IT: When hundreds apply, who gets the job?

[Blue_Horseshoe]

From The Irish Times, 7th June 2010

[

WHEN 120 people queued through the shop and out the door for 10 SuperValu jobs in Trim, Co Meath, last month, Marie Mullen (25), a trained legal secretary with an honours Leaving Cert, was among them. She had been made unemployed the year before when the printing company where she was office manager closed. Her partner, Ian Hennessy, then lost his job when Belgard Motors was liquidated. With a mortgage to pay and a two-year-old son, the couple found themselves counting pennies for the first time.

](https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/0607/1224272000008.html)

Blue Horseshoe

[tea_drinker]

interesting times we live in.

“We [the shoppers] were put in this embarrassing position of recognising people we knew in the queue.** It was undignified . . . disgraceful**. I felt I was encroaching on their personal lives. This is a small town where everyone knows everyone else. I felt very upset about this because I don’t want to know other people’s business in the town, or to learn in this way that someone had fallen on hard times.”

Tought titty, people Q to get a job and you get squemish Poor you!

[bearishbull]

Eijits. Should have gotten on the pigs back , sorry a Public sector job when they were recruiting.

[Pyramid5]

He sees three reasons for this indiscriminate CV-sending: many just want to prove when they go to the dole office that they’re trying to find a job when, in fact, they feel they’d be better off on social welfare.

Spurling, who believes that “women make for better managers than men do and they’re great to work with”.

Will these hopefuls who actually completed the workshop get jobs in retail?

“I don’t think so. A lot were over-qualified – there were even former business owners. And a bank manager who thought he could run a petrol station.” Whelan doesn’t blame people who have lost jobs in construction and financial services for trying, but does think that an overall effort to retrain the unemployed should be an urgent goal.

Alot of assumptions here by recruitment agencies. I’m doing courses for jobs that are below the level I was previously at, but in a different sector. I find his comments very insulting. He says re-training is a matter of urgency, then says that people that are re-training are over qualified. Not everyone fits into a textbook profile

[Tyrannosaurus]

In a Centra in Naas, Co Kildare, manager Damien Fallon has received 180 applications for one job as deli supervisor, but still can’t find a suitably trained person. John Curry of ABC cleaning services got 100 e-mails last week for one cleaning job, but, he says, a lack of training – and an inability to understand English – made all but about 10 not worth interviewing. Mike O’Sullivan, head chef at Radeens Court, a new restaurant in Bandon, Co Cork, has got 300 applications in the past two weeks for a chef job, but the applicants are inexperienced or cannot speak English.

wtf kind of english do you need to be a cleaner? What sort of specialist training does one need to work at a deli that they cant get on the job?

Barry Whelan, managing director of Excel Recruitment, which specialises in retail, says that this is the story everywhere: employers and agencies are being overwhelmed with CVs from people who are not right for the job. He sees three reasons for this indiscriminate CV-sending: many just want to prove when they go to the dole office that they’re trying to find a job when, in fact, they feel they’d be better off on social welfare. Another reason is laziness, he thinks, with people applying online who can’t be bothered to seriously look for a job. And, thirdly, “desperation” from people who’ll try anything.

Excel is desperate for qualified people to fill jobs that are going begging in the retail sector. The recruitment company gets up to 200 applications per day, yet only 4 per cent warrant an interview

what the hell experience do you need to work in retail? Thats the kind of thing I did when i was in secondary school part time. Clearly Im missing something, please inform me

WHELAN SUMS IT UP: “There are jobs out there but not the right people for them.” Recently, Excel held a two-day workshop for people who wanted to train for retail roles, but, of 1,000 people offered the chance, only 350 bothered with the formal application form. . Of these, 150 people filled in the form and committed to attending the workshop. The 850 others were “too lazy” to bother, Whelan suspects

“bothered” maybe because yer mans workshop is a load of shoite, I wonder does he charge cough cough
and anyway there is no shortage or unemployed people with retail experience

[johnnyskeleton]

@Blindjustice BATONEFFECT

wtf kind of english do you need to be a cleaner? What sort of specialist training does one need to work at a deli that they cant get on the job?

what the hell experience do you need to work in retail? Thats the kind of thing I did when i was in secondary school part time. Clearly Im missing something, please inform me

Recruitment agents, like gasses, expand to fill whatever space they have. So when there are 100 people, any one of whom can do the 1 job available, they like to be seen to be doing the work of whittling them down into the ideal candidate, just as they would if only 1 of the 100 might be suitable. As such, they make up arbitrary criteria for determining suitability.

