Hi All, apologies it's been a bit quiet on the Blog this month but we've got an exciting post for you today. RTE's fashion show "OFF THE RAILS" is currently looking for makeover candidates for their upcoming season and have asked us to help spread the word. This could be the ideal chance to look your best at an upcoming interview or starting your new job. Please find all the details below and pass it along to anyone who might be interested:

NEED A COMPLETE STYLE OVERHAUL?

ARE YOU TIRED OF HAVING THE SAME OLD LOOK? DREADING THAT SPECIAL OCCASION BECAUSE YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO WEAR?

BRENDAN AND SONYA ARE HERE TO HELP!

RTÉ’S “OFF THE RAILS” IS LOOKING FOR MAKEOVER CANDIDATES FOR OUR UPCOMING SEASON. IF YOU OR SOMEBODY YOU KNOW WOULD BE INTERESTED IN TAKING PART THEN GET IN TOUCH.

SIMPLY LOG ON TO: WWW.RTE.IE/FASHION/OFFTHERAILS TO DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION FORM

OR E-MAIL:  OFFTHERAILS@RTE.IE

OR CALL:  (01) 2082139

FOR MORE INFORMATION.

Morning all

Our Sales Assassin Charlie is taking a well deserved break this and next week so you're stuck with my views on The Apprentice for the last two episodes I'm afraid.

Last night saw yet another food task - I'm wondering will it be called "Masterchef Apprentice" next year. This time round the teams had to come up with the whole concept, brand and design for a fast food restaurant. 

On one team we had Helen and Tom and on the second team Jim, Suzie and Natasha. Both teams were given assistance, Helen's in the form of a kitchen helper and a counter person and Jim got a chef. 

Jim could have done with a lot more than just a chef to be fair and from the first few minutes it was like watching a car crash, you could see the disaster unfolding before your eyes and wanted to look away but just couldn't tear yourself away from the screen. I watched quite a lot of last night's episode with my hands almost covering my eyes as if I were watching a horror.

Natasha and Suzie sniped and argued with one another from the get go, they went with a Mexican themed fast food restaurant, sombreros and cacti on every surface. Jim did the market research, decided on the menu, choose the name and brand colours while Suzie and "Tash" sat and glared at one another and argued about whether peppers were Mexican. 

Tom and Helen went with a pie and mash theme and 100% British, there was a slight moment of panic when they choose Columbus (who was Italian I believe) as their British mascot for mash but they seem to have blagged their way through it. Their branding and name "MyPy" was excellent and Tom played a blinder on the decor to be fair to him.

When they did their trial runs with 50 customers it was clear "MyPy" was going to be the better brand and the fact that they didn't make their patrons wait over 10 minutes for "fast" food was testament to the planning and prep that went into their business. The sight of Suzie running manically around their restaurant trying to seat people then realizing she didn't have enough seats was classic.

All in all it came down to the experts opinion though and even though "Caraca's" had already lost in my eyes Macho Nacho aka Jim only dug humself a deeper grave when he couldn't answer the mark-up and business expansion questions the experts posed. I bet his mental arithmetic will never be classified as a strength again! 60 x 7 anyone? £4600 pounds it is not!

This task should have been a doddle for Natasha with her hospitality degree and ultimately her claim at the start that she had run her own restaurant as part of her degree shot her in the foot. Sir Alan finally took his opportunity to give her the sack and not a minute too soon we think!

So who do you think will win?

@garydickenson

"Thinking about what I saw on #apprentice last night. I can't understand why anyone would want to go into business with any of them?"

@josephbelll

"Heyy Susan, do the mexican like their children? @bbcapprentice #Apprentice"

@djbentley

"A Mexican restaurant named after the capital of Venezuela and a British pie named after an Italian explorer. #backtoschool #apprentice"

@pokomon

"catching up on #apprentice. even my spleen is cringing."

In the third of a series of blog posts, Peter Cosgrove in CPL puts on his jobseeker hat and lets you know how he would approach a Recruitment Agency for a permanent role...

