tfpl blog

WEB evolvement – one, two, three...

It does feel like the web today, or www, has all happened very fast. But it has taken 2 decades! Back in 1991 Tim Berners Lee first introduced the web to the public, having created the concept, developed the idea of ‘hypertext’, shaped the first web browser and editor, launched the world’s first website - http://info.cern.ch and gave users an introduction to getting started with their own websites.

Initially websites were there as a means to publish information. Estimates show that the 220 million pages in the 1990s, have grown to a number of 1 Trillion, but as Internet hosting is not restricted the answer is more likely to be ‘infinite’ and growing at that rate too! In the early nineties pc’s were gradually appearing in organisations. There were significant cost factors, training people on how to search, learn keyboarding skills, use DOS, the early non-windows operating system and so on. Mainframes had been around for some time, but only usable by computer programmers who had the skills of cobol, fortran, pascal and the like. In the early nineties the pc was the tool used by the library and information staff to search the bibliographic databases as a profound improvement to thumbing though the printed indexes. Amstrad led the word processing market, then other software providers came along and finally Microsoft conquered the market with their ‘office’ suite. At the same time PCs became laptops, netbooks, iPads and communication moved from ‘wires’ to ‘wireless’ with mobile technology now commonplace.  Another overwhelming advance as to how people can work both in and outside the workplace to access real-time data repositories to save and access information and data.

The web has evolved in tandem. These slides (Download Web 3) take a light hearted look at the changes, which almost typify generations x,y,and z.

What is interesting to information professionals, is the increasing need for the use of taxonomies, metadata standards, tagging, information architecture, enterprise searching and discovery tools.

As the web has evolved so has the requirement for LIS skills. With available information growing at an infinite rate ‘googling’ for items becomes an almost impossible task. Recall is up, precision is down. Indexing/classifying items is the only way through the myriad of websites and pages. Automatic tagging software only really works well once the taxonomy and metadata rules have been set up. Intelligent systems can now clock what we read, films we see, clothes we buy, restaurants we visit so they can provide us with the information before we even know we want it. Sounds familiar? Push and pull? All points in one direction. Long live the information professional!

- Vivienne Winterman, Senior Knowledge and Information Management Consultant

Capitalising on Social Media – Recruitment in a Digital Era

by Luisa Jefford, Director, TFPL

The emergence of social and professional networking tools has had a profound effect on the way the world collaborates and shares knowledge and expertise.  TFPL, are more aware of this than most, we have daily contact with organisations and employees whose roles are to aid the transfer of knowledge, information, intelligence and insight within their domain. 

Having celebrated 20 years in recruitment this year I have seen the landscape change dramatically.  My introduction into recruitment was a folder full of CVs that got added to and searched on a daily basis by the Consultants, people were contacted, submitted and roles obtained. 

Working in a market where demand far outstripped supply there was little need to have a more pro-active approach when meeting your clients requirements, you matched people looking to recruit staff with people who were actively looking for work.  Fast forward 20 years and you are sitting in a market where there is a war for talent and the recruitment business is a competitive one.  People looking for work are and should continue to be prized assets for any employment business and having a strategy for attracting talent is vital for an organisation that wants to stay ahead of the competition. 

These days the competition comes in many guises and perhaps one of the largest impacts on the recruitment industry has been a sharp increase in people leveraging their own professional network to widen the opportunities available, combine this with astute organisations and their hiring managers effectively using a variety of tools and techniques as part of their talent management strategy and as the middle man you are in danger of being kept out of the loop. 

These tools include Linked In, Viadeo, Twitter, Monster, Facebook to name a few and reach an audience that perhaps aren’t always aware they are actively job seeking.   The power of a casual internet search for a new opportunity should not be underestimated by any recruiter.  These are the people we need to work hard to attract.  In addition they allow individuals to maintain contact with organisations and colleagues that perhaps would not have happened before the emergence of these tools. 

So in today’s world, with much talk about Recruitment 3.0, what should we be doing?  At TFPL we believe that the combination of our expertise, market knowledge and strongly developed professional relationships with our clients and a robust strategy for using social media tools and techniques is truly the winning combination. 

From a job hunters perspective these tools give you valuable market insight into roles that are being recruited and salaries being offered  but also offer organisational intelligence, who are the growing organisations and which industries do they operate in.  They should certainly be in your job hunting strategy.  However, it is worth remembering that a TFPL can and will offer you this and more.

At TFPL we use a variety of tools and techniques to manage existing relationships with our clients and candidates, sell our services, give distinct marketing and pr messages to a wider audience whilst remembering that doing all of this makes us more visible to our market place and also people sitting on the edges of current market.  In addition we also remember that doing this makes us more visible to the masses than a well developed website ever will, so quality assurance of our message is an important part of this. 

Join the experts in the Cloud

In putting together the programme for our latest event on 'the Cloud', we've had the opportunity to speak to a wide range of people, all with their own key challenges to address. The biggest one, aside from cost and efficiency benefits available in IT service provision, has been around realising attainable business improvement, for example, in reducing the cost of doing business whilst maintaining and improving information security and integrity.

Andrew Jordan, CTO from Thomson Reuters has been overseeing a huge data migration programme at Thomson Reuters, amalgamating the organisation's disparate business information sources into a centralised cloud based platform with the aim, in doing so, to reduce and ultimately eliminate duplication, gradually ensuring that business data is current and relevant.

A must have when the organisation relies on the quality of its data when its research is aiding companies avoid dealing with money launderers and ensuring that they conduct comprehensive due diligence. Andrew has been particularly concerned with the mapping of the information architecture and metadata to aid this process and make the migration to a successful new system. And rightly so. Without a sound information architecture which reflects corporate content requirements there is always the danger that the same old problems will be migrated to the Cloud with the data. Andrew will be presenting a really interesting case study on his work at our event in October.

Simon Smith, COO of Extrinsica Global has realised business benefits in both enhanced collaborative working in the cloud and solid security of data that can be accessed without an Internet connection but still using cloud services. Data security is a major concern for all those holding data whether on internal systems or at a data centre. His story reflects on both his own company, and his experience of working with large global organisations where he has been able to meet very high level security requirements through a cloud system.

It will be really quite interesting to see how what he's done at Extrinsica would weigh up against the dilemma of putting regulated data with its legal implications (which many of our clients face) on the Cloud

For further further information on the Cloud event programme which has now been finalised please visit http://www.tfpl.com/cloudevent 

aside from cost and efficiency  available in IT service provision

Implementation of the Agency Worker Regulations

The Agency Workers Regulations, approved by Parliament in January 2010 and scheduled for implementation in October 2011, implement the EU Agency Workers Directive 2008/104/EC, which grants to temporary workers finding employment through an agency, similar rights and entitlements to full-time workers within the same workplace, viz:

• From their first day, Temporary workers will gain the right to:
-  Equal use of collective workplace amenities
- Be notified of other vacancies at the hirer (client)
• After 12 weeks (which can only be broken by a six week break), Temporary workers become entitled to equal terms in relation to pay and holidays and working time rights.

There are several distinct exclusions and non-exclusions that will affect recruiters:

• Only genuine self-employed workers are not included in the scope of AWR
• “Self-employed” does not include candidates working through umbrella companies, who are explicitly included in the scope of the AWR.
• Managed service contracts are included

As such, some of our clients and candidates may need to be aware of their duties, obligations and expectations under the new rules.  All will have a role to play in ensuring the spirit and letter of the law are applied.  TFPL is working with the Recruitment and Employment Confederation to ensure that the way we apply the new rules is fair to clients and candidates alike, and that any changes take place with the minimum disruption.