I’m from Cork, which is the first thing most people from Cork will tell you about themselves. My entire family lives either in the same culdesac or the one next door. At one stage we all lived on the same road, which is handy if you run out of milk or get locked out but not so good if you’ve larger aspirations than to be your nanas neighbour. I was the first person on both sides of my family to go to college and the first to leave Cork, so when I told my friends and family that I wanted to move to Dublin to further my education they looked at me like I had three heads.
Somehow, I managed to get myself a house and a job to start my adventure after I finished my Bachelors, so without further a due here is the beginner's guide to Dublin (2020 edition).
When you finish college the first thing on your mind is to find a job, or at least it should be. I was very torn between the idea of working or getting a master's. Luckily, I found a solution to that, a working masters. It seemed like a logical decision to get paid while also gaining higher qualifications.
There’s a number of things you need to have in place to get a job after college. Firstly, you need a unique C.V to get through the clutter of all the other desperate postgraduates that are applying for similar positions. You can avail of your local C.V clinic, you can find a template to start yourself off here. My degree was in Marketing, so I knew I wanted to explore opportunities in the realm of Digital Marketing, Food Marketing or something within the Food Industry, that also offered an opportunity to travel. After you have your C.V up to scratch the next step is to put it to the test, and start applying. Always write a cover letter even if you’re not asked to. Double, triple, quadruple check for spelling mistakes on your C.V and also make sure that you tailor your application to the Job. I’ve always found that if you take keywords from the job description and put them directly into your C.V you immediately heighten your potential.
Next thing to do is ace the interview, I’m going to speak from experience because that’s all I have to offer here. I applied for opportunities that involved a scholarship because that was the only way I was going to do a master's. Michael Smurfit Business school, UCD in association with Bord Bia offers a scholarship that gives you two years of industry experience within the food industry, a tax-free bursary that’s paid monthly all while receiving an MSc in Global Business Practice. Now, I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounded too good to be true. To get something like this the interview process is inevitably quite extensive. I’ll tell you how I survived this intense screening process and hopefully, it will prepare you for whatever post-graduate interview life throws your way. You need to prepare well in advance for the interview, by knowing as much as you can about the industry, know what happened in the news that morning so they know you’re up to date on current affairs. I actually bought a copy of The Irish Times the day I did the interview and I still have it (It was the day Notrodam burned). Also, ask a lecturer in your college to sit with you for a coffee and get as much insight and feedback as they can give you.
For the Bord Bia scholarship, the first stage to complete an intelligence test, which honestly you can do nothing to prepare for. It’s just showing what parts of your brain work best so they can see the type of environment you would thrive in. If you are given something like this I would advise you to just jump right in and do it, the more you think about it the harder it’ll be. After that, we were given a personality evaluation, which honestly I have no idea how I passed. They recommend you take 10-15 minutes to complete it and it took me over a half-hour. Clearly, what I lack in personality I make up for in sheer enthusiasm.
Bord Bia markets Irish Food, Drink, and Horticulture abroad, with 14 overseas offices. This programme had an intake of thirty two students of which fifteen would be based abroad, so if you had a second language you could avail of taking the language assessment before the final interview. I traveled up to Dublin to Smurfit Business School where I was led to a small glass room with a table. On the table was a laptop and a flip chart, I was handed a brief with a company description and questions to answer, I had thirty minutes to research using the laptop and then put together a presentation using the flip chart. Once my time was up I was brought in to a room where I presented to three interviewers for 15 minutes, they then asked questions followed by a thirty-minute one to one interview. To prepare for something like that you need to be well versed in your knowledge of the Food Industry, moreover know how to apply your relevant experience to any potential predicament the interviewers may propose and make sure you’re confident. Put your personality into everything you say. The idea is to be likable, the first thing any interviewer is going to think is, “Is this someone I wouldn't mind working in an office with?”.
We’re all aware there’s a housing crisis in Ireland at the moment, so that definitely offers its own unique challenges. Also, knowing the kind of time frame you need as well as how much savings you should have in your bank account before leaving home is hard to decipher if you haven't done it before. I barely had enough to get the train ticket to the interview, so I’m well versed in cost-effective preparedness for moving out of home. When I applied for the Bord Bia Scholarship I didn’t know if I would be based abroad or in Dublin, I was happy with either option because travel was always an integral part of my long term planning and the hustle and bustle of Dublin City spoke to my business graduate side.
