Ireland Unemployment Rate | 1983-2017 | Data | Chart | Calendar | Forecast

From looking at the charts you can either think that more people are in employment (not necessarily in a dream job) or it means that more of us is actually leaving the country :) Either way, numbers look good. Compare to Poland where the unemployment rate is at 8.2% for April 2017.

We’ve all heard this question before – “where do you see yourself in 5 years”. Nobody really struggles with the answer anymore. There are suggestions online, people share their knowledge and experience on how to provide the right answer to this question. Therefore, I will not jump on this today. What I wanted to focus on instead is the question itself. If you read my posts regularly (you can just scroll down to see couple posts from last year) you know that I am a huge fan of the mobile lifestyle and I encourage employers to give their workers as much flexibility as possible. So then if we can work anywhere and any hours we want, should the questions still be “WHERE do you see yourself”, or should it rather be “WHO do you see in 5 years?”. I know that majority of you will turn around and say, well isn’t it obvious! Not for everyone. Call me blonde but English is not a native language for all people and sometimes they do take some questions literally. When they get a question – “where do you see yourself”, they often think of location. Even if they don’t think about the geographic point of view, still they think of their company/office/apartment. That is why I suggest we change this one word from WHERE to WHO. During the interview process, future employer get limited possibilities to get to know their potential employee, this upgrade question will help both parties to create a connection. It may turn out that they both share similar interests or they both struggle with similar obstacles in life. It is important that we all invest in our personal development. When I look at social media I see my friends starting new hobbies, sports, travelling around the world – all this is great but should be accompanied by personal development. Our brain/personality can also be trained. We can and should work on it every day. There are many ways we can get rid of negative thoughts, clear our heads and put a smile on our faces. To sum up, make sure you invest in yourself as much as you invest in your apartment/house/car. So, when next time someone asks you about your 5-year plan – you know exactly what to say. My answer would be – I see a strong, positive and self-confident woman and high emotional intelligence! 😊 Have a great week everyone – each day is a new journey – make sure you learn from it.

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- no comment needed! :)

Top salary negotiation tips for women

Negotiating your salary can be difficult. For some people, it can even be frightening. But we shouldn't forget to always be aware of our market value. We are working very hard, offering our commitment and flexibility in terms of working hours. We must fight to get a decent salary for the value we create and provide to our employer. They may not appreciate that, but they still have to reward us. This applies to new job offers as well. It doesn't matter if you were earning less at your previous job. If your new duties are more specific and require more experience - your salary should also be at the higher level. Do not be afraid that they will pull the offer once you start to negotiate. If they do, have a think if you really want to work for such employer. Best time to start negotiations is when you get the written offer on the table. You should always take your time to review it. Do not agree to it on the phone, make sure you're happy with the points listed including salary, probation period or benefits. Such conversation will be a pre-view, as you will obviously having a similar conversation in 12 months when discussing your annual salary review. It will give you an idea of who are you dealing with and can be a crucial argument when making your final decision about accepting or rejecting the new job offer. Good luck!

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How often we spend hours on staring at beautiful places we wish to visit? And you count down the days when you can actually leave the stuffy office and colleagues you're not really getting along with? Wouldn't it be great to just change your actual address and live on an exotic island for longer than just a week? Is it really that hard to leave your current life and start fresh, with new friends, new local shops and most importantly new, refreshed way of thinking? Have you noticed that each time you travel and change your scenery just for a bit, your mindset also changes? You suddenly get new amazing ideas and feel that power in you that you can move mountains? Well, at least I do get that feeling. If you feel the same way, don't think too long, just start acting. Nowadays with wi-fi available almost all over the world you can really change your life and start living it! Good luck and go for it, you only have one life to live.

