Start date: ASAP

Fireball Media is seeking a part-time Accounts and Administration Assistant for management of accounts and general administrative duties.

You will be skilled in accounts management and will be highly motivated.

You will preferably have, or be working towards, a tertiary accounting qualification.

As Accounts and Administration Assistant, you will be part of a small, tight-knit team and you will report to Management.

The role is varied and involves support in all level of the business. You will assist in reception duties including general office administration tasks, accounts duties including managing Accs Receivable, direct client contact and secretarial duties including typing and editing.

The position is subject to a probation period of 6 months, but does have the potential to develop into a full-time role.

You will have:

• Exceptional financial acumen, particularly in relation to management of company accounts

• Advanced proficiency in MS Office Suite, particularly Excel.

• High attention-to-detail

• Exceptional time-management skills

• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal

• The ability to work under pressure and on your own initiative

• A high proficiency in Sage and everyday IT practices, particularly Excel, CRM systems and software programs

• Problem-solving ability

• A flexible schedule

• The ability to inspire trust and confidence from your colleagues and clients

You will be:

• Professional and courteous at all times

• Highly driven to succeed

• Resourceful and dedicated

• Motivated and motivational to other staff members

• Confident and have an outgoing personality

• Skilled in active listening, in building a rapport with people, in problem solving, and in assimilating clients’ needs and wants

• Emotionally resilient

Our Company:

• Fireball Media prides itself on our dedicated team of tight-knit staff. You will be an integral part of a busy, highly experienced and friendly office in the heart of Carrigaline Village.

• As such, the opportunity may exist to be promoted to a more senior position after proving your experience.

Work Schedule:

• Part-time, flexible hours

Salary and Benefits:

• Salary: €9.00 - €10.00 p/hr. - depending on experience

• Benefits: Professional and casual working environment

• Free On Street Parking

• Holiday Pay (when fulltime)

• Sick Days (when fulltime)

Please send your CV and cover letter outlining relevant experience to Jaclyn Ward at info@fireballmedia.ie.

We look forward to hearing from you!

KEY DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

CANDIDATE QUALITIES

• The ability to work within a team and on their own initiative.
• Excellent communication skills and customer care are essential.
• Strong problem solving and organisational skills are desirable.
• Very good written and spoken English are also essential.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

• Expertise in PHP / MySQL, XHTML / CSS / JavaScript / jQuery / AJAX
• A Degree in a Web Development related field or an equivalent combination of experience and/or education
• 1+ years commercial experience building static & database-driven websites and applications
• High proficiency in building CSS based layouts

DESIRABLE SKILLS

• An understanding of layout design and website usability
• Experience using Adobe Fireworks
• An good understanding Of SEO

Changing your Facebook Username – Things to Know

• When you pick a new URL for your Facebook Page, the old URL will no longer work (returns a 404). Therefore, make sure that you update any existing links in your web pages, email signatures, etc. that point to the old Facebook Page URL.
  
• Be very careful when choosing the new URL for your Facebook Page because you are allowed to change the username of any Page only once.
  
• Facebook Pages ignore periods (.) in the URL and they are also case insensitive. Thus facebook.com/yourbusinessname is same as facebook.com/your.business.name or even facebook.com/Your.Business.Name

Facebook are currently testing sponsored search results. At the moment it will only appear for a hand full of users. While this may be one of their many ideas for new revenue, it is flawed (which would explain why it’s in testing mode and why they haven’t made a big deal out of it).

The familiar search bar, previously giving you results based on current friends, friends of friends, pages, etc, can now be seen to show some paid for top spots in the results. These results are almost identical to the organic ones except for the word ‘sponsored’ in small light grey text at the bottom of the results.

 The problem with this is users won’t be using Facebook to find businesses they are unfamiliar with. Looking for a coffee shop in Dublin, for example, you’d likely use an established search engine like Google or Yahoo. However, searching for a business you already know of and want to follow, you will likely use Facebook to ‘like’ their page. Using the Facebook search, you almost always know exactly what you’re looking  for and will ignore anything else.

KEY DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

CANDIDATE QUALITIES

• The ability to work within a team and on their own initiative.
• Excellent communication skills and customer care are essential.
• Strong problem solving and organisational skills are desirable.
• Very good written and spoken English are also essential.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

• A Degree in a Web Development related field or an equivalent combination of experience and/or education
• 1+ years commercial experience building static & database-driven websites and applications
• Expertise in PHP / MySQL, XHTML / CSS, JavaScript / jQuery / AJAX
• High proficiency in building CSS based layouts

DESIRABLE SKILLS

• An understanding of layout design and website usability
• Experience using Adobe Fireworks
• An understanding Of SEO

And to celebrate this launch the very generous guys in Timberland have given us an exclusive offer for our fans!

