Sponsorship history wherever you read a job

In July most of the work on IrishTalents went into the tools you use while you search for a job in Ireland.

See an employer's permit history on the job page

We built a Chrome extension for IrishTalents. When you open a job on LinkedIn, Indeed, RecruitIreland, gradIreland or a careers page run on systems like Greenhouse or Ashby, a small clover on the page shows how many employment permits that employer has on record. The side panel shows the full permit history and tells you whether the advert itself mentions sponsorship, including when it says the role does not offer it.

From the same panel you can send the job to your application tracker or save the company, in one click. The extension connects to your free candidate account, so everything you save lands in your workspace. Its page went up on 28 July.

An application tracker you can work in

Each role in your application tracker now opens a side panel where you can move it to another stage, set the next thing to do with a due date, keep private notes, or archive it. If we captured a detail wrong, such as the job title, employer, location, salary or closing date, you can correct it there. Employer logos appear next to each role, a Follow up column shows the date you set, and clicking the employer name opens its company page, where it used to lead to an error.

Tell us where you stand

Your profile started by asking about your situation, whether you live outside Ireland, study here, hold another permission here or already work here. The next steps suggested in your tracker followed from that answer, because applying from abroad and moving from a student permission to a work permit are different journeys. Uploading your CV and filling in your professional details became a single step in three short parts, with room for your LinkedIn and a portfolio or personal website.

Discovery, with licensed agencies

The Companies area of your workspace became Discovery. Alongside the companies it gained a Licensed agencies tab, which you can filter by several counties at once. Company cards got more compact and open a preview without leaving the list, and their chart now includes the current year and says what the permit total counts. Keeping an employer for later now uses a clear Save company button, and saved companies have their own filter.

Every employment permit year on one page

Ireland employment permits became a directory of every year of official permit data, with the annual trend, links into each year and month, and the employers, industries and cities with the most permits over time. Monthly pages now rank employers by that month's permits and hide sections the official data does not cover for that month, where they used to show zeros. The tables turn into cards on a phone, and you can sign up for permit alerts from the page itself.

Company profiles also got their permit history explorer back, with annual history and, where official monthly data exists, the monthly trend.

Look up your occupation code

The new occupations directory has a page for each SOC 2010 code that Irish employment permits use. With the occupation permit check you type a job title or a code, even part of one, and see which permit route the official lists point to for that occupation.

We also put the Ineligible List of Occupations on one page, mapped to the same codes, and every occupation page now says whether its code appears on the official lists. All of this is information taken from the Department of Enterprise's lists and never a decision on your own case.

Check your CV before you sign up

Drop your CV on the Irish CV Check and you get a first read on the page, without an account. It looks at the photo, personal details, layout, length and languages, suggests the occupation your CV most likely matches, and shows what the official lists say about that occupation. The visa eligibility check came back in the same form, starting from your CV and giving a first indication of the permit route. A free account keeps the result and carries your CV into your profile.

A directory of licensed recruitment agencies

We added a directory of recruitment agencies that hold an employment agency licence from the Workplace Relations Commission. It is built from the official register, updated every week, and has pages for each agency, county and city.

Smaller things

• Anyone could open a full company profile from the directory without signing in first.
• The companies directory switched to Previous and Next pages.
• If you had already uploaded your CV, the CV check stopped asking for it again.
• New accounts stopped being sent back to onboarding every time they clicked the menu.
• The workspace header got much shorter on a phone screen.
• The site footer started linking to every directory and candidate tool, with a newsletter signup.
• We published our privacy policy and terms of service.
• The home page started from the candidate journey, with the company directory underneath.
• New guides on why Irish companies say no to sponsorship, on building a target list from employer permit data, on Critical Skills occupation codes and on the Ineligible List.
• Sector articles on construction, agriculture and food, manufacturing, pharma and medtech, transport and logistics and the five sectors with long-term needs. We also corrected the figures in June's healthcare article to match the official permit files.