The PlanetRecruit Blog

The Job of the Recruitment Futurologist

Being a futurologist has always struck me as an odd job, like a professional daydreamer or fantasist. Personal feelings aside, their musing makes for good copy in the tabloids. Recently I read a piece discussing the future of tablet computers, phones and social media suggesting that all of these would be combined into a single headset with a drop down visor over one of our eyes, which displays information about the person you are looking at based on the their social network profile.
 
The 'vision' was that you would be able to see people who have similar hobbies or pastimes, their relationship status so on. I'm not heavy on social networking but this whole thing just sounds strange to me. This said, it did occur to me that in the same way you could display your personal availability and other details, you could use your social network profile it to find a new job.

Maybe you could indicate your current role and willingness to be approached about new work in a floating bubble above your head, possibly even with a salary attached. For example: ‘Java Developer, Available, no less than £350 per day’. You might be doing your weekly shop and you get a tap on the shoulder from an IT Director on his weekly shop who then gives you his card and asks you to get in touch (perfect!); although there would probably be no such thing as business cards. Maybe you'd have to bump heads or something. Finding a job would be so easy. 
 

Industry Event: Women in IT Advantage Session

As part of its commitment to encouraging more women to work within the IT industry, FDM Group will be holding a “Women in IT Advantage Session” on 17th August at its London Bridge office.
 
The free event will give female graduates and students the opportunity to learn more about the different career options and support available to them, should they wish to pursue a career in the field.
 
FDM Chief Operating Officer Sheila Flavell said, “We are delighted to be holding this event with the aim of promoting the lucrative world of IT to this latest generation of female graduates.”
 
Representatives from key organisations such as the UKRC and Women in Technology will be delivering presentations to give graduates an insight into how their organisations operate and benefit women in IT.
 

More Women Required to Combat the IT Skills Shortage

On 30th June 2011, UCAS revealed that 378,138 women applied for a place at university this year, compared to 291,818 men.

The statistics also revealed that 60,219 prospective students applied to study Computer Science, with 12,023 seeking to take technology courses.

But according to the e-skills 2011 report ‘Technology Insights’, only 9% of students studying A Level Computing and 15% of those reading the subject at university are female. 

And in March 2011, around the time of International Women’s Day, industry research revealed that only 16% of all IT job seekers are women.

Bob Clift, Head of Higher Education Programmes at e-skills, explained one of the reasons behind the female shortage: “What a lot of women don’t realise is that most IT roles are business focused and are equally applicable to professionals of either sex. The problem the industry still faces, is the common perception that IT roles are reserved for ‘geeky’ men but this couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Making niche technology mainstream

Apple could be about to do for the cloud what it did for the MP3 player and the tablet computer – make previously niche technology mainstream.

For most, the first MP3 player was the first generation iPod, released in 2002 – when in fact they had been around since 1998. Most recently, since the release of the iPad manufacturers and people alike are falling over themselves to release and buy tablet computers. However, the concept of tablet computing has been around for some time, with Microsoft trying it as far back as 2001.

These innovations have hugely changed the way we think about and consumer media. Take music, for example. Many swore never to give up their CD collections and to continue buying CDs after the iPod release. Compressed music doesn't sound as good – true – and nothing beats owning a real CD or record, yet most music lovers will now have extensive digital collections. The same holds true for books, with research indicating more digital books than paper copies were purchased last year.

Navigating the technology and applications market

Making sure that we meet the needs of our clients means that we are constantly keeping an eye on emerging technologies, staying on top of demand, so that when a new type of requirement materialises, we are in a position to respond and offer expert assistance. This does involve an element of guesswork and sometimes when you call heads it will come up tails from time to time.

We recently took such a plunge when we began providing specialist services to those looking to hire mobile application developers, specifically the development of new applications using the Android platform. Entering a new market takes time and money so it was with some satisfaction this week that I learnt that the number of Android mobiles has passed the number of iphones for the first time. Gartner research predicts that Android will account for almost 50 per cent of the smartphone market by the end of 2012, giving it an enormous lead on its competitors.