I never really got recruitment agents - for unskilled work anyone can do it so why not just stick a sign up; for highly skilled work if the employer doesn’t know who can do the job and can’t filter out the timewasters themselves then they should question their whole business. The only time that I can see how a recruitment agent is really justified is in those crap office jobs that are low paid highly technical and have a high turnover of staff e.g. vodafone callcentre. Even there, they are only useful because the managment in those places don’t want to do their own recruiting as it is cheaper to pay someone per head employed.

[nasdo]

Thats quite a number applying for one job. In Leterkenny 400 people applied for a job position lately. It seems to be problematic in certain areas. My missus finished up in college so started looking for one, first week she was offered two jobs and got a interview call for another but she had taken one of the two before the 3rd call for the interview. It just goes to show that some areas seem to be in a worse state than other in terms of desperate people looking for jobs.

[The_Unwelcome_Guest]

Nevermind recruitment agents, what about David “Negative Equity isn’t a problem” Duffy of the ESRI…

Trim, Letterkenny… The only equity there is iniquity.

[Daniel_Plainview]

@nasdo

My missus finished up in college so started looking for one

What did she study and what did she get the job doing?
Just interested to see where there’s hiring action.

[Pyramid5]

@Daniel Plainview

@nasdo

My missus finished up in college so started looking for one

What did she study and what did she get the job doing?
Just interested to see where there’s hiring action.

Must be a butcher or baker if the expert in the Irish Times is to be believed

The two jobs with the most vacancies today? Butchers and bakers. Bakers because people have grown tired of mass-produced bread and want fresh, wholesome loaves. Butchers because consumers have realised that a good quality butcher offers better value. With either skill, you could walk into a job tomorrow.

[The_Unwelcome_Guest]

@Pyramid5

Must be a butcher or baker if the expert in the Irish Times is to be believed

Bakers because people have grown tired of mass-produced bread and want fresh, wholesome loaves

The IT wants to start a bread bubble.

[hairy_cake]

Marie Mullen (25), a trained legal secretary with an honours Leaving Cert

[mod edit: uncalled for]

[gaius]

Err lads. What’s with all the snarky comments? Losing a job is a pretty traumatic experience and it’s attitudes like some of the above that makes people embarrassed about it.

[hairy_cake]

@hairy cake

Marie Mullen (25), a trained legal secretary with an honours Leaving Cert

[mod edit: uncalled for]

You’re missing the point. I wasn’t having a pop at the secretary (far from it, fair play to her for getting on with work, have done shite jobs myself before getting what I wanted), but rather at the way that the reportage implied that having an honours Leaving Cert was something notable. The same can be said of having an ‘honours’ degree - most places don’t actually have any pass degrees any more, so all degrees are the same.

[yoganmahew]

@hairy cake

@hairy cake

Marie Mullen (25), a trained legal secretary with an honours Leaving Cert

[mod edit: uncalled for]

You’re missing the point. I wasn’t having a pop at the secretary (far from it, fair play to her for getting on with work, have done shite jobs myself before getting what I wanted), but rather at the way that the reportage implied that having an honours Leaving Cert was something notable. The same can be said of having an ‘honours’ degree - most places don’t actually have any pass degrees any more, so all degrees are the same.

Now that’s a better explanation; thanks.

[jake76]

@The Unwelcome Guest

@Pyramid5

Must be a butcher or baker if the expert in the Irish Times is to be believed

Bakers because people have grown tired of mass-produced bread and want fresh, wholesome loaves

The IT wants to start a bread bubble.

mybread.ie could be worth millions

[nasdo]

@Daniel Plainview

@nasdo

My missus finished up in college so started looking for one

What did she study and what did she get the job doing?
Just interested to see where there’s hiring action.

Social studies but has another year to do. Only way to get a job for 5 months is to apply for full time, only in deli but will do for the next years rent. She has a bit of experience in it before though.

[bugler]

There’s hiring in Financial Services, if anyone’s curious. While our company imposed ‘austerity measures’ last year they have been replacing people, and recently loosened the purse strings to bring our team back up to more like a proper operating capacity.

I’m sure there were an awful lot of applicants for the jobs too, but we only interviewed three people (this is for the most junior position there is). I’d question the need and motivation for interviewing “hundreds”.

For any job seekers out there, I’ll say something I’ve learned in my experience of interviewing people and reading CVs. There are still a huge number of CVs coming in with grammatical and spelling errors. And annoying inconsistencies in the tense used in describing past jobs. Despite all the bread and butter advice on CVs, it still is a noticeable failing. I would never hire someone who has an error on a CV, and I’ve sank plenty of candidates for this despite the fact they interviewed well (and of course, HR/management who screen the CVs missed the errors too). It’s no use claiming to have attention to detail when your CV proves otherwise.

If anyone is looking in this sector (transfer agency, shareholder services, financial reporting, Fund Accounting, Compliance/AML etc), feel free to PM me.