After a three-year teaching career which involved lecturing part-time at UCC and Cork IT, Brendan Richardson joined Ericssons in June l995. "I did some substitute teaching too, in the secondary school in Bantry where I grew up."

The route to Ericsson was circular. "I got a job with Bord Failte as a representative in Norway but, after 14 months, was thinking about going back into teaching when the Ericsson job came up. So I went from working for an Irish company in Scandinavia to working for a Scandinavian company in Ireland.

"I couldn't see a future for myself in second-level education and was interested in computers anyway. I knew too that with Ericsson I'd get a chance to work with changing technology."

He's glad to be working in an industry "where there's a lot happening, not with a static syllabus. I'd been put off taking a H Dip by the fact that it would mean teaching the same syllabus year after year. In Ericsson, with new versions of software coming out all the time, we have to update. This means courses change too and customers have to be trained on new products all the time.

"It's more dynamic and you get a chance to work on new material, developing courses yourself. You also get opportunities to attend meetings in Stockholm and input your own ideas. Everyone's point of view is valued. Ericsson realise that those at the coal face, so to speak, have a contribution to make."

Travel is a large part of the job. "It's not quite like being on holiday but you do get weekends free to look around," says Richardson. "I've been to the Philippines, China and Canada - places I wouldn't normally have visited.

"I'm also involved in two of the biggest things happening in telecoms worldwide - GSM (the Global System for Mobile Communication) and ISDN. I've no complaints. There's always something happening and I like the way Ericsson encourage people to use their initiative."