Health care firm plans to sponsor college courses
This emerged at the highly successful Careers Fair 2007 at the Cork college where students from all over Munster had the choice of 500 graduate, internship and summer opportunities with 57 leading companies exhibiting at the event.
Johnson & Johnson are currently looking at CIT certificates in Good Manufacturing Practice and Process Plant Technology with a view to partnering with the college in the very near future.
J&J employs 110,000 worldwide and 1,400 in Ireland. The group has six companies in Munster, with 11 in all in Ireland including Janssen, DePuy, Vistakon, Centocor, and most recently Cordis in Cashel.
“Munster is an excellent location in terms of the colleges and the quality of the graduates available,” said Paul Deegan, HR business partner with J&J in Cork. “We would like to build a course and have access to the graduates in a partnership approach with CIT. We have just begun exploring this idea with CIT, but there is already a very close proximity between our needs and the college’s courses in Process Plant Technology and Good Manufacturing Practice. We didn’t know about those courses before now.”
CIT’s Higher Certificate in Science in Good Manufacturing Practice and Technology is delivered on a full-time, part-time and outreach basis. The Process Plant Technology course may also be customised to fit into the working needs of the health care group. Course content may also be customised by the partners.
Students came from all over Munster to attend the event. Around 1,800 graduates of Business, Computing, Engineering and Science studies gave their CVs to the Irish Defence Forces, Boston Scientific, Siemens, Pepsi, ProsCon and others. All attending companies were recruiting.
“We turned down a number of companies who wanted to attend solely as a PR exercise,” said Dan Collins, head of CIT’s Careers and Counselling Service. “Next year, we will expand to around 80 companies. We are focusing on quality. We are primarily interested in companies who are seeking to employ graduates.
“For example, Kingspan were looking to find 15 graduates. The job and placement opportunities for CIT graduates were across a multiplicity of disciplines. This year there was a great buzz, with around 200 people queuing before the doors even opened. The large number of companies attending is a positive indication of the current jobs market and bodes well for future graduates.”
All sectors of industry were present at the fair, with companies as varied as Glanbia, Lidl and Jurys Hotels. The J&J partnership plans are indicative of the positive response to the fair. The health care group employs 50 graduates each year.
It also selects four under-grads each year for its two sponsored study programmes — “Graduate Gold” for Engineering students, and the Net Finance Leadership Development Programme for Finance students. Many of the other companies present also run similar programmes.
Dan Collins believes that CIT’s students and graduates are at the forefront of Ireland’s evolution as a world leading knowledge economy. Careers Fair 2007 gave students an unique opportunity to meet employers face to face, he said.
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