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To highlight the importance of competencies in the recruitment process, the Midlandjobs.ie website has now uniquely had a new field to our job listings screen, especially for Key Competencies. We strongly encourage employers to consider using competency based recruitment techniques in 2021.

Of course skills will always be important for securing a job anywhere. And yes, good qualifications are often a minimum requirement. However there does seem to be some disruption to the usual norms of hiring going on right now, amid the uncertainty of a pandemic-hit jobs market of 2021.

In fact, the only certainty about the supply of talent this Summer, will be uncertainty itself. Uncertainty about how many skilled new hires a business will need before the end of this year. Uncertainty around how many qualified candidates will be available, already located on the island of Ireland [and are therefore not subject to hotel quarantine]. Uncertainty if overseas candidates will even be free to travel this year to take up jobs in the Midlands.

The adoption of Competency-based recruitment techniques in this scenario, could provide employers with the chance of securing suitable staff, even in this restricted pool of candidates.

Competency recruitment is to an extent, about focusing only on the absolute MUST HAVES!! You’re reading the cv and asking yourself if there is any evidence of your pre-designated key competencies. So even if there may be some shortcomings in the skills and qualifications, if those key competencies are present at all, you could potentially proceed through the stages of the recruitment process with this candidate.

The key to success is in deciding what those key factors are as you write up the job description and job ad, all of which takes a little longer at the start. It also makes the job of the pre-screening that little bit more onerous. But it’s at that all-important point of hiring that the hard work pays off in spades. Now you know that while your successful candidate may not be coming to you necessarily with all of the boxes ticked, they certainly have come through as having the ideal “attitude” and approach to the job you’re hiring for. You know they will hit the ground running and they will be a safe pair of hands.  You can at least hope that you’ve uncovered a gem and that your hire will turn out to be a win-win for both the company and the candidate.

Silver Lining

From a candidate point of view, many may not realise that the demand for talent in many sectors continues unabated, despite the disruption to business caused by the pandemic. Could this be the opportunity that many talented local candidates have been waiting for? – their moment to shine. And the good news for candidates is that competencies (not to be confused with aptitude) can actually be developed throughout your career. You can train yourself for competencies.

We know in Midlandjobs that there is no shortage of competency in the Midlands. Naturally occurring, home-grown talent, already located in or in some other way connected to the Midlands region of Ireland. In a normal year, international job-boards help to channel cv’s through from overseas candidates. And so the eyes of employers may inadvertently be drawn away from local talent. It could be very beneficial therefore that local candidates strike while the iron is still hot in 2021 and keep a close eye on job opportunities with local employers on Midlandjobs.ie and all job boards used by Midlands employers.

Minister Bruton to deliver address at the Jobs, Skills & Education Fair & Idea Generation Bootcamp Friday 17^th May in Mount Lucas Training Centre, Derrycricket, Daingean, Co. Offaly from 10am – 2pm.

Another great opportunity for local Midland Job-seekers to meet local employers face-to-face and talk to them about their local opportunities.

For full details check out the Westmeath LEO web page.

The newly redesigned Midlandjobs website offers our employers a unique opportunity to really sell their Midlands based employment. The uploadable areas of the site, such as the Company Profile and the Job Post area allows employers to add promotional material such as picture files and video. Pictures tell a thousand words, video sells a whole story.

The benefit of this to employers is very simple. At a time when it is increasingly difficult to track down and engage the “exact fit” candidate for our increasingly niche  roles, there is a massive advantage in being able to reach out and “promote” the excellent employment you offer.

Companies often don’t have staff  in-house to properly develop images, photos, graphics, video and so on tailored to promoting your actual employment. Midlandjobs can now offer this to employers for the development of their careers page. This means you are putting your best foot forward when it comes to attracting in the right talent for your pivotal jobs.

This new aspect to our service therefore consists of the following:

Combined with our new targeted Midlandjobs’ social media campaign for pushing out our job content, we consider these to be two compelling new reasons for local employers to list their job vacancies on Midlandjobs.ie. They give our employers the competitive edge on attracting the best talent to the Midlands.

The world of International recruitment is changing by the hour. By now, International job candidates will already be thinking very carefully about where they want to locate themselves post-Brexit. In recruitment terms, in December 2018, we’re already in the run up to this game-changing #Brexit. Migrant job-seekers could #indeed represent a massive opportunity for Midlands employers.

Here, demand is once again out-stripping supply for specialised skills. Some skilled roles can often be pivotal to a business operation. If vacancies in such positions can not be filled quickly, there can be potential implications for the financial health of a  company, as well as for the very future career prospects of it’s staff.

Which makes it all the more astonishing at this time of a global #WarForTalent, why any modern civilised country would effectively want to shut their doors to sources of the scarce skills which often migrant workers offer. In fact, it is difficult to see how there is any business case whatsoever for not seeking more inward migration. Thankfully, the Irish system is actually increasing the numbers of work permits it issues from year to year and has recently had the good sense to set about reviewing  it’s procedures to be better able to respond to skills shortages. Ireland also seems to have a very good track record of integration of populations from overseas countries and this is certainly evident in day-to-day life in the local Midlands towns with different nationalities living in relative harmony thankfully.

