Getting the word out that Westmeath is a great place to work

By Ciara O'Hara

If you were hoping to find your vocation or to set off on a new professional path, there’s a good chance you found what you were looking for at the Midlands Career Expo in Mullingar Park Hotel on Saturday September 23. Organised by Mullingar Chamber of Commerce (MCC), the event revealed the region to be full of possibilities, proving you don’t have to commute to pursue a promising career.

Representatives from a variety of sectors, firms and institutions helped candidates of all ages identify their interests and talents, and find the most suitable professions. Job prospects ranged from retail to robotics, insurance to healthcare, as well as adult education, apprenticeships, and opportunities for gaining experience and developing skills.

A series of inspiring talks was delivered by speakers that included Ireland’s first astronaut, Dr Norah Patten, and award-winning mental health advocate, Niall Breslin.

“There’s plenty of vacancies here and they’re from every walk of life and they’re from top management down,” said Allyson English, president of MCC. “We have over 45 exhibitors here today, which is great – fantastic turnout.

“Most of the exhibitors we’ve been speaking to here have said, ‘We’ve got a job for everyone’.”

“The market is busy. There’s candidates there; there’s roles there,” according to Mairead Duignan of Force Recruitment. “People need to come to us. If we have your CV, then we can help you get work. That’s the main thing. We have so many roles open. We’re just trying to find the right candidates… there’s definitely a job out there for everyone,” added Mairead.

“The midlands is a great place to work,” said Tony Palmer of MidlandJobs.ie, who helped organise the event. “Why commute to Dublin when there are really good, high-quality jobs here, excellent companies here, excellent apprenticeships on offer. We want people to reduce their commuting… people should look locally first before they look at the bigger scene. When you commute less, you have less time in the car, you have more time for family, for doing the things that you like. What’s not to like about that?”

Guidance counsellors Caroline Cornally and Liz Glennon from Longford Westmeath Education and Training Board (LWETB) highlighted the adult education options available locally. “Our job is to help adults back into education, if that’s what they want. We help adults make the decision, or empower them to make the best decision for themselves.

“We would have programmes for people who need help with their reading and writing, so that would be our adult literacy services, right up to maybe the equivalent of the Junior Cert, and then we have courses the equivalent of the Leaving Cert. And that would in Mullingar, and we have a lot of part-time provision,” said Caroline.

The courses LWETB offer are all free, with the exception of some of the evening courses. There are even free buses to and from Athlone for various classes and apprenticeships.

“People might not realise that there courses specifically for adults and they are linked towards jobs; we try and put on courses that are specific to a job… if they’re thinking of changing careers, or thinking of jobs, and they’re not really sure where to start, sometimes we can be that starting point and just give them the skills they might need.

“They only might need to do maybe an evening class with us for a period of time, let’s say book-keeping or payroll or something like that, and then go on to work. Or sometimes people do more full awards because they just want to generally build up their education level. So we cater for everybody,” said Caroline.

As well as providing training, LWETB also has a number of job vacancies. “We’re currently looking for people… and again, they’re local jobs, Mullingar, Athlone and Longford,” added Caroline.

Representatives from Maynooth University were spreading the word about their graduate options. “We have full-time and part-time masters and postgraduate programs, and diplomas and certificates. But we also have a new initiative at Maynooth called ‘Microcredentials’, and these are really flexible, short, part-time courses aimed at professionals who are looking to upskill or reskill, or perhaps like they’re looking to break into a new industry or they’re looking for a promotion.

“So these are short, bite-sized pieces that people can do. Our longest one is doable in 12 weeks. And they are based either online or blended… and they’re tailored around practical skills development, but also we are aiming to make sure that we’re responding to skill gaps or industry needs.

“So we have courses that are actually co-designed and co-delivered with industry representatives and industry partners. We’re working with a growing number of industry partners and sectors to make sure that we’re responding to the emerging skills needs, current and future,” said Dr Zsuzanna Zarka, project lead of the IUA MicroCreds project at Maynooth University.

There are opportunities to train and develop new skills with Buckley’s SuperValu too. “We have four stores in total. We have three SuperValus, one in Mullingar, one in Moate, one in Birr, and then we have a Centra as well in Mullingar. We’re recruiting for all the four shops, for different roles across them all.

We offer flexibility, we’re local. We’re looking for people in our deli, or people on our shop floor, in our checkouts, lots of options to either get started in a career in retail or progress through a career in retail as well.

“We do a lot of online training and there are different opportunities for apprenticeships, supervisory courses, up to degree courses in retail management, if people want to progress their career and find that retail is for them. And we support people through the education process as well,” said Caroline Collins, operations and supply chain specialist with Buckley’s SuperValu.

