With a new investment valuing the company at $95bn, Stripe is setting its sights on further expansion in Europe.

After a decade in business, Stripe has announced plans to significantly expand its operations in Ireland as it continues to grow in Europe.

On the back of investment that sees the company edge closer to a $100bn valuation, Stripe will add at least 1,000 jobs in Ireland over the next five years.

Roles will be added to a broad range of teams in order to support Stripe’s accelerating European user base and launch new global products. Some of the jobs created in Ireland will also take the lead on Stripe’s global operations.

Speaking of the announcement, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, TD, said the new roles at Stripe will be “really good, well-paid, professional jobs” that will be a real boost to the Irish economy.

Stripe, founded by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2010, is dual-headquartered in San Francisco and Dublin and currently has more than 3,000 employees across 14 international offices.

Its platform to power online payments first launched in the US in 2011, arriving in Ireland in 2013. Two years later, Stripe opened its Dublin office.

For more information, please click on the link below;

Read Full News Here

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But there are still places in Dublin that are hiring, Here’s a list of full-time and part-time jobs currently available in Dublin:

An Post

An Post is currently recruiting temporary Postal Operatives to join their team.

Fingal County Council

Fingal County Council are now hiring a full-time, permanent General Operative.

Fáilte Ireland

Fáilte Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority responsible for promoting and supporting the development of tourism in Ireland are now hiring a full-time, permanent Marketing Executive to join their team.

JD Sports

JD Sports Fashion plc, Dublin Northside are now hiring a part-time, Temporary Seasonal Sales Assistant to join their team. JD Sports requires potential candidates to be fully flexible.

Ikea

Ikea, founded by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943 as a tiny Swedish mail-order catalogue business are now hiring a Customer Fulfilment Operations Developer to join their Dublin team.

Harry Corry

Harry Corry, Coolock Retail Park, Co. Dublin are now hiring a part-time, Temporary Sales Assistant to join their team.

Dublin Bus

Dublin Bus is now hiring full-time Operatives to join their Engineering department.

Pallas Food

Pallas Foods are now hiring Warehouse Operatives to join their Dublin team.

Fastway Couriers

Fastway Couriers are now hiring a Full-Time Warehouse Operative to work in their warehouse in Tallaght Dublin 24.

Superdry

Superdry, Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15 are now hiring a full-time, permanent Sales Assistant.

Civil Service

Graduate Opportunities in the Civil Service 2020 – Administrative Officer

Musgrave MarketPlace

Musgrave is Ireland`s leading food retail and wholesale company are currently recruiting for a Pricing Administration Support to join their MarketPlace, Ballymun, Dublin 11 team.

Hertz

Hertz Car Sales are now hiring a full-time, permanent Sales Executive to join their North and South Dublin Locations team.

Barnardo’s

Barnardo’s is the children’s charity with the largest number of services on the ground are now hiring Four Shop Sales Assistants in the following Dublin locations;

1- Dun Laoghaire
2- Dalkey
3- Kilbarrack
4- Clondalkin

Iceland

Iceland is one of Britain’s fastest-growing and most innovative retailers are now hiring a part-time Retail Assistant to join the following stores;

Finglas
Blanchardstown

Gap

Gap, Westend Retail Park, Blanchardstown, Dublin are now hiring Seasonal Sales Associate to join their amazing team.

Twitter

Twitter is an American online news and social networking service are now hiring a full-time Training Coordinator to join their growing team.

eBay

eBay Inc, founded in 1995 in San Jose, California are now hiring Category Trading Advisor to join their Dublin Team.

PANDORA

PANDORA designs manufacture and markets hand-finished and contemporary jewellery are now hiring Seasonal Sales Assistant to join their Arnotts, Dublin team for the festive period.

The Housing Agency

The Housing Agency is a government body working with the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government is now accepting applications for an Administrative Officer – Grade 7 in the Human Resources team.

ESB

ESB, established in 1927 is Ireland’s foremost energy company are now hiring Billing & Payments Operations Team Member to join their team.

For the latest Job news and Opportunities visit http://jobprospect.ie/jobs/

The post Jobs in Dublin: 21 Businesses Hiring in Dublin Right Now appeared first on Job Prospect.

However, I still manage to always deliver on time. Same applies to the millennial’s who somehow are tweeting, snapping, hash tagging, but when it comes to work, they still manage to complete their assignments within allocated time.  So, what is the deal with this? How does this work and how is this even possible? Let us analyze this and either justify the “waste” of time or categorize it as something being useful despite of giving the illusion of being wasted time.  

You might have heard of a tool called Yammer. It was a Facebook like service, but for the corporate sector. Microsoft bought this service back in 2012 if I am not totally mistaken. This was a surprising move for many. However, speculations were that Microsoft had to do something to compete with Facebook being total dominator within their field which is social networking. But again, as I mentioned the product was primarily meant for employers and businesses not as such for private persons. Facebook later wards came with something called Facebook at work, which was quite similar to Facebook for private persons or end consumer. You might also have heard of Slack, that too is a similar product, which is widely being used in businesses. Just to point out, all these tools that have been mentioned here, can be considered counterproductive products, which cause waste of time and waste of productivity. Yet employers are not only implementing these but are also encouraging their employees to use these products actively. So, what is the deal with that? 

If you recall the 50,60 and even 70 and 80 eras you might recall that smoking var becoming a more and more trendy thing to do. Employers were even encouraged and, in some situations, forced to allow smoking breaks. Besides that, unions made sure that being minority at work you should get free on days special to you. Same was the rule for religions, where some employees were even allowed to perform religious rituals during work hours. If you take either of these activities, none of them have productivity written over them. A matter of fact they are not even remotely associated with productivity. However, they are related to well-being. In most of the cases these activities lead to social gathering, which either were productive or not, but small social gatherings they were for sure.  

