Education

My advice to anyone awaiting results is not to stress over it

Life after the Leaving: Alan O’Beirne is co-founder of a website that makes searching for CAO courses easier

Alan O’Beirne works in technical recruitment at Amazon Web Services

Aine McMahon
Wed Aug 16 2017 - 00:00

We launched UniBrowse.ie because we all went through the pain of searching through college courses when we did the Leaving Cert, so we made a search engine to simplify this for students.

I’m lucky enough to work in technical recruitment at Amazon Web Services so basically my job is to find, attract and hire top network engineers into our Dublin team.

Outside of work, I play hurling and Gaelic football for St Jude’s GAA club in Templeogue. I have an enormous sense of pride being part of such a brilliant club.

I went to St Mac Dara’s in Templeogue, Dublin, and studied business, geography, history and French and the usual three. Business studies was definitely my favourite subject, despite the fact I flopped on the Leaving Cert exam!

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I suppose I did well enough in the Leaving Cert; I got 430 and was happy. I’ve since been completely overshadowed by my younger brother who now has bragging rights!

After the Leaving Cert I studied a degree in sports and exercise management in UCD and followed that with a master’s in business and entrepreneurship in DIT. I enjoyed them both, but wanted to get a bit more technical so I did a master’s in e-commerce in DCU, which I loved.

Every bit of education I’ve been a part of has had its own contribution in its own way. Although I’m not working in the fitness industry now, I still took a lot from the degree. The master’s in ecommerce was invaluable for me; DCU is a really innovative college and the course was really interesting.

If I was to go back in time, I would probably go and study computer science. It’s a fascinating industry and the stuff people work on is crazy.

My advice to anyone awaiting results is not to stress over it. The exams are done and results can’t be changed so just fill out your CAO with courses you think you would enjoy.

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