Where the jobs are ...

The National Skills Bulletin available from www.forfas.ie provides an excellent overview of current and anticipated skills shortages in Ireland. The table below provides a summary of just some of the areas of shortage mentioned in the report that you may consider targeting for a potential career change. See also the list of courses available through the Springboard initiative which target these sectors on bluebrick.ie/ springboard.

Science
Product development chemists, biologists, medical scientists and nutritionists. Laboratory analysts at technician level.

Engineering
Chemical (process safety), design and development (pharmaceuticals, medical devices, food), electrical (power generation, high voltage), electronic (printed circuit board microchip), planning and quality control (standards compliance, validation), mechanical (renewable energy) and production (process automation and Six Sigma).

ICT
Senior software applications developers (Java, C++, C#, VB, Ruby, Perl, Python), network and security experts (.net, SharePoint, encryption, cloud computing, virtualisation -- VMware), system administrators (Oracle, J2EE, SQL Server), web developers (PHP, JavaScript, XML, HTML, Flex, ColdFusion), business analysts and IT project managers.

Finance
Risk analysis, management and cost accounting, compliance and regulatory standards -- domestic, EU (eg MiFID, Solvency II) and global (eg Basel II)) and financial analysis are in short supply. Financial experts with proficiency in financial software packages (eg SUMMIT and SAP).

Sales and Marketing
Experienced marketing managers; technical sales representatives with specific industry, product and market knowledge; multilingual telesales (particularly with German and Nordic languages).

Transport & Logistics
Multilingual international supply chain managers with forecasting, planning and scheduling skills.

Supplements