You might also remember the boom of open offices without cabins and no permanent desk policies, which were all justified with the fact that these changes will increase the collaboration and productivity of the employees. Even for these suggestions or change in work environments there were a lot of discussions with both people for and against the new trends. However, in the end of the day things happened as they did and most of these things are now considered as a natural part of a modern office space. Coming back to our original discussion, as we at least can learn from 50-70 years modern history is that humans have been and will remain to be human. They have a social need to interact with other people, despite of being at work, they still need to mingle or talk about none job related things. In these processes people learn other colleagues as human beings and make bonds. These bonds make the work environment much more suitable for creativity and teamwork cause increased productivity. This is also the reason that big companies strive to make work environments joy full, full packed with non-job related but stimulating activities. You might have read or heard about how employees of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon etc. can work out during their work time. Or how these very same employees can play table tennis, or even video games without managers getting agitated. Managers and leaders from the newer generation are brought up and into this modern work environment where they realize that happy and healthy workforce is a key to success.

Organizational investment in health and well-being of their employees are very much in the zeitgeist right now. It’s being fueled by the latest science, the growing costs of unsustainable workforce practices and the recognition that promoting smarter workplace behaviors can also have a significant impact on the bottom line by driving employees to greater job satisfaction, engagement and productivity. One of the principal challenges for businesses today, though, is how to manage change in a way that keeps employees engaged and productive, while also readying them to be the driving force behind transformation. This is why it is very important for every organization to place the employee experience at the core of employee engagement, health, and well-being is essential to building a purpose-led organization. 

This human-focused approach to addressing the future of work is one of the many reasons why well-being is increasingly important across the enterprise and with stress and burnout continuing to be two of the biggest challenges for both employees and employers many people wrongly assume that digital overload and burnout are problems reserved for the tech industry, when in fact it is a global conversation. With technology, innovation, and competition all getting faster, job stress in all industries is on the rise, this is why the most successful companies in the world are heavily investing in a more comprehensive, personalized, and science-driven approach to health and well-being in the workplace through technology.  

With the support of technology and the leaders across industries, we’re continuing to think how to maximize employee health and well-being, and engage employees in new ways. Organizations are seeing an incredible opportunity for growth in AI and people analytics, where technology and data can be infused into career development and recruitment to eliminate bias, give real-time feedback, and engage employees. Imagine with the use human-focused AI, how much healthier, happier and more productive your workforce could be. 

To capitalize on this monumental opportunity, organizations need to adapt to the demands of a highly-competitive environment to attract, retain, and support their most valuable resource – their workforce.  

And since work-life integration continues to be an important factor in winning the war for talent, building a different kind of culture from what existed 10-15 years ago will be paramount to an organization’s success. Focusing on improving and well-being of people’s lives – along with the long-term health of the bottom line – will enable companies to go from surviving to thriving. 

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This is a dilemma that almost all employers face, it does not matter if your office is in Ireland and situated in Dublin, Dundalk, Louth, Cork, Belfast, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, Drogheda or Galway. There is always competition present in the job market when it comes to employees or whether we are talking about employers. The press to attract employees with goodies will always be there.

A matter of fact is if you consider large companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Spotify or any other renown company you almost always have a dedicated budget for personal development i.e. a budget tied to the skill development of each employee. This employee might be a desk worker or a field worker and ranging from a new hire to a senior manager. So why is that important? These multi-billion companies have loads of cash and can surely spend some bucks on keeping the skillset of their employees up to date. But how can a small or even medium company do this? How can budgets be tied or allocated for skill development for every employee? If you have ever wondered about this or tired to figure out the answer but have not found the answer you have come to the right place. Let us give you some free advice worth a lot of money. These advices might even be considered as saved money that you did not have to spend on skill development and skill maintenance of your employees, but still managed to get/keep them up to date. 

Previously we have published a blog post for employees, describing and enlisting the most generic IT skills required for a worker in this digital age. If you have not read this blog post you have some catching up to do. You can read the blog post here:  http://jobprospect.ie/mastering-office-products-for-fulfilling-job-requirements/ 

As we stated in that blog post referenced, there are a lot of free resources available online, just waiting to be used. The least and employer can do is to require a certain level of competence within each tool from a specific job position. Keeping the legal things in mind, you certainly cannot impose employees spending their off duty time on learning these skills but you certainly can impose setting off some time each day for a period to learn a new skill or brush up old ones to the latest technology. Back to the phrase or example from social media, do you really want to sit around with a workforce which gradually is getting outdated? In today’s competitive market this is not an option, and before you know it you get caught up by your competitors who leverage and try to capitalize your every weakness and use it to their benefit. We do realize that there are some certain aspects that need to be considered, the genitor might not gain benefit by becoming a racer in a specific tool or technology, but by learning let’s say more about building management and automation systems he might be able to gain valuable knowledge that might prove useful in the effective operation of your office building.  

Every business, being an employer, should have an overall policy for all managers. This includes manager at executive level as well as in the middle level and lower level managers. Each level should be responsible for creating a 3-5 year’s plan for people/employee skill maintenance and development plan. This can be as generic as describing the goals or as detailed as describing the goals along with a detailed execution plan. Whatever the detail level is, a plan should be made available and executed.  

