Ideal career path to choose now and education involved? PLEASE help

romakarol

I am going into 6th year once the summer holidays are over. It is time I decided what career I want and the college course involved so I know what to work towards, and hopefully get motivated. I am shocked at my inability to find this information through google searches, but hopefully posters here can help me. Thanks for any help!

-What types of good careers are the ones currently employing students. The ones you can be most sure of getting a job in fast once you are out of college (if necessary)/done your apprenticeship/whatever?

-What qualifications are needed, if any? ex: "a masters in X."?

-Ideally the job should be IN IRELAND.

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Can you recommend anything for me personally? I am a fluent Russian, English and Romanian speaker. My best subjects are Spanish, history, English, religion and biology, but I could probably get the qualifications for any course that doesn't require irish, or a maths grade above a b3 or so.

zl1whqvjs75cdy

IT seems to be your man. Or possibly accounting if you can get into one of the big 4. Research science is struggling big time in this country so if you want to pursue that you'd probably end up leaving.

romakarol

Thanks for the tip donkeyoaty!

I heard about IT. Is it really still going strong? Does it look like it will still be going strong by the time I have finished sixth year, went to college and got the necessary qualifications (advice from anyone with experience in this appreciated)? What kind of course should I go for if I wanted a Job (I assume a degree is necessary)?

Accounting doesn't seem like something I could take (hated it before the junior cert, not doing it as a subject, don't want to do it as a career).

zl1whqvjs75cdy

Regarding IT still going strong in 4 years, I'd say it will be but I don't have a crystal ball. The large companies such as Google, Ebay, Facebook and Paypal all have offices in Dublin so the companies seem to like it here which is a plus. If you get no specific course advice here (I'm science grad so no help to you) it may be worth contacting the HR depts of the larger companies and see what they are looking for. Although IT moves so fast it is difficult to know if that'll still be relevant in 4 years time.

As an aside, if you want to go down the IT route it may also be worth trying out some coding for yourself to see if you like. Some people love it, some hate it. This website (which I have no affiliation to) http://www.codecademy.com/dashboard is excellent for teaching yourself various coding languages and may help you get a feel for whats involved. Its also free. Again take all I say with a pinch of salt as I am not in the IT industry.

romakarol

Thanks again donekyoat, I did try something similar to codeacademy (called codeavengers) in transition year. Would certainly get back into this to qualify myself some more.

Doing google browsing of IT right now, and in answer to the question "do you need a degree to get a job in IT" I found something called certs (one was called comptia A+...). trying to figure out what those are now.

djpbarry

romakarol wrote: »

I am going into 6th year once the summer holidays are over. It is time I decided what career I want…

It really isn’t. It might be time for you to start thinking about what you want to study at Uni, but trying to plan where you’ll be career-wise in, say, ten years time, is extremely difficult.

romakarol wrote: »

-What types of good careers are the ones currently employing students. The ones you can be most sure of getting a job in fast once you are out of college (if necessary)/done your apprenticeship/whatever?

Right – you’re going about this all wrong. Forget about what’s hot right now, because it’s very likely things will have changed considerably by the time you graduate. Focus on what you think you’ll enjoy studying at Uni and what is likely to leave you with the most options on graduating.

donkeyoaty0099 wrote: »

Research science is struggling big time in this country….

It really isn’t – Nature recently identified Ireland as one of the top five “up and coming” destinations for high level research.

zl1whqvjs75cdy

This is definitely not how it is at the cold face of research. Do you work in science research in Ireland. (Really sorry, I known that sounds bitchy and condescending, its really not meant to be) .

djpbarry

donkeyoaty0099 wrote: »

Do you work in science research in Ireland.

I did a few years ago, yes.

zl1whqvjs75cdy

Do you mind me asking what area? (Science, computer science etc. You can be nice and vague.) I am in the middle of a science based PhD and we are struggling big time funding wise. The number of post grads in our department has more than halved in three years. Postdoc funding is very very hard to get now and we are definitely seeing a lot of postdocs leave academia in Ireland. Teh lack of cohesion between the different institutes is pretty appalling too considering how small the country is. If you are into immunology maybe things are a bit better as I know there is a strong group in Trinity in this area, but otherwise things are grim.