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A recent survey by PayStream indicates this growing strength. 1/3 of contractors use recruitment agencies when they are looking for their next role. 73% of contractors asked had positive feedback about working with agencies and continued to state that the agencies professionalism, understanding of their skills and matching their skills to roles are what sets agencies apart from their competitors.

The survey also delves into the recruiter’s side and how recruiters work with contractors. The results collected were 44% of recruiters having given contractors advice and interview preparation. However this differs from sector to sector. The findings go further to explain that around 23% of contractors would like agencies to provide them with some form of interview preparation service, although 53% where not interested.

“In light of this, agencies may want to look at offering this kind of support more often because some contractors may not appreciate the benefit of interview preparation until they’ve actually received it.” Paul Malley, Managing Director, PayStream.

84% of contractor that were offered an interview preparation service found the service to be “very useful” or “quite useful”.

“The majority of recruitment agencies (76 per cent) preferred to find out about a contractor's skills via face-to-face interviews, with 60 per cent preferring telephone interviews and 12 per cent embracing video technologies, such as FaceTime or Skype.”  via: TheGlobalrecruiter.com

The relationship between contractors and agencies are being strengthened by the nature of the recruitment industry. Recruitment is a people business and contractors (along with everyone else) crave human interaction.

Certes relationship with our contractors is second to none. With excellent IT industry knowledge and a personal dedicated service from beginning and beyond your placement, Certes will help you find the right placement for you. Offering assistance such as ‘CV amendments’ and ‘Interview preparation’ done face to face or via telephone. If you’re in search for your next contract role, visit Certes for a wide array of IT contract vacancies across the UK.

However, many people are becoming complacent and are letting their security clearances expire, and with the Defence Security Service (DSS) having to carry out more and more checks, this can have damaging effects on your prospects.

A recent report on DSS indicated it had a backlog of more than 500,000 applicants. This means that it can take employees whose clearances have expired between six months and two years to receive their new one — an unacceptable time frame for many potential employers that have significant contracts to deliver in the short-term.

The easiest way to maintain security clearance is to take “cleared” positions with companies or government agencies and there is certainly no shortage of those job roles in the current market.

Your active security clearance is one of the hottest tickets in town so don’t let it expire!

Virtual Learning Environments (VLE’s) provides accessibility between teachers and students. Teachers can monitor the progress of students and students have quick access to test results and lesson materials.  Access to information is only available to authorised staff and students who can only gain access to their own personal accounts.

Cloud systems are also used for holding information concerning everyone in a school which includes personal and health. As with VLE’s, this information is only accessible to authorised staff.

However schools are not experts in security and feel that they are not responsible for the security of the software, this is the responsibility of the software provider. This may lead to information schools have stored being vulnerable to attacks. Computer weekly emphasises that “the responsibility is clearly shared. While the physical security aspects are the responsibility of the infrastructure providers, all the aspects related to the users’ management depends on the SaaS providers (Software as a service) and the schools. In this regard, the SaaS providers are used to deliver to schools a user with administrator privileges for managing users, delegating that responsibility to the school”.

In order to alleviate security risks, Computer Weekly explains schools should establish and comply with set rules. 

Security measures such as:

• No information or authentication information should be stored on personal devices, such as tablets and smart phones.
• Use one device
• Do not surrender control of student information to third party suppliers

As with any other cloud software there are risks. To minimise the risks Schools and SaaS provides need to work together to combat the risks of vital information being put at risk.

The Forum came up with a range of suggestions regarding how this issue might be handled. This article provides a short summary of the findings. The Forum discussion was structured around a perhaps familiar framework that is illustrated below.

The five critical success factors when embedding changes were identified as:

• Planning: Whether it is undertaking the change programme itself, deciding how stakeholders are to be managed, conducting the transition from ‘as is’ to ‘to be’ or embedding the changed processes, careful and thorough planning is vital. Without this, success is likely to be, at best, hit or miss and total failure is a real possibility. Apart from the usual elements of project planning – where, who, when – planning for any changes to working practices needs to embrace the other CSFs discussed here.

• Stakeholder engagement: Similarly, the stakeholders – defined as anyone with an interest in the change programme – are the key to success and it is necessary to engage them, enthuse them, recognise and react to their concerns and, if they are hostile to the change, find ways of taking them along. Common mistakes here are: assuming that all stakeholders think alike, which of course they do not; overlooking a key individual stakeholder or group of stakeholders; avoiding stakeholders who are felt to be hostile to the change initiative; not tailoring communication to each stakeholder or group (see next section); and treating stakeholder engagement as something to be done once at the start of the initiative, instead of continuously throughout.