Having up to date skills makes the employees more valuable for the business/company. The older the knowledge or technology the more the experience counts, but the newer the technology the more the new skills counts towards a successful execution of a plan or project. Companies that have a plan aiming towards a clear goal in the horizon tend to be more inspiring for employees as well being more robust and adaptive to change as compared to the ones who choose or stick to just traditional values and tools.

Consider a hiring process where a candidate or potential employee asks about carrier development and investment in the future of people, what will be your answer? We do not have the budgets as the fortune 500 companies or would you rather want to gladly describe how you invest in people within the budget you have to make them even a more valuable asset for you company? We know for a fact that the later choice explanation would encourage the right candidate while the other choice may result in a hire that really is not so much into investing in the future themselves. Some companies operate with bonuses for employees while other do not afford to have this kind of luxuries available.

In either case, if you educate your employees and make sure that they understand that you being the employer value them the most will make them invest more effort in makes them even better and not to mention the amount of effort they will be willing to put in to do their job. If you have your development plan and strategy ready you might even would have started to crouching numbers.

For example, if being an employer you provide each employee 40 hours for skill and personal skills development and you have 50 employees you are spending 40 x 50 (200) hours for non-productive work per annuum. However, if you think about how much these 40 hours are in terms of time spent each year divided by month you will roughly end up under 3 hours per month per employee. If you further break down this to weeks the number becomes even less than an hour. Then again, if you have done your homework and these hours are spent correctly and meaningfully you would be investing this exact amount of effort in the future of your business.  

If you have any questions related to the content presented here please feel free to make contact as we can guide you and even hook you up with the right resources to guide you to create the right level of policy for your business.  

The post Investing in Your True Asset by Investing in Employee’s Skills appeared first on Job Prospect.

In early 2019, Revenue launched live reporting of payroll for employers all over Ireland. It was made mandatory for all employers to switch to the new reporting system from 1^st January 2019. From an employee’s perspective, documents like P45s and P60s were discontinued. This project was named PAYE modernisation and it was designed after extensive consultation with stakeholders. Although early on, the system had many discrepancies, with time, Revenue has improved the entire system. During the Covid-19 lockdown, it is actually because of this PAYE modernisation system that Revenue was able to launch the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) so quickly and efficiently. 

Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection recently announced changes to the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP). The changes involved reduction of the flat €350 for people who were earning less than €200 per week before the start of Covid-19 lockdown. Again, this up to date information is only available to DEASP – Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection because of the PAYE modernisation reporting system. As part of the launch of the system, all employees in Ireland were asked to sign up to Revenue’s online service for employees called myAccount. Services offered through myAccount have been improved and increased over the last few months.  
 
This blog is mainly focused towards people who start their first job or who have recently changed their job.  If you are an employee who is starting your first job in Ireland or if you have recently changed your job or even if you have started a second job, I would suggest that you sign in to your myAccount and update your record. myAccount enables employees to register their new job or to cease an old job, allocate or transfer tax credits, cut off points and USC bands as required. It also enables users to claim new tax credits.  
  
Registering as a user for the service is quite simple. You go to Revenue’s website. Click on the myAccount link. 

Now you will have three options. 
1- If you already have myAccount setup, you can sign in to myAccount with your PPS number, Date of Birth and Password. 

2- If you have a verified MyGovID account, you can also use your MyGovID details to sign in 

But if you do not have any of the above setup, Click on Register now

Once you have completed the process, you will either be posted a pin number to your home address or you may be given a temporary pin number provided you fulfil a specific criterion. Check Revenue’s website (www.revenue.ie) for details.  

Once registered and signed in, you can register your job by following the “Update Job or Pension” Details link. You will be asked to provide an employer tax number,  job start date and few other questions depending on your record held by Revenue. 

Who is it for? 
This service is for anyone who: 

a- Is starting a new job 
b- Is starting to receive payments from a private pension (not a DEASP, i.e. social welfare, pension) 
c- Has left a job or pension and has received their final payment

What do I need? 
To add a new job or pension you will need:  

a- Your new employer or pension provider’s tax registration number 
b- The date your job starts or pension becomes payable and how often you will be paid 
c- To tell us an estimate of your overall incomes 
d- If you have recently moved to Ireland, you will need to provide some additional details such as arrival date.  

How long does it take? 
About 10 minutes for most people. Some people may have more or less questions to answer. The sections are as follows;  

1- Section One: 
Add your new job or pension  

2- Section Two: 
Tell us how long you have been living in the Republic of Ireland 

3- Section Three: 
Tell us about your overall incomes 

4- Section Four: 
Review your details and submit 
  
To make a change to your credits and cut off points, follow the link “Manage Your Tax 202X”.  

You will be brought to a page showing your employments registered with Revenue. Scroll down to the section and you will see “How your tax credits and rate band are currently divided”. If you would like to make changes to this section, press the Edit button. You can now give Revenue estimated figures of your expected gross income for each job. Revenue will then calculate an allocation for each job and prompt you to confirm if you are happy to continue. Revenue’s allocation system does not always work the way you like. So you have the option to accept Revenue’s allocation, to divide the credits and cut off points equally or if you like to distribute your tax credits and cut off points in a specific percentage, you will be given the option to type a message. This message is then sent to Revenue and they make the changes for your manually.  

If you go to myAccount and click on “Review Your Tax 201X – 201X “,  

You will be brought to a page where you will be able to review and file your tax return for the previous 4 years and claim overpaid taxes.  

More details about this in my next blog.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:    
The content of this blog has been written by Rehan Khan. The author has been part of many successful multinational companies where he learned and excelled. He has worked in IT, Finance, Accounting and Advisory sectors. Currently, the author is not only running his own successful businesses but also acting as an advisor for several past employers on a regular basis. In case you need to contact the author, use the comments section below.  