Shop online today to buy Timberland Boots & Clothing at www.timberlandireland.ie and get €20.00 off your purchase when you spend over €150.00!

Simply enter the coupon code fireball during the checkout process to avail of your discount.

This offer runs from the 15th July – 31st July 2011 (inclusive)

Remember - It's FREE SHIPPING to anywhere in Ireland.

Timberland manufacture and sell clothing for men, women and kids with a focus on footwear for hiking, mountaineering and other outdoor activities.

Timberland Ireland currently have 8 stores nationwide and now require an easy to use e-commerce website with a fresh design and an emphasis placed on social networking.

The new shopping cart will allow customers to browse their range and purchase their products and gift vouchers online.

We are really looking forward to working on this exciting new project.

This feature will enable their clients to pay for their training courses online via their website. Along with this site upgrade, the CCEB also wanted to develop a user friendly backend that would tie seamlessly in with their current website.

The Fireball Media team are excited to be part of such a significant project, knowing that we are helping the CCEB aid the growth of micro enterprises within the region.

From grabbing reader’s attention, to evoking an emotional response, the use of imagery is an unrivalled communication medium. Images are easier to read and inform faster than just text alone. The old saying, “One picture is worth a thousand words” holds true to the digital age and highlights exactly why imagery plays such a vital role in website content, enabling users to scan pages quickly and get information fast.

1

Improve Readability
There is no better way to spruce up dull and lifeless web pages then with the use of imagery. Photos can help improve the readability of overly long and dull web pages by breaking up large amounts of content, providing visual cues and entry points of text. It’s important to ensure images are relevant to content discussed. Try and align the image as close to the most relevant content as possible.

3

Optimise For Web
It’s important to optimise your images for the web. Large files sizes can really slow down page loads and frustrate the end user so it’s vital to modify both the size and quality of the image if you are working with high resolution versions. Avoid adding low resolution images to your website at all costs. Photoscape is a great little editing tool that allows you to crop and resize images easily - and best of all, its free to download!

5

Make It Memorable
Oftentimes you may need to explain complex concepts requiring large amounts of text. Imagery can act as a powerful medium for explaining such procedural steps. A simple image beside a piece of related text can make the content easier to understand and therefore more memorable then an abundance of text.

7

Evoke A Response
Brighten up your news and events page by using images for each post. Allow the pictures to do the storytelling. For example if you are holding a charity event, you could use hard hitting images to evoke an emotional response and achieve your desired reaction. Use pictures to convey history and craftsmanship etc that would be difficult to convey via text.

9

Avoid Copyright Issues
Avoid copyright infringement by only using photos you know you have the rights to. Resort to Stock Photography if you do not have access to your own unique photographs. When you buy stock photography, you buy the rights to use it for a variety of purposes. One of our favourite stock photography sites is istock.com.

What we've been up to over the past few weeks

Brand New Compton Model Agency Website Launched

Who would have thought one of our clients could have gotten away with not revamping their website nearly 8 years! Somehow wiley Mr. John Compton managed it, but we caught him in the end and he's now the found owner of an absolutely gorgeous brand spanking new website at www.compton.ie. The old website was in dire need of a fresh look and improved navigation due to the vast number of pages. With a big focus on the visuals, we knew it was of utmost importance during the design process to make the photos standout on the website. The redesign has been a success and the lesson learned is don't leave it too long to update your website! Check out the lovely new site at www.compton.ie

999 Emergency for Emergency Response Training

The Emergency Response Training site needed a major revamp, including a new look and logo with added functionality and features to bring it into the year 2011!

You can see a sneak preview of the how the site is progressing below

Office Shake Up

Just as we're busy using our expertise to give some old websites a much needed lick of paint we've done the same to our Carrigaline office. New paint work, some creative touches here and there and our portfolio taking pride of place have made the office bright, colourful and a great place to work as always. We've also made some nice enhancements to our own website. Check out our new tool bar which gives lots of social media interactivity to the site. We've also created a custom 404 page - now if a file of ours goes missing or someone clicks on a bad link they'll get a nice surprise as well as a couple of ways to find what they're really looking for.

Hickeys Stoneworks - Brand New Design

Another great new customer, just signed up this month. The design and build of the new website is well under way for Hickey's Stoneworks. Hickey's have their roots entrenched as far back as 1765 and their knowledge, experience and competency has been acquired and handed down over generations. So now they are coupling their stoneworking traditions with the brand new website. Check out the sneak preview below.

Other News In Brief...

• New Logo for Mac Parts Direct

  We've just completed a great new logo for Cork compant Mac Parts Direct. As well the logo we've also put together a complete corporate branding package including business cards and letter head design. Check out their logo and lots more in our logo design portfolio.

