tfpl blog

Business Information : Resources Free to All

by Anne Ashdown, Recruitment Consultant

Arriving at London’s Guildhall last night for the inaugural meeting of ASLIB’s Business Information Community of Practice launch, I could sense a frisson of interest amongst the crowd of information professionals who had gathered to learn more about this new networking group. I wish ASLIB every success in the uptake of interest in this new initiative.

It was a very convivial event, well organised and for me represented my first visit to the City Business Library. Goretti Considine, Head of the CBL had offered the use of the library for the event and gave the first talk of the evening which was an overview of how the CBL has been involved in marketing and engaging with the business community, particularly in these times of little or no budget.

Her talk was informative and once it hit home that they are a FREE resource to any member of the public it dawned on me just how much a valuable resource the CBL is, particularly for the self-employed and SMEs and of particular relevance to me as a Recruiter to the Business Information community, an essential resource for  those job seekers who are looking to gain or refresh their business information research skills.

With free access to a range of business research tools including Datamonitor, Mint, EIU etc. it is an ideal opportunity for jobseekers who are looking to upskill their online research skills or maybe those returning to work after a period of absence who need to refresh their skills. As a recruiter, I am often asked by candidates how they can gain experience using research tools when they don’t have a job and therefore access to a range of tools. I will now be pointing them in the direction of the library team at CBL. They also have a Facebook page which is proving a useful marketing tool for their events,  http://www.facebook.com/#!/CityBusinessLibrary  for anyone interested in exploring their facilities further.

Youth Employment Meeting with Students from John Ruskin College

by Matt Woods, Recruitment Consultant, Temporary and Contracts Team

Yesterday afternoon we had the pleasure of welcoming 13 students and two staff members from John Ruskin College in Croydon to TFPL to discuss job searching and employment for young people.

With youth employment very much in the news, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) keen to encourage Recruitment Companies to engage with schools and colleges to discuss the ways young people can make themselves more marketable in this the most challenging job market for many years.

Amidst the media gloom about the prospects for young people, it was great to meet such an enthusiastic and committed group, some of whom are looking forward to university, some to apprenticeships and others to getting straight into work.  It’s common to think about the barriers young people face when looking for work, but the students from John Ruskin College, being well-versed in the use of social media and having been well-guided by their tutors in the importance of networking, have many advantages and opportunities that other job-seekers won’t have.  We looked at CVs and interview skills, using the internet and social networks to find jobs and the importance of perseverance.

In the current job market, recruitment companies will need to play their part in helping schools and colleges to prepare young people for the job market.  It’s an area we’re expecting to hear a lot more about in the news and an area in which we expect to be working with the REC in future.

Library and Information Services Open Day at the House of Commons

House of Commons Department of Information Services Open Day for Librarians & Information Officers

by Helen Trudgeon, Recruitment Consultant

Last week saw the annual House of Commons Department of Information Services Open Day. Starting in the impressive Portcullis House, a group of around 60 librarians and information officers were  given a highly informative outline of the House of Commons’ library services by Bob Twigger, the Director of Information Services for Members, which was followed up by an interesting guide to the Reference Services Section by its head, Dora Clark. 

Employing a staggering 150 people made up of subject specialists, economists and IT experts as well as researchers, librarians and information specialists,  the department responds to around 30,000 enquiries annually - an average of around 56 a year for each of the 82% of MPs (and their aides) who use their services regularly.

Katharine Marke, Head of the Library Resources Section then gave us an overview of their services, which include acquisitions, LMS and catalogue management, conservation of parliamentary documents and disaster recovery planning. We were then given a brief overview of the Parliamentary Outreach Service by Matt Ringer, who outlined their work in encouraging greater public engagement with the House of Commons and the House of Lords across the country.

Following a demonstration of their online resources, he day was rounded off by a visit to the Members’ Library, which is situated very close to the chamber of the House of Commons itself. We heard it described as the only single quiet place in the whole of Parliament and enables members to avoid computers, phones and other noisy distractions for a few minutes’ peace and concentration.  Finally, we visited the floor of the House of Commons, although disappointingly, with Parliament in recess, we didn’t have the opportunity to listen to any debates.

Can KIM help organisations to be more socially responsible?