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Which tools are these tools that will not be covered during onboarding process? Well, are you given training on how to use a computer? What about how to surf the internet? What about using emails and other office products? It is almost expected and compulsory for you being an employee to know how to operate these tools. What was previously done on a typewriter and on paper is currently being done electronically on computers and emails. Furthermore, more advanced tools are being utilized. In this article we will focus on which necessary tools you need to master, as Microsoft tools are by far the most common tools being used in the market along with Google application we will be focusing on these tools. However, the same principle applies also to other products, these do also include open office. 

Moving forward with Microsoft tools as an example we have  

Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, SharePoint, Teams, Word, Visio. 

Access: 

This is a database type of a tool mainly used to store data. Being an average office worker you are not expected to have a working knowledge of this product, however, if you work within accounts you might end up working with Access. The good news is that in look and feels the tool resembles much on Excel spreadsheets which are the next item on our list.
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/access  

Excel: 

 Excel is heavily used by departments that work with numbers. This also applies to managers who work with budgets etc.  Excel offers a large number of functions that are prebuilt into the product. Furthermore, you have the option and capability to create Makro and formulas. By utilizing these and similar function, several tedious tasks can be automated when you only punch in numbers, while Excel does the magic for you. These can be simple tasks as bookkeeping or more complex tasks as calculating taxes and salaries. Depending on your role and your job title, your employer will be expecting you being an employee to know how to use Excel or similar products to assist you in your job and becoming more efficient. 
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/excel

OneDrive: 

Onedrive or Gmails G-drive are the tools which are some of the most popular tools used for sharing files and content. Dropbox is also one of the heavyweights who has made its place within the leading cloud-based storage services. You should at least be comfortable with using these and similar products. You should also be able to share the files both with restricted and unrestricted access, as during a successful carrier with a known employer will require most if not all it employees to be able to share files. 
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/onedrive/online-cloud-storage
Link: https://www.google.com/drive/

Outlook: 

The outlook is the world’s second most used mail client, only second to Google’s Gmail. Knowing how to use an email client is definitely one thing that is expected from an employee. Most of the communication between employees or even employer and employee occur through digitals means as email. You should at a bare minimum be able to send an email, create contact and be able to send emails to specific people in a specific manner. By that I mean, you should know about and how to use cc and bcc field I.e. carbon copy and blind carbon copy field. How you can forward and email or part of an email to other people. You should also be able to withstand phishing attacks I.e. identify fraud ant emails where someone poses to be someone from within your circle of trust. Being an employee, you represent your company to clients and customers, you must be professional enough to at least fill these bare minimum standards of using an email client. You should also be able to add Out of office message, I.e. emails that are sent to the sender who sends you emails while you are out of the office on vacations or just sick and unable to be at work. 
Link: https://outlook.live.com/owa/

PowerPoint 

To make impressive presentations, PowerPoint is the tool of choice. An employer expects from all its employees to be able to make professional presentations. As the tools similar to PowerPoint have been around for almost 20 years if not more, being able to use PowerPoint or similar products can be the difference that lets you get the promotion or fellow employee/colleague who makes stunning presentations all the time. If you are one of those who still are caught behind the stream, get busy learning PowerPoint, as it is as easy as drag and drop. In the newest version of the tool, it makes it even easier to make presentations by suggesting presentation templates based on content. 
Link: https://office.live.com/start/powerpoint.aspx

Project 

Microsoft project is another tool which is mostly used by project managers. If you are a project manager or aiming to become one, you should try to familiarize yourself with this product as it makes your life much easier. Besides that, a lot of employers tend to use Microsoft Project as is integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products. Remember that learning tools that will make project planning easier is as important as Prince2 certification. 
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/project/project-management-software

SharePoint 

SharePoint is a product which enables collaboration between team members. An employer will certainly expect you being capable of browsing some sites and sharing documents by using SharePoint og similar products. Luckily, SharePoint is mostly a browser-based product, this makes it almost as a website. However, the main difference lies in the collaboration capabilities. You can share files, documents and much more using SharePoint and these can be shared internally within an organization or with people outside of your organization. Again, make yourself familiar with SharePoint. The is nothing better than a CV enlisting a lot of tools that are largely used within an organization. This makes your CV and you as a potential employee much more attractive. 
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/sharepoint/collaboration

Teams 

As its sister product SharePoint, Teams offers a lot of similar functionality with some additional functionality like allowing to chat with your teams or your contacts. In addition, you can use this tool to arrange and attend meetings. During the Covid19 pandemic, Teams was one of the most broadly used meeting tools, right up there with Zoom and Cisco Webex. Most employers encourage the use of Teams as it helps reduce travel-expenses and increases productivity but allowing you to focus on work rather than travelling from one location to another to attend the meeting.
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software

Word 

If you can use a computer the chances are that you will be able to use Word. It is broadly used within organizations. Try to learn the more advanced feature of Words, so that it can be used more professionally. A team manager at an employer will surely be interested in hiring someone is capable of producing almost as professional documents as a press or newspaper publisher. 
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/word

Visio 

If you’re an engineer, or work with processes or have any job that requires you to draw, remember the name Visio. It is a great tool with a lot of stencils available which can be used in diagrams. Anything from a flowchart to a detailed blueprint can be made/drawn in Visio. It might not be the tool that your employer would require you to master, but if you are familiar with the product or are an advanced user your employer will definitely include you in the circle of valued and skilful employees possessing digital expertise to copy with any challenge.  
Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ie/microsoft-365/visio/flowchart-software

During this post we talked through the most broadly used digital office tools. If you are unfamiliar with most of these, you should seriously consider spending some time learning these tools. Most vendors like Microsoft and Google provide free online training that will take you from a zero to hero within a very short period of time. Make sure to invest 15 minutes each day, and become a digital office tools ninja in no time.   