We all know life is not all about sunshine and rainbows. But we desperately want to delete this thought from our heads. We consistently want to believe that everything will work out, that we will manage that we will pick up and fight …. Well at least some of us will. The truth is that it will not happen by itself. It will require us to work hard every day on all levels to get there where we want to be. But getting there is not the only goal we should focus on. The more important one is to realize or better figure out what “there” means. What needs to work, what we will manage and why do we need to pick up and fight (also who should we fight is good to know). When we are down and feel useless and devastated, often we tend to watch motivational speeches or we read “smart” books or articles. All that is good but it’s not good enough. These people, telling us what to do are just doing their job. I highly appreciate what they’re saying, also believe that their intentions are good. However, our job is to select information and make sure we apply only 100% useful stuff. There is no need to waste time on something that does not apply to our personal situation or won’t make any difference to the position we’re currently in. So, let’s say we know what went wrong in our life and now we need to fix it. We also identified the problem or issue or conflict we need to manage. We know what brought us down and we think we have the strength to get up and fight – but are we sure we’re fighting the right monster? Depending on which personality type we are (there are tests online you can take and it will give you the idea of what type you are), we either point at ourselves or we point out at someone else. It can be our partner, sibling, colleague or Manager. That’s the human nature to blame somebody else for our failures. Even if we’re blaming ourselves it will still be somehow connected to the third party, i.e. I missed that deadline because I was distracted by something else, it’s my fault that I got distracted, but it’s not my fault that I get distracted so easily, I am the same as my mother/father. We don’t see blaming other people as a bad thing anymore because we can always say “I am sorry I was wrong” and get it over with. “Sorry” does not mean as much as it used to mean years ago. Now people just throw it back and forward and do not appreciate the value of this word. Same applies to “love” or “promise”, I guess it’s the price we pay for fast development within society. It’s not an easy thing to do, to pick up a fight with our monsters. If we decide we want to do this, we need to be prepared to deal with the consequences that will follow if anything goes wrong. As we stated at the beginning, life is not all sunshine and rainbows. There will be consequences if we win and there will be if we lose. Either way, we need to be prepared to live with them. Make sure you know who you’re fighting before you start your fight as it may be the most important thing you do in your life. Magazines scream through the windows – “Make it happen”, “3 ways to career change”, “Be bold, bright & brave” – all happy to give you career or development advice but all very generic and without a clue of what your real issue is. We must have a very strong filter on information around us as it can be useful at times but also cause a lot of damage 99% of the time. Therefore it's so important to get face to face with someone and then get the right advice from the right person. Using additional sources is always good but making sure you get the best out of it.

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Make sure you surround yourself with great people and don't waste time for the ones who clearly don't appreciate you. Karma comes back - ALWAYS ! :)

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Why Good Employees Quit

Something light to read on a Sunday afternoon. In today's world with all these innovative tools like Skype, outlook and even LinkedIn, we sometimes forget that we actually work with human beings. It doesn't matter how well paid or how rewarding your job is. If you don't get along with your co-workers or Managers, it's just not worth it. You work to live not the other way around. The same rule applies to personal relationships. If you're brave enough to end your toxic marriage/relationship, why it is so hard to leave workplace that makes you feel stressed and feel sick every Monday? Have a good look at your current job and make sure you actually enjoy waking up in the morning. If you don't - then it's time to change. Trust me, opportunity is there waiting for you. Not sure where to find it? Happy to help :)

Referrals - where "helping your friend" ends and "stalking" begins. We all have at least one friend in our closest circle who either worked or still works in big, international, top company, we would die to work for. Even if it's for free meals or amazing chill-out room. Whatever it is that attracts us about this company, it's handy to have an insider as a close friend. Generation X as we all heard is very forward and normally wouldn't have any issue with just asking "are there any open positions at the moment, and would you mind sending my CV in". It's not a shock to anyone nowadays, as HR departments love to receive CVs from employees, that way half of their sourcing task is done :) and they even pay fees once referred person gets the job and stays in for a certain amount of time. But what if there are no suitable positions open or what if our CV isn't as great as we thought and we get rejected or we don't get any feedback at all? We're generation X we can't give up, we have to try harder. So we send our CV again, and most definitely ask our friend to maybe speak with HR directly about our application, as he/she is already in the same building, so maybe casual chat over lunch will do? What can happen, is that our friend will start avoiding us, or maybe even unfriend us on Facebook. Anyway, my point is, referrals really do work, and if we have a chance to achieve our goal with a little help from our friend, we should go for it. If our friend is a real friend, eventually will tell us the truth about our application and this might be a friendship test but at least we can stand in front of the mirror and say - I TRIED !!! Good luck with job hunt in 2017 :)

Another year is nearly over. We all look back to sum up our achievements and failures of 2016. Wise men say that if you don't fail, you can't succeed - but still, failing sucks and nobody likes to hit rock bottom before touching the sky. Is it possible to just skip the bottom part and become successful straight away? Well, let's hope it is, same as meeting your Prince Charming in Disney's fairy tale. I am not joking, it has to be possible. We just have to remember one crucial detail - each Cinderella or Snow White or even Fiona - had a Fairy Godmother who helped her become super pretty or super strong or magically got her super car and clothes etc. I will be super modest here - but I offer my support as a Fairy Godmother. I don't have magic wand but will use all my power and knowledge to help you become a superstar on the job market. Get in touch and let's start working together.

How to Manage Time With 10 Tips That Work

Very true !!! :)