tfpl blog

So, what is the market really like?

Even before it had begun the majority of the UK population knew 2009 wasn’t going to be the easiest year for career opportunities.  Now, 4 weeks into the working year and there are evidential signs that the “recession”, which many of us had hoped was a figment of the media’s imagination, is in fact a reality.

Unsurprisingly TFPLs recruitment service has been contacted by a record number of candidates looking to begin their job search.  It’s not difficult to guess the reasons why… in the majority of cases this is because of the unfortunate, though inevitable, redundancies and restructuring many organisations have faced in their efforts to cut costs.

It’s hard to imagine which is worse – facing the fact that you have lost your job or that you are lucky enough to be employed with the slight caveat of having the focus of your role so significantly changed that it no longer appeals to you.  In addition, there are those individuals that think that whilst not affected yet and hopefully not at all, they need to keep their options open, and wisely so.

“So, what is the market REALLY like?”  is a question I am asked consistently and my response is that whilst there are fewer opportunities to be had, particularly in the private sector, and competition is fierce we have noticed that the public sector remains very much unaffected.  However, It’s not all doom and gloom, we have had some fantastic assignments in over the last few months and whilst it may take slightly longer than you had anticipated finding your next career move you should be re-assured it is out there.

Our advice to anyone who is not yet affected by the “credit crunch” is to take action before it bites.  A positive mental attitude will be one of your unique selling points, difficult if you have been through the redundancy process, a flexible approach to your next move, a winning CV and to remain well networked are all things that will cost you nothing but will go a long way in helping you through what undoubtedly feel like difficult times.

Luisa Jefford

Director - Information and Knowledge Management Recruitment, TFPL Ltd

The cause of 'SharePoint sprawl'

by James Lappin

SharePoint is taking on some of the features of a monopoly.  It is becoming a byword for Enterprise Content Management, as 'iPod' is a byword for music players and 'Google' is a byword for search.  If an information need bubbles up in an organisation, someone, somewhere is going to say 'can we do that with SharePoint?'

 

SharePoint seems to be everywhere.   You know there is a ball of string somewhere in your dad's shed, in everyone's dad shed.  You know there are some SharePoint licences kicking around in your organisation, in everyone's organisation.

If you haven't chosen it for your document and records management system then your organisation will still end up considering SharePoint for your intranet, or your website, or for collaboration, or for an attempt at introducing some form of social networking. 

When you purchase SharePoint 2007 for your intranet you aren't just buying an intranet module of SharePoint. SharePoint  isn't a suite of modules, it is an integrated product. When you purchase SharePoint to roll-out as an intranet you are getting far more than just the SharePoint publishing sites, which are intended for the type of content traditionally posted to an intranet. Instead you are getting all of the different types of SharePoint site, including:

• team sites  (a place for  a team or work group to collaborate on documents and other outputs, store documents, share news, and display and manipulate key data) 
• my sites (providing each individual with a storage area, and a means of communicating information about themselves to the rest of the organisation) 
• all of the other specialist types of site you can set up in SharePoint, including  document workspaces (where people can collaborate around one particular document), wiki sites, and meeting workspaces (where people can plan and record one meeting)

If you choose SharePoint for your intranet and chose to turn on team collaboration sites, unexpected consequences may occur.  If the implementation team rolling out SharePoint are primarily accustomed to rolling out intranets, where a small percentage of the organisation contribute a small percentage of their team's information, then they may be unprepared for the chaos that can ensue from an uncontrolled roll-out of SharePoint team collaboration sites. 

Team collaboration sites are meant to accomodate the messy day-to-day work of teams and work groups.   You might hope that each team makes do with one team site,  in which they house as many document libraries as they need, for all the different projects that they undertake, accompanied by collaborative goodies such as a shared calendar, a shared contact list etc.    But in practice the team site will be sprouting sub-sites like there is no tomorrow.  

When a new project starts the desire will come for a new sub-site, like a fresh new exercise book at the start of school term, to accomodate the specific communications and information preferences of the group working on the project.  Each sub-site can, in turn, accomodate as many document libraries as its owners want, and sprout as many sub-sites, meeting workspaces, wiki sites, document workspaces etc. as its owners need. You can see where the phenomenon known as 'SharePoint sprawl' comes from!

One way of lightening the overload

As mentioned here, I only recently started to use Twitter after being convinced of its very qualitative qualities at our SP3 Summit. Although previous to that, I did feel that I might be missing a trick (or two) in not subscribing to such things, this concern was outweighed by my reluctance to (a) clutter my bookmarks with them, (b) regularly visit and maintain my presence on them or, to sum things up in two words: information overload.

After subscribing to Twitter I endeavoured (for a while at least) to find a solution to these problems and ended up testing out a few services which only seemed to either half address my concerns or simply added to them.  I gave up.

Little did I know that the answer was under my nose.

Last week, I was asked by our recruitment arm to deliver a complimentary training session to a number of temps themed around Web 2.0.  Immediately, I started to construct its content and structure in my mind.  The focus would be on an emergent and, what is to many people still, a somewhat controversial Web 2.0 phenomenon known as microblogging (specifically web2ools such as Twitter). 

I then considered that these temps are more than likely to subscribe to such things as Facebook already and may view the advent of additional applications as an unwanted burden on their existence, in much the same way as I would have... This resparked my previous endeavour, this time motivated by a strong desire to deliver a satisfying training session consisting of a solution to this problem. 

Serendipity! This is what was right under my nose:

(click to enlarge)

You can see my various widgets linking to my favourite web2ools from one platform, where I can interact with them (albeit in a lite version) without going to the website proper.

iGoogle's been a revelation but are there any alternatives? And how do they rate in comparison?

The Ministry of Justice overwhelmed by information requests

On Monday, The Times* reported that the Ministry of Justice has been unable to satisfactorily process a third of the enquiries it is obliged to answer under the Freedom of Information Act.  The irony was highlighted by the Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Herbert. He pointed out that it was the MoJ which introduced the legislation and blamed his government counterpart, questioning the commitment of the present establishment to open government as a result. In its defence, the Ministry has recognised the extent and seriousness of the problem and stated that it is working with the Information Commissioner's Office in taking steps to improve compliance to its FoI obligations. 

Political sentiments aside, this demonstrates the continued information and records management difficulty that government institutions still face in fulfilling their statutory FoI obligation of transparency and accountability, a full four years after the legislation took effect and nine years after its introduction. 

*Backlog in Freedom of Information requests grows. (2009, January 12). The Times, p. 18.