The post Mastering Office Products for Fulfilling Job Requirements in 2020 appeared first on Job Prospect.

A wise professor of mine used to say, it is not important to know how thing is done in technology, the most important thing to know is what is possible. If you are a programmer, you can solve a task a million different ways using different programming languages. Same applies for an IT pro, who daily work with IT systems and keep our society working. So what are these 5 skills that every employee or potential employee should possess that an employer would love to hire?  

1) Know The Basics  

It sounds too simple that it might even sound stupid, but however, this still remains to be a fact, if you do not know the basics you never will be able to fully grasp or comprehend the technology. As we are talking in general terms, let’s apply this to a programmer first. If you do not know what datatypes are supported within a programming language you would surely use the wrong datatypes causing a miserable design and even a worse application. Applying the same example on an IT pro, if you do not know how a computer works, how can you optimize a system or how can you make a system stable?

2) It is all Logic 

A lot of information technology is logic/logical. There is no room for emotions or thoughts. Make sure to make logical choices especially when it comes to computers. It can be a simple task as writing a program or a complex task as programming a spaceship landing for NASA. In either of the cases, the solution will follow or should follow certain mathematical algorithms in order to make decisions rather than guesstimates. 

3) Become a Jack of all Trades 

Unless you really want to become a senior technician or an expert within a limited area, you should be trying to gain and gather a lot of knowledge of more products. I am not saying that you should not master one or two fields, and I am rather saying or advising you to master some fields but do not make that the only thing you know. If you have forgotten it already, you can scroll up and read about the example of Nokia and their descent from being the largest mobile phones vendors to becoming a company who barely produces mobile phone.  If you can, you should rather focus on point (1), so that your concepts are as clear as possible. When a point (1) is in place, you are well set to start using different tools. As we have been using programmers as examples, let continue to use this analogy. Having the foundation in place, you as a programmer would be able to program in any programming language as it only would be a question of semantics. However, if you only focused on a specific feature of one specific programming language, you would have had a hard time to adjust and to adopt a new programming language.  

4) Embrace Change 

Whenever change arrives it can be seen as a new opportunity or it can be considered or perceived as a burden. The way you perceive change will impact how you function both with regards to productivity as well as well-being. 

5) Continuous Development 

Curiosity killed the cat, but it does not kill the technical guys and gals. Normally the more curious you are the more successful you are as a technical person. Keep on learning new stuff and try to stay up to date. Attending seminars and courses is a great way to keep on developing your skills and keeping yourself up to date.  Another good practice is to keep on taking certifications. This makes sure that you are up to date with regards to technology and that you are attractive for employers.   

Here are some of the companies hiring in Ireland right now!

1- Amazon
2- Google
3- PayPal
4- Stripe
5- Facebook
6- Salesforce
7- Microsoft
8- Intel
9- Dropbox
10- Apple

I hope that you can follow these simple advice and tips and become more successful in your job. If you are a technical person, I would really like to get feedback regarding your thoughts on the material provided within this blog article. From a level of 1 to 5, how much do you think these things apply to you? Looking forward to hearing from you.

The post Top 5 Skills for Technology Jobs in Ireland appeared first on Job Prospect.

One of the things that was probably most unanticipated during and before the Covid19 pandemic was the impact of it on businesses both new ones, already established ones, the ones growing, the ones been there for decades and any other category of business that you can imagine. One thing that became evident is the saying that “one thing that is constant in the world, is change, embrace it!” 

A Leader’s Role 

If you think of a leader, what will you use to describe this role? And what will the definition be when it comes to a generic description of the role vs your personal experience with various leaders and manager through the years? In general, terms a good manager and leader is considered to be a person who leads by example. The one carrying the flag and leading the troops in the right direction. The same person can be described as the general that is encouraging the troops and keeping the morale high through any circumstances and conditions. Probably one of the most important jobs of a good leader is to make sure that the entire team succeeds and that no one is left behind. It is also the leader’s responsibility to make sure that the employee’s interest is taken care of and that an employee’s desire for challenges is met in their daily work.  

Need for Teamwork 

Why is teamwork so important is a question which might have different answers depending on whom you may ask and what position they might be in. But with respect to business, teamwork is key to success. Consider a team of engineers developing some software, a team of salesmen trying to achieve their sales targets or goal, consider a team of teachers, factory workers producing something or whatever scenario where more than one person is involved in producing or delivering a product or a service! As soon as more than a single person is involved in work, the teamwork becomes crucial. One component must deliver so that the other component depending on the first can continue to be developed/delivered to the right person being the customer in this case. 

Manager’s Toolkit   

In traditional terms a manager might have had a limited arsenal of tools, however, in the modern era, a plethora of tools are available just waiting to be used. The challenge is no longer if there are any tools that are suited for the needs, and has rather become how to identify the available and relevant tools. Let’s explore a modern manager’s toolkit that can be utilized during the Covid19 pandemic. We will also spend some time exploring available options. 

