tfpl blog

The right CV for you

Author: Jayne Eaton
TFPL Intelligent Resources, Consultant

I ran a "taster" session on CV and interviews tips and techniques on Wednesday 28th April. I was joined by 8 Information, Knowledge and Records Management professionals and we all squeezed into the TFPL boardroom: the group, a mixture of people who are currently working, candidates who've worked for us in the past and registered candidates who are between jobs, brought their own CVs and we had a lively discussion about what we thought should and should not go into them!

 
We discussed interviews and exchanged "war stories" of our own personal experiences. It seems that even though alot of the content of the presentation was common sense, it's worth reiterating as for some, it's been a long time since they were job hunting and 'fashions' in CV etiquette and interview styles can change quite abit.
 
It was an enjoyable hour with constructive conversation and suggestions and from initial feedback it was a success with everyone who attended. I do hope to run another one in a few months as I've had feedback from other people who couldn't attend that they would like to come along to a future event.
 
In conclusion my final words to anyone putting their CV together :  It's a very personal choice as our session highlighted.  Choose a style that best represents your communication style and your thinking, remember it's a marketing tool to sell you in to an organisation and don't over complicate it.  Good luck with your job search.

The Annual Salary Review - a considered approach is called for

Author: Anne Ashdown
TFPL Intelligent Resources, Consultant

I was interested to read an article produced by the consultancy firm Towers Watson entitled: “Recession: Leaving a Trail of Insecure Employees in its Wake” . 

The effects of the economic recession of 2008/2009 have impacted all major market sectors. This has also coincided with firms moving to outsource more of their support functions in all the areas that TFPL Intelligent Resources has traditionally recruited in, namely analysis, research, library and knowledge functions.  These combined effects have had something of a double whammy effect on the confidence of our traditional client base.

But there is a clear shift in attitude happening now. What strikes me is an apparent concern about performance and the challenge of keeping up with the demands of growth, with a team which has been stretched, and possibly depleted, in the last year or two. The evidence is an increased number of requests from our clients, benchmarking salaries for roles that have survived the downturn.

There are recurring questions, so I thought you might be interested in considering our current view, if it’s your turn to benchmark:  

• Simply to benchmark today’s salary of an Information Officer, a Knowledge Manager or a Research Analyst as it appears on the open market won’t give you an appropriate measure of the level of salary that will be sustainable for the year ahead. In a number of companies, salaries have been frozen in the last two years, or employees have worked reduced hours in order to safeguard their roles. Don’t therefore look at current data and base any salary review on a token increase on this.  As soon as there is an up-swing in recruitment, (we think we see this now) then it's likely that good people will be readily poached to roles offering better prospects, be they financial motivators or incentivised to move for career development.  

• Retention of valued staff will become an issue again. Anybody with a management remit should consider the opportunity cost and financial cost of having to replace a member of the team who transfers their skills and experience elsewhere. A good tie-in for key staff could be a reasonable payrise to make the employee feel valued but also don’t underestimate the value of recognition, career development and training.

Clearly there has to be a commercial balance, so we’re not advocating sweeping pay reviews across the board.  However, the momentum in vacant roles becoming available across all disciplines in the market is such that employers should take heed and be sure to take a measured and considered approach to their salary reviews this year.  Retention of key team members should be high up on the salary review agenda, so save your overall costs in the medium term.

We welcome your experience and thoughts in this area and would like to share insights if this is a topic you would like to discuss with us

Conference announcement: 'Evidence, Value and Impact: the LIS Research Landscape in 2010'

Author: Darron Chapman
TFPL, Managing Director

'Evidence, Value and Impact: the LIS Research Landscape in 2010'

 

Monday 28th June, 10:30-16:15

British Library Conference Centre, London, UK

Organised by the Library and Information Science Research Coalition

£100 (including VAT, lunch and refreshments)

http://lisresearch.org/conference-2010/

 

 

The Library and Information Science Research Coalition conference ‘Evidence, Value and Impact: the LIS Research Landscape in 2010’ takes place on Monday 28th June at the British Library Conference Centre in London. This one day event will consider perspectives on the LIS research landscape and will appeal to all LIS research stakeholders, ranging from funders to publishers, as well as practitioner researchers and academics. 

 

There will be access to expert speakers and peers from public, academic, special and corporate libraries, the health service, higher education and the corporate sector. Delegates can develop their knowledge and increase awareness of different aspects of research in the context of the conference themes - evidence, value and impact. Related research priorities will also be considered on the day e.g. identification of research opportunities, collaborators and funding; methods for enhancing the relevance of research outputs in services delivery; avenues for publishing research output; techniques for integrating research activities into everyday work practice.

 

The conference format includes a number of presentations including two keynotes and a "one minute madness" session in which delegates may opt to actively participate . There will be facilitated breakout sessions and opportunities to discuss LIS research issues informally during breaks. 

 

For more detailed information, the conference programme and delegate bookings please see the conference web site at http://lisresearch.org/conference-2010/, and the registration page at http://www.event-logistics.co.uk/lisrc10/lisrc10_registration.html

Help us map the market for business and competitor intelligence

Author: Julia Hordle
TFPL Intelligent Resources, Director - Corporate Intelligence Recruitment

Joining up with TFPL doesn’t mean the old “Intelligent Resources” team has lost its zeal for developing the market for skills in Intelligence disciplines. Far from it, the TFPL offering has diversified since we joined up last year. This has broadened the choice of roles in the TFPL recruitment portfolio for people with strong commercial and information/research/analytical skills.

