Class of 2026: Guide to getting hired for graduates
Temporary roles are a good way for companies to assess someone before making a full-time hire. For a graduate, it is a foot in the door.
If you are graduating this summer and the job hunt feels unexpectedly difficult, you are not imagining it.
The Irish labour market has shifted noticeably since this time last year, and a lot of the conventional wisdom graduates have been given - tailor your CV, apply online, wait — is no longer enough. But don’t lose hope; the jobs are out there, you just need to adjust your strategy.
To find out more about the realities of the graduate hiring landscape, I recently spoke with Siobhán Kinsella, President of the Employment and Recruitment Federation (ERF). Kinsella has spent thirty years working in Irish recruitment and has seen every disruption from the introduction of the fax machine to the rise of LinkedIn. Her advice for this year's graduates is practical and encouraging.
The ERF's latest Irish Labour Market Monitor, which tracks recruitment activity across more than 600 recruitment businesses operating in Ireland, makes for sobering reading. Employer optimism on future vacancies fell from 56% in January to 39% by March of this year. On the surface, the numbers are bleaker than they were in 2024 or 2025. But Kinsella is careful to contextualise what that actually means for a new graduate.
“The rate of hiring might have slowed down, but our economy is growing. It’s still a buoyant job market.”
The pullback, she explains, is concentrated in specific areas — particularly multinationals, where uncertainty around US tariffs and large-scale AI adoption has made employers cautious. But the public sector is still expanding, and the SME market is not only growing, but is more active than many graduates may realise.
"A multinational is very structured," she says, "but if you want to get a broader experience, you're probably better off going for a small to medium enterprise."
Something fascinating that Kinsella told me was about what is happening on the recruiting side of the application process. It explains a lot about why firing out online applications can feel futile.
"The biggest thing graduates need to be careful of is not just firing out their CV to job boards," she says. "We've seen a massive proliferation of AI helping people machine-gun out CVs, so the volume of applications coming into inboxes and tracking systems is actually having a very negative effect."
AI-generated CVs, it turns out, are being screened by AI hiring systems — and most are not making it through. In addition, the European Union's AI Act and existing GDPR legislation are both clear that AI cannot make the final decision in a recruitment process. That decision still has to be made by a human — which means the single most important thing a graduate can do right now is actually talk to a human being.
To achieve this, Kinsella’s advice is to use your network. "Some people may think they don't have a network," she says, "but if you're playing sports on a team, everybody on that team has parents. Do you know what they do? Have you ever asked? There are people you know socially whose jobs you know nothing about."
When I ask about what employers are looking for from graduate hires, Kinsella's answer is not what most students spend three or four years preparing for. The skills topping her list — critical analysis, the ability to develop rapport, decision-making, bringing teams together — are the ones developed not in lecture halls but behind a bar, on a shop floor, or on a delivery route.
"Any part-time job, any summer job that has you dealing with the public develops those skills," she says. "I wouldn't hire a graduate who hadn't worked in retail, transport, logistics, or hospitality." She adds that any recruiter worth their salt goes straight to the summer jobs section of a CV, before they even look at the primary degree.
This is a message for younger students too — if you're in fifth or sixth year, or in your first or second year of college, getting a part-time job now is not a distraction from your studies. It is, by some measures, as important as your degree.
Kinsella has a son currently sitting his Leaving Certificate, who wants to study business. Recently, a family friend — an electrician — suggested he would be better off doing a trade, given where AI is headed. While I personally believe that entering a trade is an excellent choice, I also feel it’s not helpful to push someone away from their desired path due to fear of AI. Kinsella admits she had what she calls "a speed wobble" when she heard her friend’s advice.
Then she reminded herself what she has lived through professionally. "I grew up with a phone in my hallway," she told me. "I've been around for VHS tapes, cassette tapes, CDs, Blu-ray, MP3 players, Spotify, dial-up internet, blockchain, LinkedIn, job boards. And no matter what piece of technology comes along, you adapt."
The job displacement that AI is currently causing, she believes, is likely to be temporary. "I have a quiet chuckle every time I see a large consulting firm being fined by governments for submitting AI-generated reports full of hallucinations," she says. "I think we're having an overcorrection at the moment."
The skills AI cannot replicate — decision-making, critical thinking, managing a team, the ability to look someone in the eye and build a relationship — are, she argues, precisely the skills that Ireland has always been particularly good at.
One of the clearest findings in the ERF's Q1 data is the structural shift toward flexible hiring, with the share of recruiters filling fifty or more temporary roles in a single month rising from 9% in January to 13% in March. For a graduate holding out for a permanent position, this might sound discouraging. Kinsella says it should not be.
She started her own career as a temp controller. "The amount of people I put into jobs as temporary agency workers who went permanent in those companies was extraordinary, and that is still the way it goes," she says. Temporary roles exist partly because recruitment is an expensive risk for employers — a bad hire is a costly mistake. Taking someone on a temporary basis is a way of managing that risk. For a graduate, it is a foot in the door.
"Show up, look for extra work, show consistency and commitment, and keep learning," she says. "It's a very good way to get a permanent job. And any job is easier to get from a job. Every person you meet is a potential connection for your next opportunity."
I asked Kinsella what she would say to a graduate who has been applying for months and is starting to feel demoralised. Her answer would raise anyone’s spirits:
"Our rate of hiring may have slowed, but our economy is growing, year on year on year. If you were going to be anywhere in the OECD, this is the country you want to be in. It may not look the way you anticipated — it might be a temporary role, a contract, a maternity cover — but once you get into the workplace, you will continue to develop and grow. Change your approach. Look at the human element a little more. But no - you will find a job. And if we could fix the weather, we'd be great."
More information on the ERF's Irish Labour Market Monitor is available at erf.ie.