• New Social Media Packages

  We're recently launched our new Social Media Packages. Getting your Facebook, Twitter or other social media account in order can be confusing and sometimes it's hard to know where to start but that's where we can help! We will sort out your branding and setup as well as provide advice on when, where and what to share with your audience. Find out more on our dedicated social media page.

Round-up of this week's web news & articles of interest

Facebook plans to reinvent Email
End of email as we know it? Facebook plan to combine email, SMS, IM, Chat, and other forms of online communication.

Google Forced To Delete Street View Collected Data
Sometimes seems Google are just one evil mastermind away from taking over the world!

Anyone can setup a Twitter account, however what you do after that can be quite a challenge. Twitter can be a powerful marketing tool if harnessed correctly, enabling users to build worthwhile relationships and gain access to helpful information. It's only cost is your time. So to help you make the most of it, here are our Top 10 Tips for using Twitter .

(Some of) What we've been up to this week month

New Business, New Website

We have been busy over the last number of weeks designing a new logo and website for BPI Consulting, a new company attached to Lean Sigma Systems Training. Owners Susan & Jerry were pretty clear from the outset what they wanted and thankfully are very pleased with the results - a clean, fresh, modern design. You can see a sneak preview below.

Kartworld Website Launched

The brand new site for Kartworld Adventure Centre was also launched in the last few weeks. The new site brings the experience you get at Kartworld to life as well as giving you all the information you need to spend a great day at Kartworld. It's a brilliant place for Christmas or birthday parties and all kinds of groups, so get onto the site now where you can book online.

All of us at Fireball have had a chance to experience the brilliant International Karting track at Kartworld and I even got to play a few games of paintball, which was excellent fun (though I was left with a few bruises!)

The Kartworld website was a great one to work on and, thanks to Clive, we also got to experience the fun there too. The site is full of new features such as vidoes and interactive maps - take a look at www.kartworld.ie now.

Eircom Spiders and Junior Spiders

We've been secretly working behind the scences on the Eircom Spiders and Junior Spiders websites. We've done lots of custom programming for both, including entry forms, table booking forms, online payments, public votes and online judging areas. All different and interesting and a great chance to be part of the buzz of the awards.

Awards, Awards, Awards!

Apart from working on the Eircom Spiders and Junior Spiders sites we've also been kept busy on many other prestigious awards websites including the PPI Radio Awards and All Ireland Marketing Awards. The AIM Awards, which recognise excellence in the marketing professions, have just launched for 2011 and are available to enter online now. The PPI Radio Awards 2010 took place in October and we were delighted, as always, to have been part of the excitement. We have looked after both websites for a number of years but we're always excited to work on them as each year is different. Thanks to both for being such great clients!

New Social Media Packages

We're currently helping out sports media company Ballywire Media with their social media presence. Getting your Facebook, Twitter or other social media account in order can be confusing and sometimes it's hard to know where to start but that's where we can help, as Ballywire recently found out! We will sort out your branding and setup as well as provide advice on when, where and what to share with your audience.

Other News In Brief...

• Deebert House Hotel choose our Ezine Manager for their email marketing

  The Deebert House Hotel in Co. Limerick are the most recent in a long line of happy customers who have chosen our FMG Ezine Manager to handle their email marketing. For a small one off fee we have given the hotel the ability to gather emails on their website, organise subscribers and lists and send their professionally designed email newsletters anytime to their long list of subscribers. Check out the Deebert House Hotel website to see it in action or find out more about it on our email marketing page.

• Animal Care Society Christmas Cards Now Available

  It's that time of year again! Just like clockwork, The Cork ACS has another batch of beautifully designed Christmas Cards available in their online store, Waterstones Bookstore in Cork and selected Maxi Zoo petstores. Every cent goes to the charity so get ordering! Visit www.animalcaresociety.ie

• Synergy Security Facebook Campaign

  Well done to the guys at Synergy for their recent Facebook competition - earning them over 500 new fans in the space of 2 days! "Like" Synergy on Facebook now

• Ecojel - Jellyfish Survey

  Jellyfish have been particularly abundant in our sea lately. If you have spotted any or have been unfortunate enough to be stung by one - you can now fill out a Jellyfish Survey on the Ecojel Website and help the team with their fantastic research. Visit JellyFish.ie

Round-up of this week's web news & articles of interest
- focus on Customer Service

5 Tips for Improving Your Social Customer Service
Get your customers coming back for more by using Social Media as a customer service tool. 1.7 million Irish people use Facebook! Go where the crowd is.

Small Gestures That Make A Huge Difference
Greg Canty from brilliant Cork based company Fuzion shares his thoughts on the small things - couldnt agree more.