Firstly, find out where your job is going to be so you know the area you’ll be spending most of your time in. The way Dublin works is that the city center is Dublin 1 and the further away from the city you get the higher the number. Odd numbers are on the north-side and even numbers are on the south-side. The closer to the city center you get, the higher the rent. Also, houses, apartments, and studios in the south-side are more expensive than the north-side. Put the address of your job into google and look at areas that are within 5 miles, alternatively look for accommodation that is along the Luas line or bus route. Dublin's pretty interconnected regarding travel and offers a variety of options.
When looking for a house I recommend using Daft.ie or Rent.ie, you can also join Facebook groups for people looking for houses in Dublin. When choosing your limit with rent be realistic, look at how much your wages will be and use the 50/30/20 rule. 50% of your earnings should be spent on needs such as rent, bills, food, travel, and hygiene. 30% can be put towards wants, your wants are specific to you. 20% towards savings. For me the graduate programme supplied a tax-free bursary, it's worthwhile downloading a financial analytics app like Revolut especially if you’re not used to being paid monthly. It's one thing being broke when you're at home it's another thing to be broke in Dublin. If your rent alone is more than half your earnings then you know it’s not in your price range.
After I was accepted to the graduate programme, UCD offered accommodation for all of us that lived far away or were moving abroad. We lived in a hotel for some time during the summer in Dun Laoghaire and it was honestly the best Summer I’ve ever had.
Dun Laoghaire pier
Once you apply for a house, make sure that you have the deposit ready to go, references on hand along with a month's rent. Always make sure everything is in writing and read the contract carefully. It’s tough to find a place in Dublin but it’s not impossible, the greatest tactic is persistence.
No one really tells you how difficult it is to make friends when you’re in your twenties. Especially if you’re far from home, where you don’t know anyone and you don’t have fallbacks like college societies or lectures to force yourself out of your comfort zone. It’s so important to make friends if you are moving to Dublin because people have the power to make or break an entire experience. For me, I was lucky, because the scholarship was given to 32 individuals that would all inevitably become very close friends of mine. Even if you don’t have similar circumstances to me, the things I've learned from my experience would still apply to you. For instance, when I first started I was very intimidated. Anyone would be nervous to meet that many people at once. I had to share a room with a complete stranger for the first month of the program when we stayed in a hotel, little did I know we'd end up getting on like a house on fire.
The best advice I could give for surviving the difficulties of socialising are to ignore all your inner inhibitions and just jump right in. Be friendly and even if you are not talkative by nature that's okay, however, it is important to push yourself out of your comfort zone. The first month after you finish your post-grad you do experience an anti-climatic slump. You’ve just dedicated your life to something for three or four years and now it’s over. The best way to overcome that is by socializing and meeting new people. Our programme requires us to work in Bord Bia in whatever team we are assigned and then every six months we have lectures at Michael Smurfit Business School for two weeks. In Bord Bia the culture is very friendly, everyone talks to everyone, so being shy was okay because almost everyone made an effort. For the first few days of any job you are bound to come in overdressed, after a while you’ll get a sense of what everyone else is doing and the worry of what to wear becomes less daunting. It's important to note, it is always better to be overdressed rather than underdressed. Be open minded to new ideas, people, cultures and adventures because Dublin's full of them.
All the gang
So I hope I’ve helped you come to grips with tackling Dublin. My Journey with moving to Dublin was made a lot easier because I was accepted into the Bord Bia scholarship, the grad programme opened a lot of doors for me that I would have struggled to do myself. I would recommend it if you want to get up here to the big shmoke, or if you want to travel further ashore. It’s a 24-month programme that's helping me further my education all while gaining a master's from Irelands number one business school. It’s worth applying for if you have similar notions like myself. You can check out the website here .
Some parting words of advice; watch out for cyclists, watch out for the Luas, mind the seagulls, don’t look the pigeons directly in the eye and accept that no matter where you’re from they will always refer to you as a cultchie.
See ya later boiiii,
Hazel
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......From Cork.