I) Available Tools for Teamwork 

A large number of tools, both paid and free versions are available. The functionality greatly differs from product to product depending on the service type, region availability along with competing for availability in your area. To use one of the available tools as an example, you might choose to utilize, Google Meet, Teams, Lync, Slack or Zoom. All the products mentioned here can be used to collaborate between teams, however, each and every one has its benefits and drawbacks. Hence, the question for a manager becomes what to use and what not to use?  

ii) Choosing the Right Tools 

 While choosing the tools, it is very important to consider the needs of your workforce. Who better understands the needs of their workforce than a very engaged leader? The tools selected must be easy to use and must fulfil all the needs and functionality that is required by your team to complete the job in hand. More than often, it is difficult to find a single tool which fulfils all the requirements and you end up choosing a number of tools making the life of those who you care about most (at work) a living nightmare. When several tools have the same functionality the choice of tool falls on the mercy of the employee’s preference. The preference falls normally down on ease of use and end user-friendliness. Therefore it is quite important to consider these factors before the acquisition of new technology and products. 

Tools in Desperate Times 

The tips provided in the previous sections are valid in the time of peace, I.e. in the time of normal operation. What do you do in the time of chaos and the time of Covid19 pandemic? You can definitely not start procuring new tools. You are surely dependent on using the existing tools. Office 365 is used by more than 180 million customers around the world. If you have a business that has an online presence or you use computers at your workplace the chances are high for you being one of these 180 million customers. By the way, these 180 Million customers are not numbers of active users, each of these 180 million have a varying number of active users ranging from 1 to several thousand or even hundreds of thousands.  

If you are so lucky that your business is using office 365, the next section applies specifically to you. Even if you are not a paying customer and using Office 365, there still all tools that can be utilized free of charge.  

Using Office 365 as a Collaboration Tool 

Office 365 is a complete suite of different products consisting of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Sharepoint, PowerApps, PowerAutomate, Planner, Teams and several others. The most important tools are the tools for collaboration. We can write a blog post on each of these tools but we are not specifically focusing on the technology here and rather on the employer’s options so let’s keep our focus on the Office 365 collaboration tools and how these tools can be used to increase employee’s productivity and help the business grow.  

1) Use of Outlook 

Reaching individual by email is still 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined. This is a powerful statistic and should not be ignored in talent acquisition. Receiving a text or a call with a job offer can come across as intense, invasive, or spammy. This doesn’t mean that emails coming from recruiters or your future employer won’t come off as spammy, but we do know that emails are generally perceived as the more formal and official way to communicate something as important as a career move.  

If you use email, you might be familiar with Outlook it is the second most used email client in the world after Gmail. A lot of paper working has been replaced with email communication. During the day, employees communicate with each other using email. The email is also quite an important tool to communicate with external resources as clients and customers. The email client is used by individual users or can be utilized by several users by utilizing the shared mailbox functionality. By utilizing shared mailbox functionality, save mailbox is available for a team of employees. This approach works well but is quite a traditional approach for collaborating with your team.  

2) Use of Sharepoint 

Sharepoint is a document handling and management system, a system providing processes to create, manage and update documents during their entire lifecycle. It is a bit unfair to describe Sharepoint as only a document handling system, as it offers so much more. You can create libraries, create blogs, internal wikis, create collaboration sites etc. Automated processes can be created, emails can be sent directly to rooms (project folders), RSS feeds can be enabled and utilized, tasks can be created and assigned by utilizing integration with a planner. Sharepoint also provides RBAC (role-based access control) which enables creating of virtual teams. This teams can be projects or departments or something as simple as job roles. As Sharepoint retains the data indefinitely, it is a good archive solution. In order to use Sharepoint, it is important to create good processes to define the flow and to define the structure in advance. Not properly planning and just starting to use Sharepoint will surely cause creation of a lot of unstructured data, which might become difficult to process. However, predefined Sharepoint roles as author, contributor, reader and visitors to make life a bit easier.

3) Use of Teams 

Microsoft’s latest addition to the collaboration family is Teams. Teams simply put is the recommended tool for collaboration. Teams provide a lot of functionality that Sharepoint provides, but with an even more modern touch. In addition, in Teams, Channels can be created and users can be added to these channels. Both internal and external workers/users can be added to these channels. Teams also provide a very rich platform for online meeting, Chat, and file and screen sharing. Teams have also officially replaced Lync, but with added functionality. Collaboration is made easy as you easily can differentiate based on individual users or teams/channels. Teams have a rich integration with other applications which can directly integrate with teams. As with Sharepoint, it is imperative to have a good structure within Teams. It is wise to invest some time in planning the exact use of Teams. A more systematic adaption approach is better than using every available functionality. In many SMB organizations, internal employee start using Teams for it has officially been adopted by the organization. This means, you no longer can have a planned structure or deployment. However, there is still possible to create a structure that works.  

As with most the products, there is no one size fits all solution. The solution must be designed according to your organization and your employee team requirements. If you have not started to use Teams, it might be the collaboration tool that you were missing. If you only want it to be used for internal communication, or for it to become a tool for collaboration or whatever use, make sure to access it properly and deploy it gradually. 

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I will not be able to list all but I will try to list a few good options to get you started. It will give you an idea where you should concentrate your efforts. You can choose to be in a Accountancy/Audit Practice or join directly the likes of Commerce/Industry or may be join Specialised Advisory like Taxation or Fraud Investigation. These three options broadly fit nicely in the main branches of accounting like Financial Accounting, Cost/Management Accounting and Forensic/Tax Accounting, respectively. 

Practice (Accountancy/Audit) 

By far the most popular choice and in my opinion, a really good one as well. 
 
