Supermarkets, cinemas and chippers are seeing a glut of applicants for jobs that were once considered menial. But not all are suited to the jobs, writes KATE HOLMQUIST
WHEN 120 people queued through the shop and out the door for 10 SuperValu jobs in Trim, Co Meath, last month, Marie Mullen (25), a trained legal secretary with an honours Leaving Cert, was among them.
She had been made unemployed the year before when the printing company where she was office manager closed. Her partner, Ian Hennessy, then lost his job when Belgard Motors was liquidated. With a mortgage to pay and a two-year-old son, the couple found themselves counting pennies for the first time.
“If you want a job, you have to keep looking,” says Mullen, who waited outside the Supervalu on the town’s main street to be interviewed and didn’t mind having to queue. Her persistence was rewarded with a job at the deli counter and the prospect of career progression.
“Absolutely shocked” is how Supervalu personnel manager Josie O’Rourke felt when she saw the enormous queue of people ranging in age from their 20s to their 50s. Many had come from Dublin and were prepared to commute. Three days before, she had done no more to advertise the jobs than put a poster in the store’s front window, but news of the opportunity spread via text and e-mail.
The sight of job-seekers queuing very close to where people were paying at the tills disturbed Jane Lynch, who in 33 years as a resident of Trim had never seen such an event. “We [the shoppers] were put in this embarrassing position of recognising people we knew in the queue. It was undignified . . . disgraceful. I felt I was encroaching on their personal lives. This is a small town where everyone knows everyone else. I felt very upset about this because I don’t want to know other people’s business in the town, or to learn in this way that someone had fallen on hard times.”
O’Rourke says that if she’d known how many would turn up, she’d have organised things differently, but she was still determined during the interviews to give everyone the same chance, whether they had qualifications or not. She can’t put her finger on the qualities that made a candidate successful, but potential was a factor. “We do a lot of in-store training. Everybody has the potential to become a manager as long as they get the right training,” says O’Rourke.
There was similar excitement in Gorey, Co Wexford, last month, though it occured without the need to queue. An unexpected 1,059 people applied for 25 jobs at movies@Gorey, a seven-screen cinema and theatre complex that opened over this past weekend. “It was unbelievable” and a “logistical nightmare,” says manager Eugene Tobin, “but we answered every application.” He and Graham Spurling, who run the family business, Spurling Cinemas Group, were looking for “go-getters” with customer service backgrounds. They were impressed by people who had kept busy while unemployed by doing courses. The standard of applicants was so high that honours degrees were common.
People who sent in CVs without the required cover letter fell at the first hurdle, since inability to follow a simple written instruction didn’t bode well. Some applicants had university degrees, but education without relevant experience isn’t enough. “Having computer knowledge is not enough, you need people skills in this industry,” says Spurling.
The applicant pool was whittled down to about 50 enthusiastic people aged from their 20s to their 40s. The 25 chosen, says Tobin, have the potential to develop their skills and grow into management while also displaying the attitude required by a thriving family business with seven locations, including the movies@Dundrum. The new Gorey operation will show the World Cup live in 3D, as well as concerts, opera and interactive film premieres. “We can’t survive on cinema alone. We have to have other activities,” says Spurling, who believes that “women make for better managers than men do and they’re great to work with”.
Yvonne Gartland (32), from Gorey, is one of four newly hired female managers. Getting the job felt “brilliant” for this lone mother of a six-year-old, after two discouraging years of unemployment when she had applied for hundreds of jobs, going online daily. “Most jobs I applied for, I never heard a word from anyone. I’m very outgoing and I have a lot of customer service experience in retail and the hospitality industry, as well as administration. This job is at a good level for me.”
“Blown away” is how Lena Forde (36), also from Gorey, felt when she was also hired. She had worked in hotel management and run a service station, but was forced by the recession two years ago to move to London where she trained to work with special needs children in mainstream schools. She enjoyed this new career, but she missed family and friends in Ireland so much that she wanted to come home, so she sent her CV to movies@Gorey.
She thinks her experience was a plus. “Working in the hotel industry, I learned that if the kids are happy, the parents are happy.” Her advice to jobseekers? “There is work out there. You have to be prepared to diversify. I’ve never worked in a cinema before, but I have good leadership and management skills.”
Supervalu and Spurling Cinema Group aren’t alone in being astonished at the number of job-seekers keen to work. Earlier this year, a chip shop in Donegal, Charley’s, got 400 applications for a temporary dishwasher job. The large number of applications is annoying for many employers because they find themselves wading through hundreds of CVs from unqualified people. One entrepreneur in the food industry confessed that she was so fed up she threw 400 applications in the bin.
In a Centra in Naas, Co Kildare, manager Damien Fallon has received 180 applications for one job as deli supervisor, but still can’t find a suitably trained person. John Curry of ABC cleaning services got 100 e-mails last week for one cleaning job, but, he says, a lack of training – and an inability to understand English – made all but about 10 not worth interviewing. Mike O’Sullivan, head chef at Radeens Court, a new restaurant in Bandon, Co Cork, has got 300 applications in the past two weeks for a chef job, but the applicants are inexperienced or cannot speak English.
Barry Whelan, managing director of Excel Recruitment, which specialises in retail, says that this is the story everywhere: employers and agencies are being overwhelmed with CVs from people who are not right for the job. He sees three reasons for this indiscriminate CV-sending: many just want to prove when they go to the dole office that they’re trying to find a job when, in fact, they feel they’d be better off on social welfare. Another reason is laziness, he thinks, with people applying online who can’t be bothered to seriously look for a job. And, thirdly, “desperation” from people who’ll try anything.
Excel is desperate for qualified people to fill jobs that are going begging in the retail sector. The recruitment company gets up to 200 applications per day, yet only 4 per cent warrant an interview. In “the good old days”, Excel replied to every applicant, but can’t do that anymore because the agency makes money only by placing people in jobs, not by writing condolence letters. In one case, 115 people applied within two or three days for one PA job, so Excel had to ask Fás to take the job off the site fast. Five of the 115 eventually got interviews.
WHELAN SUMS IT UP: “There are jobs out there but not the right people for them.” Recently, Excel held a two-day workshop for people who wanted to train for retail roles, but, of 1,000 people offered the chance, only 350 bothered with the formal application form. Of these, 150 people filled in the form and committed to attending the workshop. The 850 others were “too lazy” to bother, Whelan suspects. Ten dropped out after the first day of the workshop, leaving 140. Will these hopefuls who actually completed the workshop get jobs in retail?
“I don’t think so. A lot were over-qualified – there were even former business owners. And a bank manager who thought he could run a petrol station.” Whelan doesn’t blame people who have lost jobs in construction and financial services for trying, but does think that an overall effort to retrain the unemployed should be an urgent goal.
The two jobs with the most vacancies today? Butchers and bakers. Bakers because people have grown tired of mass-produced bread and want fresh, wholesome loaves. Butchers because consumers have realised that a good quality butcher offers better value. With either skill, you could walk into a job tomorrow.
