The pandemic has brought out the very best in some young Laois people. Our new series ‘Up and Coming’ is designed to highlight the great entrepreneurial spirit and creativity we’ve seen from Laois people this year.
This week we spoke to Leanne Donovan from Portlaoise, a Business Studies gradute of DCU who is taking social media by storm with her project ‘The Irish Graduate.’
Leanne has taken the pandemic in her stride and created a network of graduates from all over, who share their experiences navigating life before, during and after college.
“The Irish graduate is a community of graduates who share their experiences to inspire recent graduates and students to navigate life post college, just like how they did,” she says.
Leanne was inspired to start the Irish Graduate due to her own experience preparing to travel abroad.
“The initial idea can be traced back to around November of 2019. I was to go abroad, and as I was getting ready to go abroad I was Googling everything, like, what to pack what to bring, you know, do I get a SIM card there, do I get one here, all these kinds of things.
“The accounts I trusted the most were real life people experiencing it, and of course if it comes from an Irish voice you are going to think it’s a lot more credible.
“With that, I wanted to document my journey of moving abroad to getting a job, getting an apartment and everything in between, that’s what I felt I wanted and I felt others could get real value from that.”
Due to the pandemic shutting down international travel and life as we knew it, Leanne did not get to travel to New York.
“I knew I still wanted to do something, and that’s how the Irish Graduate in its current form was born.
“I’ve always been quite honest with my college experience, it was less than straightforward and wasn’t glamorous.
“That’s what most people’s experiences look like when you actually have private conversations with people away from your Instagram stories.
“You see the trials and tribulations, but that’s not shown at a careers fair on a college homepage, and that’s what I wanted to provide a platform for.
“We have a ‘My Graduate Life’ series, that’s one of the main things we document.
“People can really take the reins if they want to focus on something in particular, they want to talk about how they chose their Leaving Cert subjects, or just about college life in general, or international experience, whatever it is.
“We also just launched a ‘Why I Picked My Masters’ series because I found when I was in final year of college, a lot of people who said they were never going to do a masters, ending up doing one, which is what’s been tagged as a ‘panic masters’ and with their cost, you don’t want to do it just because it’s a pandemic.
“It’s still a big commitment, especially financially, so with that you want to make sure you’re choosing the right one.”
The aim of the Irish Graduate is to share the real life lived experiences of people.
“We share feature blogs from students, graduates who want to get something out there, that they can then share with their networks.
“People who maybe almost failed their undergraduate degree, because they just didn’t like the subject, but when they did study something they wanted to, they got a first class honour.
“Someone who changed from midwifery to banking, something completely different, or people that navigated life through college, and their early graduate years with mental health difficulties and how they overcame that.
“I feel like me being honest about my college experience at the very start definitely paved the way for others to bring that honesty as well, which I didn’t expect starting out so obviously that’s something I was grateful for.”
It doesn’t stop there for the Irish Graduate, as Leanne also features industry professionals, career coaches and guidance counsellors who have the expert knowledge.
“I’m conscious that I could Google ‘Top Three Interview Tips’ and I could write that out, but you could just as easily Google that.
“I want to tailor this to something people aren’t going to find elsewhere on the internet.”
Another great benefit of the Irish Graduate has been the opportunity for Leanne to build up a network.
“That’s something that was a main priority for me, and I’ve successfully done that, and even expanded into international networks.”
The Irish Graduate gave Leanne the opportunity to stand out from the crowd when applying for jobs in what is currently a precarious employment sector.
“I have good experience and a good CV but I needed something to stand out from the crowd. And that’s what the Irish Graduate did.
“I had interviews with large SMEs, third-level institutions, and one of the biggest tech companies in the world, and they were all amazed with what I was doing with the Irish Graduate. They’re 20, 30 years in the industry and they see graduates coming in and they know that’s something they wish they had.
“With those kind of responses, I knew I was off to a winner.
“I had the perfect balacne of helping others as well as also helping myself, which of course had to be a priority during the pandemic.”
The Irish Graduate turns one in May.
“You see a lot of people with pages similar to mine and with that you have to ask when does my graduate life end, when do I stop talking about this?
“The benefit of the Irish Graduate is that it is a lot less about me, as it is about other people so I feel I will still be able to facilitate this platform.
“Hopefully I can branch into more than just navigating graduate life, and into managing it. This could be financial advice, for example, again, from industry professionals, or job reviews and advice once you have a job.
“As well as that, I’m planning an industry based series. For example, Insurance.
“So I will have a graduate give their experience, maybe someone who is graduated five or ten years, to senior managment, as well as opinion pieces on trends in the area.”
Leanne has also been chosen to join the Washington Ireland Program For Service and Leadership, which is a prestigious program for young people from different backgrounds to come together and learn life-changing development and leadership skills.
“It’s crazy to think I was selected for the Washington Ireland Program when you look at past alum.
“Obviously, this year it’s more unique in that we can’t go to Washington and that itself comes with its own benefits.
“They’re able to take more people onto the program and have more diverse backgrounds, people in part time courses and people who wouldn’t usually be able to give that block of their summer to go abroad.
“I’m going to be meeting and be able to talk to people who are industry leaders in this space, and that again goes back to building your network.
“I’m also going to be working on a consultancy project with your peers for leading US organizations.
Are you or someone you know an ‘up and comer’? Get in contact with us to tell your story.
Anyone who is interested can contact us on any of our social media channels or email us on news@laoistoday.ie.
SEE MORE –The Competitive Start Fund ‘could create the next start-up success story in Laois’
