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A chance Twitter conversation is responsible for the creation of six new jobs at the online business directory Whatswhat.ie.

Paraic Hegarty, a Cork-based investor and managing consultant has been appointed Director of Strategy and Innovation at the company. Hegarty ended up investing in the company as a result of chatting over Twitter with Sian Phillips, Financial Director of Whatswhat.ie and an active Twitter user.
His investment is to result in five new jobs as well as his own hands-on role in the business and the opening of a new office base for the company.
Phillips explains that the conversation started because herself and Hegarty were following each other on Twitter, most likely because they were both involved in Business Camp Limerick last year – though never met at it.
“Whenever I chat to somebody for the first time [on Twitter] really I always look at the bio to see who they are and probably follow them back. I noticed he had in his bio angel investor. We were looking for an investor at the time,” she explains.
Because both were following each other they were able to exchange DMs (private direct messages via Twitter). Phillips sent Hegarty a DM asking what an angel investor is, he replied and within a few weeks this resulted in further email exchanges, a phone call and a meeting between Whatswhat.ie Managing Director Barbara Gordon, Phillips and Hegarty. “We kept it under wraps until we signed,” explains Phillips.
Hegarty’s investment has resulted in the opening of an office in Bray, Co Wicklow. Prior to this the two directors had worked from their respective homes, Phillips on the Cork/Waterford border and Gordon in Bray.
As well as appointing Paraic to the position of Director of Strategy and Innovation, the company has hired two salespeople and an admin person who will be based from the Bray office and is seeking a further two salespeople.
Phillips adds that you can get a good feel for people on Twitter, if they are honest with their tweets. She says that she thinks Twitter is a brilliant place for matching potential employers and jobseekers, but the problem is people don’t know enough of the time that people are seeking work.
“I think it’s just a fluke that I looked at his bio and thought ‘angel investor, we need one of those’,” she concludes.

Looking for a job and don’t have a LinkedIn profile yet? It may be time to invest some time in getting a thorough profile together before LinkedIn start hiring in Ireland.

LinkedIn has announced it has plans to establish its international headquarters in Ireland, taking advantage of the country’s highly skilled workforce.
While it is not clearly how many people the world’s largest professional network with more than 60 million members globally intends to take on here, positions include marketing, sales, finance and customer service. The new Dublin offices will serve as its centre for international growth. LinkedIn will manage its continued international expansion from Dublin, working with teams from the growing London office which opened in 2008, and the Netherlands office opened in January this year. It is to retain its corporate headquarters in California.
Kevin Eyres, managing director of LinkedIn Europe commented, “As our membership continues to grow quickly, this is the right time for us to establish an international headquarters. Being based in Dublin gives us access to a highly skilled workforce and enables us to coordinate our business growth across Europe and beyond to deliver the best possible service to our members.”
Welcoming the announcement IDA Ireland CEO, Barry O’Leary, said: ““Ireland has always been attractive to innovative global leaders and I’m delighted that a leading business social networking site, such as LinkedIn, has chosen Ireland as its international headquarters.
“This is an endorsement that Ireland can satisfy the needs of highly innovative and technologically advanced companies as they make critical investments.”.
Details of current openings can be found on the LinkedIn website.

The international confidence in Ireland’s skilled workforce was evident this week with eBay’s announcement it is to expand its Dublin European Centre of Excellence workforce by 150.

The expansion of 150 jobs at the centre is supported by the Irish Government with the aid of IDA Ireland. eBay, which already employs over 1,600 people at its Blanchardstown, Dublin site together with PayPal, its online payment system, has created the new permanent positions in customer service, personal account management and process enhancement.
With more than 90 million active users globally, eBay is the world’s largest online marketplace, where practically anyone can buy and sell practically anything.
The roles created are in areas that will support the execution of eBay’s global and European strategy, and include positions for specialists with strong technical skills in business analytics, content management, project management and account management. The company is also keen to recruit multilingual customer service representatives.
Welcoming the announcement, Taoiseach, Brian Cowen TD, praised the job creation. “eBay is now a global brand name and we are delighted that our capital can provide the flexible and skilled workforce necessary to help this brand grow further in the period ahead.’’

There was an “is it a bird, is it a plane” reaction last week to the launch of Weedle.com, a Dublin-based website which offers to connect people with other people who need their skills.

Speaking to Prosperity’s Digital Ezine, CEO of Weedle.com, Iain MacDonald explained: “You have demand for people with skills and supply of people with skills. Currently there’s no large-scale, simple way of connecting people with skills to the people that need them. We provide a very simple way to connect you with people who need your skill or to find people with the skills you need.”

The obvious question is, isn’t there already LinkedIn? “LinkedIn is a very good way of managing your contacts within a white-collar network environment. Facebook is very good for sharing your thoughts or photographs with friends. What Weedle does is enable you to connect with people who need your skill or find people with the skills you need.”

How Weedle works is business people create a profile, explain what they can do and demonstrate what they can do, by uploading a video for example. Businesses could vary from accountants to babysitters to carpenters.

For those searching for skills on Weedle, the search string is semantically analysed so that a search for a carpenter will also return results for a joiner, for example. Answers are ranked according to an algorithm, so that the person most likely to meet your search need will be ranked at the top. Also taken into account are the content of a profile, the last time the person logged into their account and how quickly they respond to queries.

You don’t have to log in for the aforementioned results. However, people who are logged in will also get results based on whether friends or contacts have used them and thought they were good or they have gone to school/worked with people. “It’s like automatic word-of-mouth,” says MacDonald, “you can see instantly who in your social network has used somebody with the skill you need now.”

It’s not just for sole traders or consultants; whole teams can sign up to it and put their Weedle link in their email signature to help clients become aware that the team does more than what the person they are dealing with does.

Weedle, which currently employs 18, is expected to grow over the coming year along with some future site improvements. “We are launching in beta, so we’re looking for some support from the Irish internet community,” says MacDonald. “It isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The only way we’re going to make it better is through feedback from real live users.”

Job creation announcements were top of the list of goals for 2010 for a number of companies in January.
PayPal, which employs 1,100 people in Ireland announced the creation of a further 100 new jobs in customer service and operations at its European Centre of Excellence in Blanchardstown, Dublin. These positions are in addition to the 150 extra jobs announced during 2009. The Dublin centre, which was established in 2003 with 25 employees, manages all direct customer contact for PayPal’s businesses across Europe. The jobs will see further opportunities for permanent positions in customer service and operations for individuals fluent in English and a second European language.

Commenting on the announcement, Barry O’Leary, CEO IDA Ireland, said, “PayPal’s investment represents a key endorsement from one of the world’s leading online companies, and is further evidence of Ireland’s ability to compete for and win high quality technologically advanced Foreign Direct Investment. This expansion builds on Ireland’s reputation as a global hub for the digital media sector.”

Also on Dublin, 35 high skilled jobs are on the cards over a three-year period at the new EMEA Headquarters of on-demand translation technology and service provider, Sajan, Inc. The company will create opportunities for software engineers, localization engineers, testers, project managers, quality personnel, sales executives and accounts personnel.

Galway is to get 20 new jobs with the establishment of an inside sales and customer care operation in StreamServe Inc. A leading provider of business communications solutions, StreamServe, will initially employ 20 people at the Galway operation in areas such as sales, maintenance renewals, and customer care operations, servicing both the US and EMEA markets.