Ivan (Radulovic) and I have been contributing  to the UK-CIF board and panel since a group of passionate practitioners decided to breathe bit more life into the CI forum in the UK, and not be quite so reliant on the US administration of SCIP. In particular, we are interested in mapping the communities of people in the UK with an interest in Intelligence.

In our Corporate Intelligence recruitment team, we already know that there is vibrant demand for people with the right mix of skills and experience for collection and communication of commercial intelligence, and more specifically, demand for people with the ability to see significance and steer strategic thinking. Practitioners exist within “pure” Consulting and Strategy roles, exist in Sales and Business pursuit, in Procurement/sourcing and in investment and advisory businesses. What is your interest? I’d love to know…

HOW YOU COULD PARTICIPATE:

NEXT EVENT:   The UK Competitive Intelligence Forum will be hosting its forthcoming networking event on 10th June around the theme of career planning. (please look out for event details nearer the time)

Market research for UK CIF:   HOW WELL DO WE KNOW OURSELVES?

To enrich the event in June we are undertaking some classic market research to obtain a foundation of understanding with respect to:

• How practitioners entered the discipline
• Their existing trials and tribulations, perception, value measurement, focus
• How practitioners will evolve

It will help us all to know the emerging market for skills in the UK better than we do at present – we are hoping to provide a hub of information and interest for the UK community.

Please help us all by completing the survey - It will only take 10 minutes and every recipient will receive a summary of the results, from UK CIF. 

Take the Survey 'Intelligent Intelligence Career Planning'

As of today, 28/04/2010, we have already had an encouraging response, but your input will help make sure what we get is an accurate and balanced overall picture. Please do join in.

For my sins, I’m also involved in planning the event on June 10^th and would be delighted to hear from anyone who would have an interest in speaking or joining a panel for debate, or providing some sponsorship to UK CIF. Please get in touch as soon as you can. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

SLA(e) are holding a SLA(m) evening

Author: Darron Chapman
TFPL, Managing Director

This will be a great opportunity to build and cement relationships; find out more about what your fellow professionals are currently concerned with, how they and their employers are dealing with today’s market, and where they think Information is headed. For further information please click here.

Kindly sponsored by SLA Europe, TFPL Ltd and Freepint

Date: 18 May 2010 

Strong demand for training in records management and Web 2.0

Author: Claire Valentine
TFPL, Training and Events

It has been a busy four months since Christmas and we have seen an increasing demand in the need for in house training, as organisations look to gain benefits from the tailoring and customisation that can be achieved by having a trainer come onsite to deliver a course specifically for a team or department.  This can work out very cost effective for organisations too, reducing travel costs and gaining the discounts that can be available through not paying for an external venue.  Key topics have been in records management and web 2.0  in particular how web 2.0 tools can be used effectively within organisations to facilitate communication and collaborative working.

This demand has been reflected on the public access schedule too where we have needed to add new dates on to the programme in these areas.  We also have a number of new courses on the programme that start to go live in May which cover Copyright issues for web 2.0, knowledge transfer between teams and an overview of information security.  Paul Pedley our resident expert trainer in copyright has developed a new course exploring the risks posed by re-using and producing copyright within the web 2.0 world.  Ian Wooler and Sandra Ward senior associates and trainers at TFPL have developed a new course looking at sharing of knowledge between teams and how to encourage this transfer.  We also have the pleasure to welcome new trainer Vic Parry to the team to run an Introduction to Information Security looking at the ISO 27001 2005 standard and what it means for your business.  Full details on these courses can be found in the training pages of our website.

We are looking forward to a busy summer and to meeting some of you on the courses and events we have coming up.

SharePoint offers new opportunities for information specialists

Author: Martin Sanderson
TFPL, Senior Consultant

Remembering Ralph Poole’s reflection in his past blog post that the days when IT developers managed (often with little or no success) all the processes for systems and user requirements analysis may be coming to an end with the arrival of SharePoint platforms.  With SharePoint much of the functionality is preconfigured and the most important prerequisite (and challenge) is deciding how to organize and present information to support users in their day to day operations and tasks. Poole concluded that “Unfortunately, for developers, this means MOSS 2007 needs configuration rather than development”.  Perhaps this is even more so with the introduction of SharePoint 2010.  So move over developers and move in information specialists who are well equipped to deal with information architecture, content types, metadata, search configuration and site navigation.

The Library of Congress to archive all "Tweets"

Author: Shooresh Golzari
TFPL, Consultant

According to this BBC article, The Library of Congress is set to archive every Tweet that has ever been and every Tweet there ever will be. In effect, this is an attempt to preserve the [social] historical context around world events (i.e.) what people were saying, for example:

• before and after Barrack Obama was elected as US president in 2008;
• the drama around the Iranian elections of 2009 as it was unfolding;
• or in reaction to the earthquake disaster of 2010 in Haiti. 

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging service, which allows users to post their thoughts on anything in no more than 140 characters; the number of users is well in excess of 60 million and ever growing and there are reportedly up to 55 million "Tweets" per day.  My first reaction to this news, given that number, was to wish any future historian luck in finding any gems amongst all the drivel. But... I then remembered the clever search mechanism built into Twitter ("hashtags") and Google's hand in enhancing search in Twitter is apparently also being utilised by The Library of Congress.