I’m delighted to announce today that my latest web project has gone live, and that it is Obraichean Gàidhlig – a website designed to help employers and jobseekers in the Gaelic community find each other.
It’s a site that was borne out of a post-graduation sense of frustration that finding jobs related to Gaelic was a difficult task and there was no real way of keeping on top of it. You could subscribe to alerts on different job feeds, but the results were very mixed – with either a glut of information about jobs that had nothing to do with Gaelic or very little about ones that were.
That’s why I decided that there needed to be a dedicated online hub to find Gaelic jobs, and went about building Obraichean Gàidhlig (which you can visit by clicking the image below):
The Obraichean site is built through WordPress, with the aim of being minimalistic in terms of design to focus squarely on the jobs on offer.
Having said that, while I’ve designed it to be simple I’ve also tried to pack it with different features I think will be helpful including automatic job posting & application functions, Google Maps integration, a community forum, social login and integration with a newsletter.
As a web design project it was simple, but as a larger community project it’s been more of a task.
Setting up and creating the presence online has taken some time, as it’s not easy to cultivate a strong following quickly while developing something. Hopefully as time goes on and the website is shared around there’ll be more in the way of community action but for now it’s still in its’ infancy.
Gaelic may not be known for its’ technologically savvy demographic, but I think that using the internet as a means of brining Gaelic-speakers together in any way possible is a positive step that can make a real difference. That’s especially true when it comes to jobs relating to the language, as the way in which applying and recruiting for positions has shifted online makes getting to grips with websites much more important.
By making more online resources available to the Gaelic community there’s great potential to add value to the language and the culture, and I hope that the Obraichean site manages to help with that in its’ own small way.
On-the-whole I’m happy with how the site has turned out so far and the response it has received has been great too. I truly hope it goes on to help people find jobs and becomes a hub for the language’s continued revival in the professional realm.
Interested in seeing what Gaelic jobs are available? You can find out over on Obraichean Gàidhlig.