If you choose Practice to be your first step in your career, like most people you will immediately think of the Big 4. If you are reading this article, you already know what I mean by that. Yes, the Big 4 is a good choice and it opens up a lot of options for you later in your career. The companies are now very large practices who specialise in all kinds of fields. You name a service, they will provide it. For new joiners, they have comprehensive training programs that are well defined. Those programs have been evolving with the ever-changing business practices. The Big 4 have large clients from all business fields. You will have teams with lots of responsibility being allocated to you. I have met many professionals who trained and worked with these big practices. But you should also know that the Big 4 are not the only option. Over the years and based on the feedback that I receive directly in the market, I have observed that most of the successful people currently working for the Big 4 are not the ones who have been trained in the Big 4. They actually come from a very small but important firms, referred to as Small Practices. 

Small practices or Firms have always played a very important role in the wider economy and specially for the Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs). If you are a part of such a practice, you will be dealing with clients from all sorts of business sectors. Usually, the number of employees in such practices is small. This gives all staff the opportunity to not only deal directly with the clients, but also enables them to understand the countless number of problems a business faces on a regular basis. Such an exposure is not only good for your Curriculum Vitae (CV) but will also prove to be invaluable experience for you in the long run as you progress through you career. Usually such firms have very small number of employees so it means there is always an opportunity to earn those management positions fairly quickly. It is easier to gain insight into big projects as you are always working very closely with the senior partners. If your long-term plan is to get a practicing certificate and setup your own Practice, you will always learn more about sales by working for small practices as job titles in such businesses can easily overlap. 

Nowadays many newcomers or graduates who are joining this sector for the first time have been influenced by the dress code culture of big IT Companies. Well, in small practices, the dress code culture is a bit more relaxed so that is an added benefit. So, there are a lot of benefits of being part of a smaller setup but in the end, it all depends on your personal preference and goals.

Commerce / Industry 

If you plan to work for industry, I assume that you are already well aware of the sheer number of options and roles available to you. Obviously, there are all kinds of industrial organisations that are involved in different sectors. The options are almost unlimited. If you check Job boards or websites that advertise jobs and search through some of the roles that are available, you might feel a little overwhelmed by the job titles, job descriptions and job responsibilities however if you spend some time and summarise the data, you will see that most of the roles are actually the same. Nowadays Human Resource departments are creating all kinds of fancy Job Titles, but the jobs actually involve more of the same. I have seen far too many times that Newly Qualified accountants who have trained in Practice, jump ship once they feel that it is time to settle down. They then progress their career either within the organisation or the sector. In most cases, this has been a successful model. 

If you are just starting up your career in the accountancy field, depending on your long term plans, you might prefer going for a specialised but entry level role when joining industry but in my opinion your goal should be to just get in. Once you are in, after gaining some experience and knowing the organisation systems and culture, you can move to your preferred role as soon as an opportunity become available. This can be in Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable or some other part of the Accounts department. Make the right connections, prove your skills and you are all setup.

Specialised Advisory 
 
As the name implies, these organisations involve a very specific role with a specific purpose. Examples are Tax Consultants and Forensic Accountants such as qualified ACFE. In most cases, I have not seen people becoming a part of Specialised Advisory in the early days of their careers. Organisations in this sector usually prefer to hire candidates who have previous experience in Accountancy field. They then polish these employees and train them. Accountancy Professionals who are enthusiasts and have a keen interest in specialised field of accountancy are also the ones who are keenly interested in being a part of such organisations. 
 
Based on my experience, I would suggest not to choose this career path when you are in the early days of your career. However if you do want to start here, your best bet for Forensics is to join one of the Big 4 as they have graduate programs that will train you. These programs usually open once or twice a year and are mostly linked to the academic years. If you are interested in Tax, what better place to join than the taxation authority itself. (IRS, HMRC, Revenue). In Ireland, Revenue takes on Executive Officers (EO) and the hiring process involves an open competition. If successful, you will be added to a panel. These panels are kept live for around a year. After that, a new panel is formed. For Executive Officers, Revenue has partnered with local universities so you will be required to complete / graduate. Revenue’s internal resources are like a gold mine. These resources are updated on a regular basis and if you consider yourself to be on the nerdy side, you will be amazed at how much information is available for you to learn from. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  

The content of this blog has been written by Rehan Khan. The author has been part of many successful multinational companies where he learned and excelled. He has worked in IT, Finance, Accounting and Advisory sectors. Currently, the author is not only running his own successful businesses but also acting as an advisor for a number of previous employers on a regular basis. In case you need to contact the author, use the comments section below. 

The post A Guide for Newly / Part Qualified Accountants appeared first on Job Prospect.

Recruitment process 
I am not going to focus too much on the interview process, if you are interested in reading my opinion you might want to consider reading other blog posts that we have available. However, I still have to include some basic principles of recruiting for the purpose to show the change and the challenges caused by Covid19 pandemic.  

During the recruitment process at either the first or second phase, you end up talking to a person from HR. Normally the first conversation is made on a phone while the second tends to be in person. During this process both the recruiter and the one being recruited (a potential employee) get the chance the evaluate the other partner I.e. the employer evaluates and gets the first impression of applicant and vice versa. As 70-80% of communication is non-verbal and mainly body language the social interaction becomes quite important. This element is quite important if you ask both the participating parties, also considering how to evaluate someone who you really do not know boils down to the first meeting. You might have heard or read the saying; The first impression is the last impression! 