Monday night saw the first Connect networking evening of 2012. Our presentations looked to answer the question on whether KIM can really have an effect on organisations to develop their actions to be more socially responsible. We had two very different speakers, Stuart Jackson from Actis representing the corporate sector and Nick Temple from Social Enterprise UK representing the third sector. The contrasting presentations provided much food for thought but ultimately showed that knowledge and information management has a strong effect on helping organisations become more socially responsible. Members of TFPL Connect can view the slides from the evening by logging into the member’s site.

What struck me from the presentations was the evidence that social enterprises are contributing a great deal in terms of revenue to the British economy and in some cases out stripping SME’s. In addition, that it is becoming increasingly important for individuals to have meaning and purpose at work performance. It seems we are moving away from a total focus on money, (clearly given the current economic climate, that sort of way of working cannot last for long); to a more valued orientated perspective where it is not just monetary remuneration that plays a key part.

Other discussions from the tables:

When Stuart spoke of his organisation he used certain words and phrases. His job title could have been CSR person as that was considered the outcome of his role. It was queried whether organisations were only getting involved in social enterprise because of the fear of losing business and it was another tick in the box when tendering. Some people felt that Cadburys did that because they were losing market share. However, some people felt that was fair enough as they need to protect their business.

Another discussion was around how you would get the board and stakeholders to accept the lower rate of profit in order to put something back in to the community. Also there seemed to be an interesting thought that if your company worked with a range of clients would that company need to be careful about the areas they invested in and supported in case it clashed with their clients interests.

There was also a discussion around the effect on job role descriptions and skills. As a consequence of the organisation being more socially responsible would that mean a change in responsibilities or skills required?

Out of the box SharePoint search relevancy rankings

by Shooresh Golzari, Information Architecture Consultant

Some quick facts about out of the box Sharepoint search rankings I put together for a client a few months ago.

Folder/site structure

Another reason to refrain from deep folder and site structures and stick to a broader shallower information architecture; the deeper the required content is in the file/site plan, the lower its relevancy and ranking.  So if you search for a specific piece of content using natural language search (search box), it will appear lower in rankings than the wrong content with a similar metadata profile if the latter is higher up in the site/folder hierarchy.

Click through

The more a search result is clicked on from the search results page the higher it appears in the rankings

Search term text match

The closer the match between search term and title or other important metadata field of the document, the higher the result.

Social ranking

Content with more favourable ratings are ranked higher in results.

Result type

Word documents and web pages are ranked higher than other formats such as PP or excel.  That is why it is important to have a filter for file type.

Emerging Risks...

by Lee Barnes, Recruitment Consultant- Risk Sector

I attended the Emerging Risks conference held by Commercial Risk Europe on Wednesday 15th, found it to be extremely informative and helpful in identifying emerging markets within economically prosperous countries with china overtaking all countries in prosperity and growth second only to America and the German export of vehicles helping to boost their economy while the UK fall down the table struggling with its financial debt in most areas due to a reluctance to spend and invest by banks.

Key risk concerns for business at present being Supply Risk, Cyber Risk, and adequate and relevant Insurance Risk. Interesting also that Lloyds when asking their top 500 management professionals listed Talent and Skills shortages as their second biggest concern.
I found there to be an interesting thought that the role of the Risk Manager and the Insurance Manager seems to be merging, will they become one of the same. And that there are no new risks just old ones that are becoming more frequent over the past 10 or so years with the increased speed of the economy.

The Growth of Social Media

by Denise Harmer, Recruitment Consultant

I attended my first NetikX event on Tuesday where Steve Dale and Geoff McCaleb (social media mobile consultant) shared some interesting statistics about social media which is undoubtedly here to stay given that staggeringly two thirds of the population visit a social network site once a month and Facebook has 800 million users...

The future of social media is clearly growth, Facebook’s strategy for example is to encourage users to spend more time on the site, this will soon be a a possibility as they are about to launch Timeline which will encourage the user to spend more time uploading and sharing information. Another major focus of social media will be its mobility -  by 2013, it is predicted that mobile devices will provide more people with their online experiences than desktops.

A few facts – 1 in 3 companies now use some form of social media to recruit (eg LinkedIn), 47% of journalists used twitter as a source in 2010, 50% of the population uses Facebook.
Its official – social media is here to stay and who knows, in ten years time email may be replaced and we could be operating in a Skype based in environment conversing face to face via a mobile platform.