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Building careers in Ireland

If you are someone with strong career ambitions, choosing to work for a US multinational firm in Ireland could be one the best moves you’ll ever make

If you are someone with strong career ambitions, choosing to work for a US multinational firm in Ireland could be one the best moves you’ll ever make.

Many American firms pride themselves on having a strong continuous learning and career-development culture. Such a culture can be of huge benefit to individual employees wherever their careers may lead them, but there is also an onus on the employers to ensure their support for career development aligns as closely as possible with business growth targets.

The four individuals profiled below, while each following different paths to building careers in R&D, manufacturing, sales and HR, all say their current employers have played central roles in boosting their skills, knowledge, and future job prospects in ways that are highly relevant not just to the employees but the company as well.

Katherine Gilbert, LinkedIn

After graduating with a degree in electronic engineering in 1998, Limerick-born Katherine Gilbert went to work for an US multinational in Dublin as a quality assurance engineer.

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However, three years later the firm closed its manufacturing base here and, thinking this was a prime opportunity to see the world, she decided to move to Dubai for a year in 2002 to teach mathematics to primary school children. “This was incredibly rewarding, professionally and personally – from the sight of 30 smiling faces every day to the sights of the red hills of Muscat, Oman.”

They say training as an engineer equips you be a problem-solver, a skill you can apply to just about any field. This proved true for Gilbert, who joined the talent acquisition team at Dell on her return to Ireland. “I discovered I enjoyed the world of HR, and saw a wonderful opportunity to combine that passion with my analytical and engineering abilities by becoming part of the EMEA compensation and benefits team in Dell.” She progressed through a variety of roles in the unit for 10 years before moving to head up a similar team in LinkedIn.

“Each step of the way I’ve been supported and empowered to be my best and do my best with my American employers during my career to date,” says Gilbert. “Achieving potential and professional progression was part of the fibre of each company.”

She estimates that 70 per cent of her learning and development has been on the job, with 20 per cent informal learning and 10 per cent formal learning. “On-the-job learning brought me such a wealth of experience. Experience in new roles, new scopes, changing client groups or changing countries of responsibility brought me unmatchable exposure to continuous learning and a wonderfully broad set of skills.”

She speaks highly of a number of learning and development programmes within LinkedIn, including ‘InvestIn’, a succession planning platform for top talent in the EMEA region. “The success or otherwise of these programmes in my opinion, is hinged on honesty, humbleness and hard work. It’s not easy to build professional muscle and general life skills that are needed to successfully grow – but it sure delivers a return on investment.”

Chris Enright, HP

Chris Enright has worked in HP for 20 years. After graduating in science from DIT and Trinity College, the Dubliner spent four years in the pharma sector before joining HP as an engineer, working on technology transfer and starting up manufacturing and test operations at the firm’s plant in Leixlip.

He took on his first management role after just four years. “The business was going through a significant expansion, and my role was to enable new processes and capabilities to support capacity expansion. I was able to take on new roles that focused on breakthrough process development, product development and R&D.”

Taking on international assignments within HP also reaped longer-term career rewards. He spent a year working on technology transfer at the firm’s base in San Diego, California, and three years in HP Barcelona managing R&D for a different business unit before returning to Leixlip in 2010 to become a department manager for R&D. He was appointed director of R&D for inkjet supplies last year.

Enright rates the support he has received from HP in developing his career over this time as “tremendous”, and included supporting him in completing a masters degree in management at UCD, a postgrad programme at the Irish Management Institute and a programme on innovation leadership at Stanford University in California.

“The internal training programmes have also been very good – over the last 20 years I’ve received training on several technical, business and personal skills programmes that have been excellent. The company has pulled in industry-leading experts for several development programmes.”

Enright believes that, as well as having a strong career development focus, US multinationals typically have a scale and diversity that enables employees to move across different departments in a way that builds valuable multi-disciplinary experience. “I previously worked for a Swiss pharma company that was more limited in mobility across the company as well as internal development opportunities.”

Katie Doyle, Twitter

Twitter is Katie Doyle’s second turn on the US multinational career merry-go-round. The 33-year-old Ballinteer woman previously worked as a strategic account manager for eBay before becoming one of the first members of Twitter’s sales team in Dublin four years ago, and where she now works as sales manager for the UK and Ireland.

“Twitter has given me the opportunity to work with the best of the best,” she says. “This was a first for me. Our hiring standards are high and we all benefit. I’ve learned so much in the past four years.

“The company has also helped me develop from great constructive feedback. I’m indebted to the managers and peers who’ve shared honest feedback about areas I need to improve and my strengths. Without this I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Doyle believes US firms place a “very high focus on career development”.

“Outside of core one-to-one meetings with managers, employees have separate career development sessions. They own and steer these, however, and their managers support them.”

The kinds of people who work in the firm are high-calibre and keen to learn and grow, she says.

“Thankfully our business has that scope, whether it’s to move into a different function, work in an another office around the world or move into management like I have.

“This, coupled with the fact that we’re direct and thoughtful with our feedback, helps people progress.”

Barry Bolger, MSD

US firms with manufacturing bases here seem more than happy to make the considerable investment to help high-calibre workers transition from one very specialised or technical area to another. That way, they get to grow talent within their organisations, but also enable those same individuals to share the firm’s learning and development culture.

After a four-year technician apprenticeship at MSD’s pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, the company sponsored Barry Bolger to do a distance-learning degree in mechatronic engineering at IT Sligo. At the same time, he gained automation experience by working on a number of short assignments with other engineering teams in the company.

Although he wasn’t looking to move to another site, he was keen to develop his skills in the automation field, so when the opportunity to work on the start up of a new biologics plant in Carlow came up, he went for it.

“It was at this time that I started to see benefits to expanding my knowledge and experience the biologics area,” Bolger says. “Carlow was a new site and a number of processes and procedures were still being developed within the automation group so I felt I was able to bring a level a standardisation from Rathdrum since it was a well-established MSD site.”

Bolger, who is now associate director of manufacturing automation in Carlow, describes the transition from API manufacturing to biologics as a “completely new experience” and “a steep learning curve”, not least in that it gave him the opportunity to move into managing people as well as processes.

“Management at both Carlow and Rathdrum were extremely supportive in the transition between the sites and made the process very straightforward.”