Firstly – I would know the type of role/roles that I would like to apply for, going to a recruiter and saying that you are looking for a change, that you want to do something different is not a good idea. They are not career counsellors, if you are looking to do something new/different – spend the time to find out what this is and then approach agencies, otherwise you are asking them to do your work for them.

Secondly once I know the types of roles that I would consider, I would research recruiters to ensure I knew what agencies have those types of roles and are most likely to be interested in me/ my CV. On the subject of CV, it took me 8 iterations to get a CV that was achievement oriented, under 1,000 words and in a format that was employer friendly – so if you have not written a brilliant CV get help because this is 100% in your control and it your first impression to anyone you deal with.

Now you know the area, the recruiters to deal with and you have a great CV, you send a polite concise note highlighting your experience, achievements and that you appreciate that they are busy but would like 30 minutes of their time. Recruiters don’t remember CVs, they remember people – so get in front of them. Once in front of them, treat it like an interview, if you arrive late, your phone goes off, you have a poor attitude the recruiter will not risk sending you out to one of their clients. The flipside is if you are on time, positive, motivated and willing to work hard, you will be much more likely to get your CV on the desk of your potential next employer – good  luck!

You might have noticed that we have a link to "Who's Recruiting" on our home page.  Clicking on this will give you a dynamic list of companies and agencies who are currently advertising jobs on RecruitIreland.com. Businesses are listed alphabetically and identified by agency or company. If the jobs expire or the advertiser marks the jobs filled their name is removed from the list. You can also find this list on the subnav whilst searching, its called "Jobs by Recruiter".  

Anyways you can check out this list here http://lb2.recruitireland.com/company/ it could add another dimension to your job search.

Yesterday I saw came across this website listing Obsolete Occupations, (thanks to @darraghdoyle on Twitter).  I liked it, hope you do too.

 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124251060 

This is embarrassingly our first post of the new year, so Happy New Year everyone! Annoyingly as one event is over we're straight into the next, Valentine's Day is everywhere so we've jumped on the bandwagon to launch our Valentine's Survey. We didn't run this survey last year as we were trying to be more intellectual but that was boring so this year it's back.

We want to know if you are going to be cutting back on the gifts this year, if the recession has made you more or less romantic or if it has even caused an improvement in your relationship? We're all a bit divided in the office over Valentine's, the lads think its a bit of a racket, I think its only right to be sent a bouquet and others find that an insane waste, so tell us, what do you think?

Take the survey here.

Look out for our 2010 Budget Calculator in partnership with Red Oak Tax Refunds, this will be live on the site early this evening after Brian Lenihan's Budget address. Check it out here http://lb2.recruitireland.com/budgetcalculator2010/.

In the mean time BreakingNews.ie have a dedicated Budget 2010 channel with continuous updates and a live Dáil feed.

2008 actually started off with a Christmas party (first of 2 that year), the team descended on the Hardwood Restaurant in Cork where much merriment ensued, in fact so vocal was the merriment that we had to remove ourselves from the premises before dessert (heads hung in shame).

Following that excellent start, 2008 was a very busy year (particularly for me as following one long advertising meeting on the 1st July, I gave birth to my son Conor, it was a wee bit earlier then planned so I’d say Rebecca was a bit surprised when I texted her to say there was no need to pick me up for work the next morning!).

2008 saw lots of new web developments for RecruitIreland.com; we launched our new Career Centre & our Blog as well as developing our Facebook Application and joining the revolution that is Twitter. This meant that Vicki, our web 2.0 evangelist, had to explain to certain people many times that those that twitter are tweeters & not twits.

We posted a job vacancy on the site for Taoiseach when Bertie Ahern handed in his resignation – the job vacancy received almost 200,000 page views and received international acclaim.

The year ended with yet another Christmas Party, this time in Kenmare, where the RecruitIreland.com Oscars took place. Prestigious awards were handed out for Best International Employee (Rebecca), Best Timekeeper (Gill), Discounter of the Year (Elaine), Shopper of The Year (Diarmuid), Talker (Charlie), Messiest Desk (Ronan) and Biggest Surprise (me).

