Surrounding the fair were what organisers termed “jobs walls”, where companies looking to recruit graduates posted details about themselves and the positions they had available.
The fair offered a one-to-one CV clinic to allow students and graduates to speak with career advisers about improving their CV.
“The seminar I was at was brilliant” said Ronan McIntyre (24) a music student from Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, after he left a talk on creative job searching.
“I’ve come today completely open-minded just to see about some better career prospects – the seminar helped you look ‘outside the box’ sort of thing about how to get a job,” he said.
Órla Ní Shéaghda (23), from Dundalk, recently graduated with a journalism degree from Napier University in Edinburgh, and was looking for a position that would allow her to gain some experience that might boost her chances of finding work with a newspaper or radio station in the future.
“I’m trying to find different avenues that might be out there to build up experience. A lot of businesses have magazines; they have internet sites and need people to write that content.”