Check Your Water

When you have an interview organised, the first thing that should come to your mind will be the usual elements of preparation such as, researching the company, memorising who you are meeting and what their position is.

If you are super organised perhaps even a list of questions you may have to direct back to the interviewer!

One other vital consideration for every interview is also the most essential part of interview preparation - getting there? Aside from all the above preparations before an interview, the most essential point is the navigation!

• Do you know where the company is based?
• Do you have the building routed/ entered into your Sat Nav?
• Have you timed the journey so you will be there early?

One final consideration - Is your car in working order?! Have you checked the oil,  water and the petrol?

Obvious as it sounds, these kind of blips can occur!

The Application

Applying for the right job is paramount in this day and age. It is an employer’s market right now so your application success depends on a variety of moves.

A few tips to point you in the right direction!

The Application

• Make sure you quote the job reference yes, but more importantly the Job Title!
• Read the Job Spec. It is imperative you are qualified to do the job - whether educationally or years experience. Some people require both! Most importantly, if you can’t do the job don’t apply for it! It really won’t be the right job for you.
• The questions. Answer the questions given at the end of the job before you click send. It saves a lot of time so be nice to the kind people receiving your application?

The Cover Sheet/ Email:

• Let the person receiving your mail know why you are applying. They really do read it, so give a small synopsis of yourself right and your working experience.

The CV

• If you are happy with it, attach it!

The Send Button

• Does exactly what it says on the tin!

Employers have the pick of the crop to choose from

In the current economic climate we find that employers have the pick of the crop when it comes to choosing candidates for their resourcing requirements. 

Not in decades has there been such an opportunity for Irish employers to choose from such a wide range of superbly qualified candidates with such excellent experience and skills and as a result they are taking their time before they make their selection.

Many employers only too well remember the scarcity of skilled and qualified candidates that existed in the Ireland of less than five years ago and the relentless career and salary demands of prospective employees.  

Fast forward five years and the employment landscape has changed beyond recognition.

Applicants for new positions often describe interminable periods of time waiting for feedback leading to a lack of self worth and a pronounced sense of limbo, this can erode already dwindling confidence whilst waiting and wondering-what happened?? 

Candidates cannot be blamed for wondering or doubting did their cv meet the criteria? Was there an ulterior reason why they have not heard back? Is the requirement real? Where they or their qualifications good enough? 

Feedback is the key and all candidates certainly deserve feedback ;-even if it is negative or disappointing because at least that way they can move on to looking at the next job. Because in the current economic climate it is the persistence to overcome disappointment and the determination to succeed despite competition that will get you your next job.

Calling all Radiologists

There are some candidates that we cannot get enough of, and right now Radiology seems to be the “Job of the Hour”!

Here at Jackie Brown Medical we have a number of urgent requirements for Radiologists so contact us as soon as possible!

If you are in the market for a new position and are fully qualified in Radiology then here at Jackie Brown Medical we can use you.

Take the time to format your CV in an accessable format.

Word is the word when applying for a job, particularly to a recruitment agency your opening shot is with your CV and the worst thing you can do is send a CV in a format that cannot be edited easily such as Pdf. Whats the difference I hear you say?

Well for a start  all CV’s received by agencies (and some direct hiring companies require CV’s to be presented in a particular fashion that  has to be done swiftly.

As the majority of  agencies use MS Office and in particular MS Word, it means having to convert CV’s to a completely different format. But that should’nt take long you say. You’re absolutely right but tell that to the recruiter who is under pressure and has a hundred CV’s to review before lunch and edit those of use.

If you send your CV in PDF or other format, it will remain most likely untouched and unconsidered at the bottom of the electronic documents submission list. What would you prefer?

Take time about your CV but the simplest thing you can do is send it in the most easily accessable format that can be read, re formated and read by OCR (Optical Character  Recognition) technology used by most recruitment databases for data capture.

Give yourself at least a fighting chance for your next job.

Make Your CV Work For You

Getting your CV right is of utmost importance, especially in the market we are in at the moment. Read these CV tips and better your chances!

The best advise for drawing up your CV is to do it in rough hand first, jotting down everything you have studied and worked at since entering college, this way you can see what is essentially a map of your professional life to date. Once you have done this, you will automatically see what doesn’t have a place in your professional profile. For example, if you studied Nursing and went into the nursing profession once qualified, then your part time summer position in between year 1 and year 2 as a lawn mower in the local community school is not as important as it was back when you were 19!

Be clear and concise with your headings, picking the obvious Education, Working Experience and a Skills Profile. From your rough draft, pick the most important information like the title of your degree, and include your Thesis title from your final year. In Working Experience, clearly give your Job Title and list your daily duties, and then streamline it once again to the most important and relevant daily duties. In your Skills Profile list specific skills learned at college and once again through any work experience.