Also in 2008

• Blockbusters were Mamma Mia, The Dark Knight and Sex & the City
• The Olympic Games took place in China
• Michael Phelps wowed us all with his body, which, we were repeatedly informed, is perfectly proportioned for swimming
• Barack Obama became the President of the United States
• Lehman Brothers collapses
• It was International Year of the Potato – who knew!!
• Brangelina had twins, Knox and Vivienne
• Tyrone were All Ireland Football champions
• Kilkenny won the All Ireland Hurling title

On my first day of work in RecruitIreland.com  I thought I would be very clever and avoid paying for parking by leaving my car at a friend’s house, just a short walk from the city centre. However, the shortcut that existed in mind did not exist in reality and so I ended up sprinting as fast as I could to make it in on time. Falling into the office out of breath was probably not the best first impression to make but apart from that things seemed to run fairly smoothly.

Luckily, soon after I joined the parking issue was sorted because we moved to our new office in Blackpool. Not only were we all more comfortable in the new office but it also helped us stop spending all our wages at lunch time.

Elaine returned from maternity leave so I finally got to meet the famous “Golden Girl” of the office. I was somehow roped into writing the reviews of the Apprentice for the blog which led to me being known as the Sales Assassin. It’s an affectionate term….I think.

We had a thrilling training day in Kilkenny that year. Activities included target shooting, orienteering, sumo wrestling and canoeing. Thankfully it was a gorgeous day as myself and Mags’ boat capsized in the river. Here is a pic of that day while we were still dry.

There was success in the Marketing department too as the “Objects” campaign won more awards, an ICAD award was given for the Tick radio ad, Ink and Line press ads, shown here.

Also this year:

• An Irish General Election took place
• Kerry won the All Ireland Football Championships
• Kilkenny won the All Ireland Hurling Championships
• X-Factor winner Leon took the Christmas number 1

In 2006 Vicki convinced Tom to give her little brother a job, he looks back at his first year with fond memories... 

2006 is a year probably best remembered for some truly great Irish sporting achievements, well that and of course I started working here. I arrived on January 9th, a quiet shy lad hoping to fit into the world of RecruitIreland.com. I was lucky I had been pre-warned by Vicki, who to avoid, who the golden girl was and how important it was to keep on the right side of Sinead!! I was also told there was a very quiet fella called Diarmuid - luckily it turned out he wasn’t that quiet - he was just surrounded by females and had no interest in hair and makeup. Vicki had of course left to work in Dublin at that stage so the guys were spared of any O’Callaghan infighting for a couple of years anyway..

In 2006 our annual surveys revealed loved ones would prefer a little bit of TLC over champagne, chocolates and jewellery on Valentines, one in five workers were afraid to take all their holidays over fears it would ruin their career chances and perhaps most telling our Christmas survey revealed over 44% of employees were receiving Christmas bonuses and four in every five bosses were picking up the tab for fancy Christmas parties. Without having any 2010 surveys to hand I’d imagine it’s fair to predict fancy Christmas parties paid for by the boss will be few and fair between this year.

2006 saw the launch of two of our best remembered award winning advertising campaigns with Beep and Creak hitting the nations TV screens and line, paper and ink in the print media. Here's Beep to jog your memory:

As per usual we had numerous nights out and activities throughout 2006 with the highlight being the Christmas party in Man Fridays in Kinsale, luckily Brendan didn’t go missing on this night out and we finished off the night in ‘ the classic ‘ dancing at the disco as a fella once said!!

Also in that year;

• Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and The Da Vinci Code were the box office favourites
• Gnarls Barkley's single “Crazy” was the best selling single
• Steve Irwin died after a stringray pierced his heart during filming
• Charles Haughey died.
• The GAA, FAI and IRFU announced that a deal had been reached which would allow soccer and rugby to be played in Croke Park.
• Munster won the Heineken cup, beating Biarritz in the final held at Millennium Stadium, Cardiff
• Europe won the 2006 Ryder Cup, held in Kildare Golf and Country Club
• Ireland's Derval O'Rourke wins the women's 60m hurdles at the 2006 IAAF World Indoor Championships
• Kilkenny won the All-Ireland Hurling Title
• Kerry won the All-Ireland Football Title
• Chelsea won the premier league