Charlie bowled over by rush for jobs down under
Oz-based employer received 200 e-mails after Corkman story
A DERRINAGREE native who is looking for Duhallow men to work for his three companies in Australia this week said he was "shocked" at the 200 emails and phone calls which he has received in just five days.
Charlie Drake has been living in Australia for a decade and last week, in an interview with The Corkman, he said he was looking for workers. Within five hours of publication he had received 35 emails and that number has since swelled to beyond 200.
In the past week he has received CVS from Duhallow men aged from 18 to 58. "A lot of the men had been self employed as electricians, plumbers, carpenters and block layers and they all were looking for one thing – a job," he said.
However, he said he was also taken aback by the high quality of the CVS with architects, quantity surveyors, and engineers who had been in high powered jobs during the boom, but have now on the dole for two years – with more being out of work for three years and longer.
So far, he has got emails from Newmarket, Kanturk, Millstreet, Mallow, Buttevant and Macroom.
However, he has also got a raft of emails from Duhallow women looking for administration work, including an unemployed accountant.
He has already hired two men, one from Newmarket and one from Millstreet. He presently has 20 men on his books but hopes to bring that number up to 50 by the end of January.
"One CV was from a single 58 year old man who said he was out of work for two years and there was just no chance of a job for him," Charlie noted, adding. "The theme was all the same really, they all wanted jobs."
He is slowly making his way down through the 200+ mails and will go through each application — though, he said, this will obviously take him some time.
- MARIA HERLIHY MHERLIHY@CORKMAN.IE
