EL native instrumental in 'Hireland' initiative

Date: 3/13/2012

March 12, 2012

By Chris Maza

chrism@thereminder.com

EAST LONGMEADOW — With economies on the downslide all over the globe, one East Longmeadow native was able to be part of a project to turn around rising unemployment rates in Ireland.

Devin Campbell, a business major at Champlain College in Burlington, Vt., recently studied abroad at the school's Dublin, Ireland, campus and teamed up with fellow students and non-profit marketing Professor Lucy Masterson to create "Hireland," an initiative designed to encourage businesses to hire 5,000 employees.

"We knew that if we could convince the large group of general employers in Ireland looking for skilled labor to simply 'pledge their intent' to potentially hire a new employee in a public manner, we could gain momentum to find well educated, but unemployed Irish citizens jobs in the long term future," he said.

Campbell said that when he first traveled to Ireland, a sense of negativity regarding the economy was palpable.

"While I was in Ireland I noticed a high amount of frustration and pessimism about the state of the Irish economy from average citizens," he said. "I was living right in the heart of Dublin, which is of course their center of economic output. Even there in the beautiful historic city, there were vacant buildings."

Campbell explained that through his classes he learned the roots of the country's struggles, which stem from the "Celtic Tiger" period, during which deregulation of the banking industry and poor lending practices required the Irish National Bank and Anglo Irish Bank to receive International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailouts, leading to mistrust in both the banking industry and in Parliament.

The similarities to the real estate woes facing the United States were evident to him and his American classmates, he said.

"Our understanding of the American state of the economy and what went wrong with our real estate bubble was nearly identical to Ireland's state," he said. "In the U.S., large financial institutions had to undergo massive bailouts when the real estate market collapsed, and in Ireland the exact same thing happened with Anglo Irish Bank and the Irish National Bank. However, the Republic of Ireland is very small in retrospect, so the country itself required IMF funding, just like Greece."

Masterson's class, which was made up of Hireland's founders, set out to change employers' perspective on job creation and garner pledges of intent to hire new employees.

"I asked them, 'What if we could change the current status quo of firing in favor of one of hiring by motivating businesses to pledge publicly to hire one person? Could this be the first step to trigger a reverse in the negative cycle we are trapped?'" Masterson said. "I asked the class if they were interested in helping. It would mean we were throwing out the theory learning and instead [learning] by real life experience.

"I told them that the worst that would happen is that they may have to repeat the semester and that I would get fired, but on the flip side, if we succeeded we would have started a movement of change that could result in real jobs for people. It was a risk worth taking and luckily for me they all agreed," she continued.

Campbell and his colleagues were tasked with discovering what strengths Ireland and its job seekers possessed and how to best connect employers to potential employees.

"We came to the conclusion that one of Ireland's great strengths was their interconnectivity with the United States and the rest of Europe," he said. "Even though Ireland is an island and suffers from a relatively stagnant domestic job pool, technology and social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn can connect Ireland with potential foreign investors and employers from the United States, the European mainland, and abroad."

From there, Campbell's focus was the early branding of Hireland.

"We as a group focused first on what the exact mission of Hireland was, what we were trying to do for both job seekers and potential employers in the Republic of Ireland," he said. "We then collaborated with Irish students from Dublin City University on a game plan of how to market Hireland to all Irish citizens as simply a career tool very similar to Careerbuilder or Monster.com in the United States, but a non-profit, student-driven organization. In the later stages, we made the final decision of the logo and design, as well as created the first stage of YouTube videos and the Facebook page."

Masterson said that as of March 8, the Hireland Facebook page had 2,950 followers. Its website has had 363,000 page views and its YouTube videos have received 8,000 hits. Its Twitter account has 740 followers.

Since its creation, Hireland has secured 3,446 job pledges from 718 companies, representing more than half of its first goal in six weeks with 171 active jobs created. In addition to that, Masterson said hundreds of interviews have taken place.

The initiative has also received media coverage from Irish national and local press, including radio and television, as well as international coverage from U.S., outlets, the BBC, Finnish radio and the French press.

"I feel I am part of a great accomplishment where we finally have created jobs and potential jobs in the turbulent Irish economy," Campbell said. "Many of us from the United States were cautious on just how much of an impact we could have on tackling unemployment in Ireland. Today, we all feel a great sense of accomplishment in the Hireland movement, and we feel we could help the U.S. economy on an even greater scale."

According to Masterson, the Hireland model is one that could be brought to the U.S. and executed effectively and work is already being done in that regard, with Campbell's help.

"This is a scalable model and is relevant as much in the U.S. as it is in Ireland. Devin's class has helped out with Hireland's sister initiative UHireUs and which is getting into gear," she explained. "UhireU.S (www.uhireus.org) is also a volunteer, not-for-profit group of business professionals, college students and involved citizens who are concerned about the human cost of persistent, high unemployment. As a sister initiative of Hireland it has a goal for companies to pledge to hire one million of the jobless in the first half of the year by motivating business owners and managers thinking and talking about add-ons, not layoffs."