The market is ever more steadily moving towards applications and devices that can be used on the move. While we don’t yet have a credible rival to the iPad tablet, we are surely only a few upgrades away from having an iPad killer on the market, most likely running on Google's honeycomb platform.

Digital Fame

Google Books reportedly now contains over five million books. That’s 500 billion words covering over 500 years: a seriously impressive figure. But even more impressive is what you can do with 500 billion words – as long as they’re digitised.

The big change doesn’t come from the sheer mass of words and numbers but from the fact the text is stored in a computer, enabling quick and easy searches for words or phrases you’re interested in. If you’ve ever tried to find a particular quote in, say, ‘The Complete Works of Shakespeare’, then you’ll understand why this is a big deal. 

But digital books aren’t just a useful toy for English Literature students. Researchers have studied these five million books and counted the number of times words appear in them from 1800 to the year 2000, tracking how our use of word usage has changed in that period. So far, so academic.

A cautious peek into the future of social media recruitment

Using social networking sites – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – to match jobseekers to jobs and vice versa has generated a lot of buzz, and not without good reason. But while social media will almost certainly change forever the way people go about searching for jobs, there seems to be real confusion as to how these tools can be used effectively.

Social media allows users to filter messages and contacts, providing a partial solution to the mountains of spam that have devalued email as a medium of communication. The idea seems to be that they can do the same for recruitment, too – filtering irrelevant content via social media sites.

Copyright Registration

A unique aspect of copyright, when compared with other intellectual property rights, is that copyright law grants the author of a work certain rights by virtue of his or her creation of the work. In other words, copyright arises automatically on creation and lasts for an extensive period thereafter.

While active registration may not be required in this country, there are often advantages in doing so in jurisdictions such as the US, and in some countries registration is required.

The creator of a work automatically gets copyright protection for their lifetime and for 70 years after their death. For some, this extensive protection and lack of any formal registration requirement is a favourable aspect of the copyright regime, because it tends to promote the creation of new works.

Is the East End of London the best place to build Silicon Valley?

The government has announced the creation of a new technology hub in London. The hub, intended as the UK-version of Silicon Valley in California, is to be known as East London Tech City. The aim is to create and foster an environment where growing high-tech companies can raise investment and enable the UK to compete globally as a centre for high tech growth and innovation. On board already are BT, Google, Intel, Cisco and Facebook, who have all pledged to create operations at the proposed site that stretches from Shoreditch down to the Olympic Park in Stratford. 

The policy initiatives, which will be introduced to help the project along, include updating intellectual property legislation and making government IT procurement open to smaller businesses.

I believe any move to help the UK technology industry progress is great news. However, the decision reflects some more urgent political needs, such as securing a legacy for the 2012 Olympics and demonstrating the government’s commitment to creating private sector jobs. Maybe this would explain why the UK’s current high tech centres in Cambridge and the Thames Valley area haven’t been highlighted for this sort of inward business investment, despite already being home to a multitude of global companies and a world-class university.

Widening the net

Chances are that as you’re reading a technology blog, you’re at least reasonably internet savvy, as is pretty much anyone and everyone these days. Except the 9.2 million adults UK adults who have never used the internet, of course.

It pays to occasionally remember that there are still a lot of people who don’t or can’t utilise the internet to take advantage of the invaluable information, services and skills it provides (as well as some of the not-so-useful but unfortunately still life-changing elements. Damn you, Zuckerberg). This is why 18-24 October has been designated national ‘Get online’ week.

Organised by UK Online Centres – a government-backed organisation to increase internet skills – a week of around 3,000 events across the country are planned to take place at libraries and community centres to promote wider digital inclusion, essentially giving people a chance to experience the wonders of the net, possibly for the first time.