And finally! Personal Profile. This takes a little bit of extra thinking! This is where you sell yourself.  Although I am mentioning it last it should be at the top of the CV.  The Personal Profile/ Synopsis is the core of you and your career to date in a short paragraph at the beginning of your CV. From your rough draft, put together a paragraph about yourself incorporating your work to date, essentially telling any prospective employer about yourself in your career.  Make it relevant to each individual position you apply for.  Generic profiles do not work as well as a targeted synopsis.  What are the company looking for.  Address how you can fill these requirements.  This should be enough to make them read on!

You can see more CV tips here.

Jackie Brown Medical Grows

Jackie Brown Medical are proud to announce further growth.

Experienced Medical and Science Recruiter Elaine Lambert has just joined our team here at Jackie Brown Medical. Elaine comes to us from Techstaff International Ltd where she specialized in Science Recruitment, specifically Environmental Science recruitment. While at Techstaff, Elaine built up a fantastic relationship with a vast number of clients and is looking forward to working with them once again.

Elaine has 5 years Recruitment experience and is “delighted to be a part of the continued expansion of Jackie Brown Medical”.

Elaine’s science background, medical knowledge and personable nature will make her an invaluable part of the team at Jackie Brown Medical.

Elaine can be reached at elaine@jackiebrownmedical.ie or on (01) 2016363.

From ATM to AMT (Advanced Manufacturing Technology)

Banking on it, the banking industry in Ireland today is suffering with almost 800 jobs are going in Bank of Scotland, Ireland/ Hallifax. Today people are looking elsewhere for employment prospects that offer security and good salaries.

Currently those conditions only appear to exist in either the public sector at senior clerical officer grades or within certain growth sectors in the Irish economy such as Medical Device Manufacturing or within Medical Sales. Both of these sectors are exhibiting phenomenal growth despite the current down turn.

Positions such as those for Medical Technical Sales rep, Chief Science Officer, or Senior Injection Moulding Engineer are on offer from a variety of major employers such as Vistakon, Mergon, KCI, Medtronic or HSL. All these positions offer considerable career prospects and attractive salaries that still hark back to the good old days of the early naughties.

Back to the Brain Drain of the Eighties

A New Order seems to have decended on the Irish employment front with salaries being one of the most obvious signs that things have changed in Ireland and that the Celtic Tiger is becoming more and more of a distant memory.

The New Order today for job applicants requires greater flexibility in taking on job roles that require increased duties for in most cases salaries as much as 15 to 20% less than previously paid less than  two years ago and job descriptions that have expanded responsibilities which would have previously merited increased pay but now are considered mandatory and simply part of the job.

Additionally we see greater flexibility demanded of candidates required to take work further and further away from home requiring longer commutes and in some cases having to be transferred overseas to sister offices whilst the current economic conditions prevails.

Job seekers should consider this as temporary however as these were similar conditions some of our earlier readers may remember existed in the eighties when emigration was the order of the day. But that order changed too and then came the boom of the mid nineties bringing us to the recent present.

The key point to remember is things do change no matter how bleak or omnipresent that they can appear. Our current downturn will change but it requires willingness to accept change to current or previous existing terms and flexibility to continue working in order to survive the harsh conditions we must go through today to meet the eventual upturn of tomorrow.

Are you what they want?

Less haste-more speed as the saying goes. I recently received over a dozen CV’s from candidates applying for jobs that they were quiet obviously not qualified to do, both in terms of experience and qualifications. After the tenth CV I became slightly paranoid and read my job descriptions again and realised they were correct and more than that were very specific in what I required from applicants.

For example, I was in one instance looking for a Degree Qualified  Production Manager or Manufacturing Engineer with experience of Injection Moulded Medical Devices. What I received was a Production Manager with none of the other attributes, no degree, no medical device experience and no moulding experience?

Obviously the candidate was not suitable and was informed of this fact. That didnt help me as both his and my time was wasted.

This made me realise that the candidates were not or could not have been reading the job specification properly or fully before application or they would have realised this and not wasted their time.

Granted these are difficult times and people are frantically trying to find new jobs because of urgent financial commitments and they are in difficult situations, However that also means their time is even more valuable and probably better spent researching where suitable jobs are or by presenting their skills correctly and sending their CV’s to employers or Agencies that have positions that match their skills and experience

Consider this; if a candidate replies to a live requirement immediately that they are suitable for, if they are the first applicant they stand psychologically 1st in line for the job with the employer as that employer may require that person immediately and lean strongly towards the first suitably qualified candidate.

At the very least a requirement may be closing out and the applicant may have missed out on a closing application date whilst wasting time applying to an unsuitable  post.

Applying to a requirement you dont suit means you are looking in the wrong direction at the wrong time and you may miss out to someone else who has taken their time selecting a suitable job and as a result won out ahead of you simply because they took the time to read the Job specification.