Midlands employers could and should position themselves to benefit from the change in the Geo-Political atmosphere in Britain, the US and other countries inexplicably turning their backs on sought after skilled immigrants. In fact, it can not be highlighted enough that Ireland will be the only English speaking country within the EU post-Brexit. The chances are the isolationist political mood of populism will fairly quickly be found out to be flawed and will probably even be reversed soon enough. But until such time, Irish [Midlands] employers with skills requirements should take swift advantage of other Global regions lack of HR foresight.

As the very excellent, recently launched Invest Mullingar website very clearly points out, we are very well positioned in the Midlands to attract overseas staff ,with far more affordable accommodation than Dublin, yet within striking distance of the Capital and Dublin Airport. The message is a very simple one – The Midlands is [and has always been] an open and welcoming market for migrant workers and in 2019 is very much open for business.

Employers: Once a company posts a vacancy on Midlandjobs.ie it is then available to be promoted by International job aggregator sites, making your vacancy available to be applied for by International candidates. Click here to Post a vacancy.

Midlands based publishers and online communities can now publish automatically selected local jobs for their readers using a simple Jobs Feed tool offered by Midlandjobs.ie.

This is one of many new features on Midlandjobs designed to improve circulation of job posts for the benefit of local Midlands employers in your local area.

The links below are tailored for the main towns – however all locations can be made available if needed by getting in touch with us.

Jobs Feed Links Midlands towns

Mullingar:           https://midlandjobs.ie/feeds/rss.xml?location=Mullingar

Tullamore:          https://midlandjobs.ie/feeds/rss.xml?location=Tullamore

Athlone:              https://midlandjobs.ie/feeds/rss.xml?location=Athlone

Portlaoise:          https://midlandjobs.ie/feeds/rss.xml?location=Portlaoise

Longford:            https://midlandjobs.ie/feeds/rss.xml?location=Longford

If you have any enquiries please don’t hesitate to contact us on 086 8237179

Below is an example of how the creators of the Invest Mullingar website have successfully used this feature to publish jobs on www.investmullingar.com/jobs-in-mullingar

So there is life outside the main cities after all – who knew.

The Canal Quarter festival in Tullamore is great value each year for Midlandians. The street is closed off for four days in August at Hugh Lynch’s pub – well worth a visit.

Basic Midlandjobs Listing             –         €29.95 plus VAT

Blog listing + Social Sharing         –         €20 plus VAT

Additional boost Admin Fee         –         €20 plus VAT (+ your boost budget)

The Midlandjobs.ie online database is a register of job-seekers seeking to find work in the Midlands region. The candidate database has been steadily growing since 2006. When a local employer posts a new job on the site, job alerts are automatically emailed to relevant locally based job-seekers informing them of your new vacancy.

However Social Media channels have now also opened up our service to other forms of reaching relevant job-seekers in the Midlands area. While the employer themselves may not have a well-developed social media presence, or their channels are not orientated around their recruitment, they can now easily list on through our Midlandjobs’ presence.

For moderate extra administration fees, you can place your job wording onto the Midlandjobs blog and share it socially amongst our Social Media followers, as well as your own dedicated social fans. CV applications will still be channelled through the Midlandjobs’ application mechanism ensuring you get the best possible local coverage for your vacancies.

As always, the sooner you get your vacancy working for you, the sooner you are likely to have found your ideal new team member, so don’t delay in talking to us.

For more information on the best way to circulate your job wording to a wider audience call Tom on (086) 8237179 or email midlandjobs.ie@gmail.com

Fascinating to look back on this amazingly prescient film from 1995 “Denise Calls Up“, featuring a group of 7 remote working New Yorkers who live their whole lives on the end of early mobile phones and laptops – but never actually meet up. This was even before smartphones, tablets or 4G were even conceptualised – like 20 years ago. The first time I saw it was in the quirky old Lighthouse cinema in Abbey St. Dublin. Check out their early laptops phones and desk-tops. YouTube, Google, Twitter and Facebook didn’t even exist let alone Tinder or Plenty of Fish. While it was a sort of comedy – if it was meant to be a prediction or a warning of what was to be coming down the tracks socially, well then it couldn’t have been more accurate. They find every excuse why their busy lives prevent them from indulging in genuine real human contact.

20 years on and remote working still has made hardly anything by way of in-roads in Ireland. What is the big problem you would wonder – management culture in Ireland by any chance? Some considerable strides are being made in terms of broadband coverage in the main towns yet still midlands based workers are forced into the car-park like traffic on the road into and out of Dublin city day after day. As an alternative, have a look at some of the e-Working centres available by Westmeath Co Co for example. Makes sense. The ultimate unique selling point (USP) of the midlands is the quality of life it offers. Never before has it been so easy to live here close to friends and family and still be entirely productive. Increasingly, it is possible for your employer to be based in New York and you working from home in Newtown lawns, Mullingar for example. As the war for talent intensifies, the more forward-thinking hiring managers overseas will spot this and start to cherry-pick from it. Local Irish employers might be well advised to do likewise.