You might not expect to find Europe’s largest independent robotics in the midlands, but Robotics and Drives is based in Mullingar and was established here too.

“It started off 18 years ago with the three directors, a husband and wife and a colleague at their kitchen table, and 18 years later we now have a workforce of over 70 people,” said Tony Crinion, customer service and after-sales manager with Robotics and Drives.

Tony told the Westmeath Examiner that his firm was “looking for people who want to have a career in automation and robotics”.

“Anybody who has either a qualification in either electronic or mechanical engineering or mechatronics, or people even who are interested in that and want to pursue a career in robotics. They might not have the necessary qualifications but they might be starting off and they can come and talk to us.

“We value people’s enthusiasm, their commitment, their education… if you’ve got what we want, we want you.”

Orlaith Martin from Integra LifeSciences was pleased with the leads the expo was generating. “We’ve got some good CVs and people have left their contact details as well. We brought our QR codes and our little slip of paper with our vacancies on it and we’ve handed out a lot of those out as well,” said Orla.

“We’re based in Tullamore. We make equipment used by surgeons. That one, the power seat, is used for the removal of brain tumours. We have some other units as well that are used in hospitals to monitor brain pressure, oxygen levels, temperature. So it’s really high-tech quality products that we have.

“We’re looking for electro-mechanical engineers and quality engineers… these jobs we’re looking for at the moment would be qualified, with experience, but often times people will come in, production operators, that kind of thing, and they would get training and development on the job. And if a vacancy comes up in another department, they can apply. We often promote and move people around,” she added.

Melanie Boylan of Stomp Media offered personal branding and social media advice to attendees, and said she was “specifically looking for work experience and transition year students”.

“It’s such an explosive area to be in right now and I’d really like to help give people that opportunity because the amount of people that say, ‘Oh, I’d love to do this but I’ve got no experience. I’ve got all of these qualifications and they won’t let me come in because I’ve no experience’,” said Melanie.

One of the speakers at the event, Dr Norah Patten, told the Westmeath Examiner that it was great to see “so much activity in the midlands”.

“I’m from Mayo. It’s lovely to see so much happening outside of the capital cities,” she added.

“What they’re really promoting today is the apprenticeships and different career opportunities… it’s a big decision, choosing careers, when you’re a teenager and there’s a lot of pressure at that age to decide where you’re going, but there’s just many routes to get to wherever you want to go… it’s kind of baby steps to a much bigger goal and you learn a lot of new things along the way, meet a lot of new people and, I think, it’s never a linear path from A to Z.”

Niall Breslin, who also spoke, urged attendees not to lose sight of who they are and what they stand for in their quest for success. He emphasised that it’s not where happiness comes from. “Your happiness lies in the people you’re surrounded by, in your relationships. Invest in them as much as you can,” he stressed, as part of his presentation on ‘Finding Peace in the Chaos of the Modern World’.

Speaking to the Westmeath Examiner, Niall said: “It’s been an immensely overwhelming few years. I think part of my work now is to make people aware that maybe the way we’re feeling is how we should be feeling.”

Allyson English was thrilled with what she called “a fantastic buster day”.

“I’d like to give a real big mention to our subcommittee in the chamber. They have been absolutely amazing. They’ve been Trojans at this. We’ve got Shirley Kiernan, we’ve got Tony Palmer, we’ve got Orla Duncan, Aisling Coleman in the office, I don’t know what we’d do without her. We’ve got Hannah, who works with Shirley, and we’ve got Lauren, who’s working in the office with us. We’ve also got Alan Windsor, who’s not here today, unfortunately, he’s out of the country. But they’ve been an absolutely fantastic sub-committee… teamwork makes the dream work, doesn’t it?”

The expo took six months to plan and organise, and everyone who worked hard to make it happen was doing so on a voluntary basis. “The board and the committee that organise all the events, we’re all volunteers. Most of us have full-time jobs as well. So all of the activities, like this career event, we organise through the evenings. All the social media as well, that was done by Hannah O’Gara, who works for Force Recruitment, and she’s working full-time as well,” said Shirley Kiernan.

Asked how the committee finds the energy for such demanding voluntary work, especially when they have separate careers, Shirley responded with: “I think really the passion comes from giving back to the community, giving back to the town… and employment is so important.

“And I suppose the other big important thing for this event as well, there are so many companies here that people just wouldn’t be aware of. So it’s to create that awareness and again try and attract new talent to the area… Westmeath and the midlands is such a fantastic place to come and live and work so we need to get the message out there.”