There is a shortage of experienced people in these occupations in Ireland at the moment. For further information on Labour Market trends, go to our Labour Market section.
CareersPortal contains a range of resources designed to assist you to make sound, informed decisions about your career. From this site you can complete self-assessment exercises, create a career plan, develop a job search strategy, research employers, explore occupations, keep up to date with our labour market trends, discover training opportunities and watch and read career interviews of people from all walks of life in Ireland.
What's your Career?
We understand a career as a journey, not a destination. You are already on this journey, and have made decisions that have lead you to where you now are.
At various times along our career journey we reach a crossroad. We must choose (or have the opportunity to choose) which direction to move. These times can be exciting, challenging, stressful or frightning depending on circumstances and our readiness to face change.
There are many factors to consider when the time for a change arrives.
Negative Internal factors - such as job dissatisfaction, job apathy or health issues all require you to take stock of who you are and what you want from your life.
Positive Internal factors - such as a passion to follow your dreams, ambition or simply the urge to do what you love to do, requires you to seek out ways to create the realities you desire in the world of work, and overcome whatever leglislative and practical challenges you might be faced with.
Negative External factors - such as job loss, redundancy or change of location requires you to establish a workable financial budget to sustain you until the next opportunity arises, and the skills of planning and managing a job search so that you get that opportunity as soon as possible.
Positive External factors - such as when a new position becomes available, or a promotion, or an attractive redundancy package, requires you to evaluate such opportunities in the context of your short and long term life goals, your values and your life/work balance.
Personal Career Choices
The choices you make are personal, based on your particular circumstances and the opportunities that you are aware of. Each person has a unique journey, and we present here the stories of many people in Ireland who have taken the time to share the decisions they have taken along their career journey. In these stories you will recognise circumstances similar to yours and we hope they will provide an insight into both the occupations they work at and the personal decisions and milestones that marked their journey.
A few things stand out as shaping the direction of my career as Clinical Psychologist. From an early age I sensed that I was suited a career focused on people. I developed childhood friendships with children with intellectual disabilities as myself and my cousin used to play with the children who lived in a local residential centre – they had play areas which were much cooler than anything we knew!
My interest in people continued as a teenager and I experienced as much as I could of other cultures during school and college summers – working on a farm in France, as au pair in Spain, and in a biscuit factory in Germany!
My interest in how individuals and cultures tick was really expanded after my undergraduate degree while teaching in Japan on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme. The experience of living and teaching in Japan was very significant in my decision to train as a Clinical Psychologist as it confirmed for me that my interest in people was probably never ending, and that I was suited to a job focused on working with people day in day out. On my return to Ireland I secured a “front line” post in intellectual disability services before I applied to study on a postgraduate course in Psychology.
I felt it was important to have direct experience in intellectual disability services so that my career decision was based on “evidence”, rather than any unfounded illusions I had! I decided to work on a relief panel (where you rotate around different parts of the service) rather than in one place only. This allowed me to experience a wide range of ages (from babies to older people) and services (residential, respite, special school). I also worked in three different Dublin based services so that I could get direct experience of the differences and similarities between services.
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How to use this Site
The resources in this site are divided into sections. Use the links in the upper left for information and resources aimed at people at particular phases of their career journey. The remainder of the resources can be found within the three main sections of the site - Career Planning, Work & Employment and Education & Training.
