WILDGEESE/EMIGRANT BUSINESS LEADERS/ON OPPORTUNITIES ABROAD/Eamonn O'Loghlin/Publisher and founder of www.irishjobs.ca
OVER THREE decades ago, Eamonn O’Loghlin followed the girl of his dreams to Canada. Soon after his arrival, he “stumbled” into a job that set him on the path to a successful career in communications.
Now, the businessman wants to ensure young Irish immigrants get the kind of “leg up” he received. O’Loghlin, through the Ireland Canada Chamber of Commerce, has helped set up an online jobseekers’ board – www.irishjobs.ca – where new arrivals can post their CVs. “When the recession hit over there [in Ireland] and so many young people started arriving on our shores, we thought we have to do something to help them get established,” he says.
Originally from Ennistymon, Co Clare, O’Loghlin came to Toronto in hot pursuit of a young lady he had met at university. He wasted no time, whisking her down the aisle within a month of his arrival in 1975. The original plan was to stay for five years before heading back to Ireland.
Amorous ambitions fulfilled, he answered an advert in the newspaper for a sales job with Hallmark Cards. As luck would have it, he was interviewed by a “Newfie”, as natives of the eastern province of Newfoundland are known.
“We immediately struck up a certain bond. There’s something between the Newfoundlanders and the Irish,” says O’Loghlin. “At that stage, I didn’t even have a driver’s licence. He asked: ‘Are you going to get one?’ I got the licence within the week.”
That job would see him through the next 18 years, taking him from sales to the marketing department. He remembers the Scot who spotted his knack for communication. “He said I talked a bit funny, but I could really put ideas into writing. I said: ‘You talk funny too.’ He replied: ‘Yes, but the difference is you can write.’”
Having made it all the way to director of marketing and communications, O’Loghlin decided to go it alone in the mid-1990s. He believes Hallmark gave him a solid grounding in “proper business ethics”. “They were really wholesome. They had a thing about quality, service, delivery, people and commitment, about under-promising and over-delivering,” he says.
By this time in his early 40s, O’Loghlin found the move to self-employment “tough going”. Hallmark hired him as a consultant for a while before he got his big break generating corporate sponsorship for one of the country’s largest entertainment venues.
Other projects had a distinctly Irish hue – his agency went on to represent Guinness in Canada, to set up an Irish business network (the Green Pages) and to publish a quarterly magazine for the country’s Irish community.
His quarterly, commonly referred to as the “Irish bible”, is distributed in print format across the country and covers business, sport, the arts and history.
O’Loghlin is keen the history of Irish-Canadians be documented through the magazine. To this end, a copy of every edition is dispatched to the national archives library in Ottawa, the Canadian capital. The magazine is complemented by a weekly radio show featuring traditional music and interviews with Irish notables. After 30 years in the Irish community, O’Loghlin is now the go-to guy for expat affairs. His efforts to help new immigrants get recruited have already borne fruit, with jobseekers finding jobs in areas like real estate and law.
In one case, a young man from Galway who posted his CV on the website found a job in landscape architecture before even boarding the plane. He was spotted by an Irish-Canadian businessman who interviewed him while on a trip home to play golf.
With Canada emerging from the global recession in good shape, it is an increasingly popular destination among young people, says O’Loghlin. The Irish will always receive a good welcome here, he says, making special mention of the Canadian finance minister, Jim Flaherty, who is descended from Irish stock.
O’Loghlin attributes his own success in Canada to the education he received in Co Clare from the Christian Brothers. “They were tough men who taught us the basics. I had an amazing education,” he says.
He advises young immigrants to be professional, to be prepared and to look the part. “Make sure the first two or three sentences in the CV grab the reader because the competition is fierce. You’ve got to be better than the rest.”
O’Loghlin, a performer of traditional music at his local pub, seems to have opted to remain predominantly Irish. As he says himself: “The immigrant always wants to go back one way or the other.”