Covid 19 – Lockdown 
So along now comes Covid19 and social distancing along with complete lockdowns. Every business is trying to minimize the impact of this new disease and is trying to do so by following advice and recommendations made by health authorities. One of the most common advice made from several health authorities in Europe has been to avoid having gatherings, and rather use internet-based conferencing. So almost everyone who can, in spite of they being technically capable or not is trying to follow the recommendation. The result though is very different for everyone trying. To be honest, the chances are, if you are a normal worker with an average non-technical job you would not know that much about online conferencing. I see that you disagree with me, yelling at me how ignorant I must be making such a claim, when Skype has been around for ages, Facetime, and not to mention Facebook messenger, and what about Signal, WhatsApp, Viber etc the list just keeps ongoing. Well, I understand your frustration, but please bear with me as I try to make my case. As you might have noticed and guessed, most of these products are target on private use and probably are not even for the business market. Those products which are or at least are worth mentioning a very least is Lync! Now back to the problem description, as you use a product to talk to your family, friends or someone else with whom you have a personal relationship is NOT the same as talking to someone whom you have a business relationship with or might end up getting a business relationship with, do you now see the difference? Let’s use a quick and short example, you might want to have a facetime, or video session with your girlfriend, boyfriend, family member etc. Will such a session force you to be well prepared? What I mean to say, you shall most probably have some general discussion or topic that are important and/or relevant to you. But there is not formalness with it.  

Now consider the scenario where you are trying to land your dream job, which is a position in a big company. Will you just make a call without being properly prepared? And if your answer is yes, you might end up not getting that job. Based on this justification, we can at least agree on the fact that using a tool privately is not the same as using it in a professional context.  

Remote interview 
The saviour for businesses being in need of new resources in the form of recruits and employees, is something called a remote interview, especially during this Covid19 pandemic. This is the better option as compared to interview in person, or is it? Let’s explore some of the key elements of a remote/online interview, both with regards to being an employer and being an applicant 

Being host or organizer  
This definitely can introduce some challenges for the employer if online interviewing and the online meeting has not been a part of the company’s history. There are number of things that need to be considered both before conducting the interview as well as during and after the interview. As previously stated in this post, the applicant who will be interviewed will also form his picture of the potential employer. Hence being the representant of company/business you must be professional and make a professional impression. There are some best practices for online meetings that can and to be honest should be followed. Let’s enlist these in random order and describe each element briefly 

1) Internet Connection Speed 
Being the host or guest participating in the online interview, internet speed does matter. If you have bad WIFI coverage or in general a lot of bandwidth consumption chances are that the quality of your online meeting will suffer. And when this happens, you might say sorry a couple of times, but after that, you are starting to make an impression, which will be quite long-lasting. Representing the business, you might give the idea that the company has or uses sluggish, outdated or malfunctioning systems. Being on the other side of the table you might give the idea that you might not have properly prepared for such an important event namely the interview. This too does not score well with the recruiter. 

2) Background Environment 
Please make sure that you sit in an office, room or a cabin without background noise. Have you ever had a phone call where the seller is trying to sell you something, you are interested in buying but you just can understand half of the conversation due to the background noise. Or you are describing relevant job experience, but in the background you dog is barking, kids are listening to nursery rimes or watching cartoons.  As people do have a lenient approach and might understand your position, this might still weaken your position and give the impression you not being professional enough! 

3) Presentation 
The presentation is also one of the most important things during and online interview. This applies to the presentation of the participants I.e. being in presentable condition as well as the presentation that might be used as material for the meeting. Having a good structure is pivotal to keep you audience engaged and keep on having their attention. Use of monotone speech, choice of a bad theme, or simple choice of colors that might not be easily visible on the screen all are part of the presentation. 

4) Being human 
Even though the interview is being conducted online, remember that we are humans and need to stretch out our legs, visit the toilet or have a need to fetch a glass of water, tea or coffee. But please also bear in mind that even though dirking beverages is permissible eating is strictly off-limits. Imagine have a meeting with someone who already has their mouthful while trying to talk to you. 

5) Correct Equipment 
Use of camera makes sure that all the participants are engaged. However, it is sometimes difficult to remember or easy to forget that you are being watched. Always make sure that your background is presentable while using the camera. Using the camera in the mobile might seem to be a good idea, but if you attending to be the host, remember that you would be using the same pair of hands to take down notes. A camera attached to the computer gives a much more professional image rather that you holding your mobile camera with your arm extended out to provide a good enough picture.

6)  Media Files and Sensitive Data 
Often if not always, a presentation includes information that is considered confidential, I.e. the information is meant to be available for the general public. This information can be a part of the presentation that you present for a candidate who meets you in person, as the person will not be taking the contents with them. While when the same content is presented during an online interview, the guest might take screenshots or pictures. Rather be safe and careful than being sorry. 

7) Presentation Skills 
It is a good idea to have gone through the presentation and interview theme in advance. You do not want to start using functions during the interview, which you are not comfortable using. For example, if you are asked a question about benefits the company offers to employees, and you do not remember and you start searching on your intranet site. During the entire process you expose information unintentionally, or in the other scenario where you have files opened on your computer while you are sharing your screen.  

8) Wrapping it up 
Make sure to have a summary at the end of the interview, as you would in person and answer any questions. Agree upon how you will provide feedback on points, concerns or questions raised during the interview.  

9) General Tips 
For online meetings, it is generally a good practice to make people wait in the lobby before you let them in the meeting room. This has several benefits like for example you have control over who is participating and entering the interview. Besides that, if you have any technical issues these can be resolved before you start people enter the room/meeting. It is also a good practice to test the meeting room and equipment before the meeting starts. If there are several people attending/conducting the interview it would be a good idea to put everyone on mute and allow one person to talk at a time.

Online meeting tools have functions as raising the hand for questions, or chat-based communication. It could also to be wise to inform about the data collection and retention especially with regards to GDPR.  

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