Recruitment Insights from Ciaran Sheehan

Ciaran Sheehan is a Senior Recruitment Consultant with AA Euro Group focused mainly on business development and maintaining and creating strong and meaningful relationships with current and prospective clients.

Ciaran is also heavily involved with recruitment in the M&E space and the sourcing of niche candidates for specific roles. Read on as Ciaran tells us about his career in recruitment along with the latest recruitment insights.

Recruitment Insights: Ciaran Sheehan

Ciaran graduated from the Munster Technological University with a BSc in Business Management. Following on from this he made the move down under and competed professionally in the Australian Football League.

While in the league Ciaran acted as Alumni Programs Coordinator for the AFL Players Association where his main focus was career progression and support for any player transitioning away from the game. Currently, Ciaran is completing a Master’s degree part-time in Human Resource Management at MTU.

Speaking of his biggest passion in the recruitment sector, Ciaran says “My biggest passion is successfully filling a position for a client with a candidate that is totally committed to and excited about their new role. Placing people in roles they are genuinely passionate about themselves brings great satisfaction”.

Following on from this Ciaran also highlighted his biggest achievement in the industry to date, which he counts as “securing a strong client for the company and building a strong and stable relationship with this client to allow us to work on a number of large scale projects in Ireland/Europe and the Middle East”.

Motto: “A total commitment is paramount to reaching the ultimate in performance”.

Market Trends

“There have been some big changes in the last few years considering the impact of Covid-19. More people have now been afforded the opportunity to work from home, giving them more flexibility on finding a role that they are truly passionate about which of course is a major positive for many”.

“What is important now more than ever is that employers/employees view their work through the lens of productivity and ensuring they get their work/life balance right. In some cases, WFH can cause employees to take on twice the workload, as you are minus the commuting time and the social interaction in the workplace freeing up extra time”.

“An emerging trend which now seems to be a pattern for many companies is the hybrid working model which sees people split their working week between home and the office. Online platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom have now become an essential tool for most organisations”.

Candidate Insights

We asked Ciaran for some insights into what makes a candidate stand out in their job application. Some of his top tips are:

Detail – include duties and responsibilities carried out on specific projects or within specific roles.
Honesty – Being 100% honest in all detail provided in a job application is essential.
Resilience – if something does not go to plan, respond in a way that can positively impact the organisation.

Ciaran also outlined some of the most common mistakes that job seekers should be aware of when they are applying for a job, such as:

Lack of confidence – It is important to reflect on past roles and understand what sets you apart from others and prove to yourself that you are in fact the right person for the job.
Protect your profile – Try not to send your CV to a client through a lot of different avenues as it may be seen as unprofessional.

Job Seeker Advice for 2021

We also asked Ciaran what advice he would give to jobseekers based on the current market in 2021:

“Honesty is the best policy – when looking for a new role and speaking with recruiters, being honest will take you a long way to finding the right role for you”.

“Always reflect on the role you are in and ask yourself if this is the role or the organisation you see yourself working alongside in 10 years’ time!”.