Recruitment Series: Recent Recruitment Improvements
Our recruitment team is made up of two employees: Steve Collins (Recruitment Lead) and Amy Kearney (Junior Recruitment Executive).
Steve Collins joined FDC in March 2023 as a Project Co-ordinator, working in to improve FDC services internally. In April 2024, Steve began his current role as Recruitment Lead for the organisation and has improved and expanded the recruitment services at FDC immensely since starting his role.
In March 2024, Amy Kearney joined FDC as a placement student during the last section of her master’s degree in Management and Marketing Amy was awarded the Jack Murphy Scholarship which FDC offers to students in various masters degrees to cover their full tuition fees as well as a 6 month placement opportunity. On completion of her masters, Amy joined the organisation on a full-time basis as Junior Recruitment Executive.
Pre-screening Interviews
Steve and Amy started conducting pre-screening interviews to save managers time in the hiring process.
During these pre-screenings, Steve and Amy have an informal chat with potential candidates via Microsoft Teams. This allows the recruitment team to narrow down the recruitment pool before sending the most suitable applicants onto the second interview stage.
The recruitment team ask a few general interview questions such as ‘tell us about yourself’, ’what are your biggest weaknesses and strengths’, ‘what is your knowledge of FDC’ and ‘why do you think you’re a good fit for the company’. It also allows candidates to ask any questions they may have about FDC or the role they have applied for.
Our recruitment team has found this interviews to be very the recruitment process and helpful for candidates, hiring managers and themselves.
Talent Pools
The recruitment team have been continuously developing their talent pools to include a wide range of skilled candidates who were not selected for previous roles.
Our recruitment team contact these candidates to ask them for permission to be added to our talent pools. When suitable vacant roles become available, any relevant candidates in the talent pools are informed and asked to apply. These talent pools also include students looking for opportunities in FDC, whether graduate opportunities, summer internships or work placement. These students either reach out to the recruitment team looking for such roles or are met at the large array of career fairs FDC attends yearly.
Graduate Programmes
We are continuing to develop both our accounting graduate programme and our agriculture graduate programme.
For our accounting graduate programme, we are delighted to be offering one or two accounting students an opportunity to pursue their accounting career by completing a funded postgraduate course. These students can continue their studies in UCC, UL, ATU Galway, TUS Athlone. Each of these colleges offer students a different 1-year full-time accounting course to continue their accounting journey and students’ fees will be covered by FDC. Successful applicants will sign a 3-year contract with FDC and work as a Trainee Accountant on completion of the masters.
Our agriculture graduate programme runs a similar style to our accounting graduate programme. We are offering a 3-year contract in which candidates will be provided with the opportunity to study a part-time masters in Ag Extension and Innovation in UCD whilst earning competitive salary in a dynamic organisation. Successful applicants can carry out this prestigious M.Agr.Sc whilst gaining invaluable experience working full-time as an agri-advisor with our growing FDC Agri Team.