If you're new here: Built In Ireland was launched in April 2026 as a guide to government work-experience schemes (CE, Tús, WPEP, Springboard+, ARC). Useful, but quietly. Today we're launching the active part — The Forge, a cooperative-project programme where members ship real features on real Irish sites and walk away with a verifiable reference from Raven Design.

This post explains what The Forge actually is, why we built it now, and how to join.

The problem this is for

The Irish job market in 2026 has three groups of people who can't get hired through normal channels:

Recent grads. Every junior role asks for two-plus years of experience. The CS degree was four years of college and somehow didn't include shipping to production. They send fifty applications and hear nothing.

Recently laid-off tech workers. The Meta / Stripe / Intercom / Workday cuts. Sharp, mid-career, suddenly idle. Don't need a course — need to keep building, mentor a few people, and stay sharp while interviews are slow.

Returners, career-changers, newcomers, hobbyists. Anyone whose CV has a gap, a pivot, or qualifications the local market doesn't yet trust. The whole "tell me about your experience" interview round goes badly because there isn't a clean way to talk about it.

All three groups have one thing in common. They can't prove they can do the work. They could absolutely do it — they just have no recent, visible, verifiable evidence to put on the table.

What we made

The Forge is a four-week cooperative-project cohort. You join, you pick a real ticket on a real Irish site, you ship under a mentor's eye, you get reviewed. At the end:

  • A signed PDF reference letter on Raven Design letterhead, co-signed by Built In Ireland. Names the project, dates, what you shipped, the impact (real visitor counts on a real site).
  • A matching public verifiable URL at builtinireland.ie/references/<your-slug>. Recruiters open it in one click. Word-for-word match with the PDF. Cannot be edited after issue.
  • A portfolio piece — your work, live, with real users, your name in the commit history.
  • A network — your cohort, your mentor, the cohorts after you.

The criteria for earning a reference are published, not negotiable: four shipped tickets, four weeks of presence, mentor sign-off, a two-paragraph self-reflection. You know exactly where you stand at week two. See the sample reference here.

The three launch projects

Cohort 1 is shipping to three of Raven Design's own portfolio sites. Each one is real, public, has real users, and has a backlog longer than Kali can ship alone:

Beyond cohort 1, we'll bring in projects from Irish community groups (parish councils, GAA clubs, Tidy Towns, charities) — the kind of project that produces a quotable reference because the work helped a real local organisation. Submit yours here.

What it costs

For members: nothing. Ever. You're paid in experience, a portfolio piece, a verifiable reference, and a network. There's no membership tier, no premium cohort, no upsell. If you can't pay, you can still join — that's the whole point.

For employers: posting a role is free; the first five hires through Built In Ireland are free during launch; after that a flat 8% success fee on first-year base, payable on start date. No retainers. No exclusivity.

The vibe-coding track

One specific track in The Forge is for people with no prior coding experience. Six weeks. The stack is Cursor + Claude + GitHub + Vercel — the same one Kali uses to ship Raven Design's 50+ Irish sites. The project you build is for somewhere you actually care about: your home town, your GAA club, your parish, your community garden, your repair café. By week six you have a live site at its own URL, a portfolio piece, and the same reference any other Forge member earns.

Vibe coding cohort details here.

What "Built In Ireland" is now

Two front doors, one site:

  • The Forge — for workers, learners, returners, the on-the-bench tech crowd, hobbyists. Where you go to ship work and earn a reference.
  • Built In Ireland (the homepage) — for Irish employers. Where you go to hire from the Forge talent pool.

The scheme guides (CE, Tús, WPEP, Springboard+, ARC, BTWEA) we wrote in April are still here and still useful — find them on the blog. The Forge sits alongside them, not on top of them.

How to join

If you're a candidate: apply via the form on The Forge. Tell us which door you're walking through and which project pulls you. We confirm a cohort slot within 48 hours.

If you're hiring: post a role on the homepage or email kali@ravendesign.ie directly.

If your community group has a project: submit it. We review monthly.

One last thing

If this resonates and you'd like to help in any way that isn't joining — share this post with someone who needs it. Cohort 1 will hire by word of mouth. The people who'd benefit most from a verifiable reference and four weeks of mentored work are mostly not currently reading career blogs. They're being told their CV needs work. They're being told to network. They're being told to learn a new framework. Send them a link to The Forge instead.

— Kali