• Communications: Communication should be continuous, honest, clear and tailored to the specific needs of each stakeholder or stakeholder group. Communication must also be two-way – back to the change team so that they can recognise any adjustments that need to be made. Tailoring is, of course, dependent on thoughtful stakeholder analysis in the first place and gaining a correct understanding of what specifically interests and concerns each stakeholder or group of stakeholders. Frequency of communication must also be judged carefully: too frequent and people will ‘switch off’ and lose interest; too infrequent and momentum about the change initiative is easily lost.

• Measurement: Progress must be measured during the change programme, and success (for example, in terms of benefits realisation) measured afterwards. Although this sounds obvious, too often so much effort goes into the change work itself that insufficient time is allowed for useful measurement. There can also be a tendency to go for ‘hard’ measures like reduced headcount, precisely because they are easy to assess, when softer measures – customer experience, staff morale and so on – may provide a better indication of how permanent the changes will prove. In terms of benefits realisation, the main difficulty is choosing the point at which reliable measurements may be made as, often, there is an initial dip in productivity or satisfaction before the long-term benefits become evident.

• Flexibility: The change team must be prepared to consider where things are not going according to plan and to make adjustments to the programme in order to deal with these problems. Rigidity is not helpful in this type of initiative. Of course, some resistance to change is always likely to be encountered and those promoting the change must not give in at the first sight of trouble. However, equally, sometimes people resist because aspects of the change are not right and will lead to problems later on. Accommodating reasonable requests for change is actually of considerable benefit when engaging with stakeholders as, if people can appreciate that they are being listened to, they will be more open to giving favourable consideration to other aspects of the change initiative. In considering these five CSFs, it will be evident that they are all interconnected and interdependent. For example, planning a communications strategy depends on a good understanding of the stakeholders and should allow for the measurement processes which will indicate if the change initiative is on track to deliver successful results. An effective approach to embedding new working practices offers an excellent example of the intrinsically holistic nature of business analysis work.

– Iton

For more information on the Business Analysis market, contact Iton Moyston

This post is an extract from Certes’ Business Analysis publication.To receive more up-to-date, relevant information affecting the Business Analysis and Business Change community direct to your desktop, sign up to Analysts Anonymous. Registration is free.

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Career changing is strongest with millennials 66% of millennials want to change career and a majority of millennials being ready to change career in less than a year.

Source: HR Review

In a bid to win over employers who often ban their staff from using the site during the working day, the social networking giant has introduced a pilot scheme, named Facebook at Work, hoping to convince companies that Facebook can be a useful tool within the workplace and that it can provide an effective way of liaising with colleagues working on shared projects.

Following on from a survey last year which revealed that more than 54% of companies ban the use of Facebook on work computers, the new site incorporates a white background instead of the existing blue one, and could act as a direct competitor to other career based social websites including LinkedIn and Yammer.

If Facebook at Work progresses past the pilot stage and makes its way onto the worldwide networking scene, the sites 1.35 billion existing users will be able to communicate more efficiently within an organization, whilst keeping their personal and professional Facebook profiles separate.  

Not dissimilar to LinkedIn, Facebook at Work could be a useful way of connecting with potential future employees and employers.

Speak to Certes now about your next IT vacancy.

Content: Share This

UK Developers.

1. Over 50% of developers have less than 5 years of professional coding experience

2. Professional coding experience varies depending on the role

3. Developers are life-long learners

How else do developers learn?

4.Developers and programming languages

Which languages do developers want to run a million miles from?

Why are developers wishing death upon these programming languages? 

What about languages that developers want to keenly get their hands on?

Why are these languages so popular? A few examples:

What’s so special about Rust to make it the most loved language for three years in a row?

So what do all of these statistics mean?

 

The need to continuously adapt to an increasingly hostile environment is a significant change from the familiar measures that kept businesses secure only five years ago.

Today’s information security landscape is continuously evolving, and as attack vectors continue to change, breaches are becoming more frequent and sophisticated than ever. The security measures of five years ago are no longer adequate.

The “golden rules” from yesteryear went like this: run antivirus software, don’t write your password on sticky notes, don’t click on suspicious links, select strong passwords and vary them.

While all of these rules still apply, the reality is that yesterday’s robust security measures are nowhere near sufficient to combat the dangers of today’s complex threat landscape, and there is a continuous need for organisations to adapt to this increasingly hostile environment.

With that in mind, here are seven key observations to help safeguard data against the rapid pace of change in enterprise security.

1. The end of generic ‘best practices’ security

Compliance is a starting point, not a security programme, and organisations that are still checking the boxes on the audit report run the risk of a security breach. This is an important conversation to have with the board, using this to drive the culture towards security that’s specifically tailored to the business.

2. Patching needs to be a daily event

Flaws in applications, services such as DNS and foundational software mean that companies cannot afford to wait a month or more for patches to fix security vulnerabilities. Therefore, organisations should ensure they can manage at the application level, with instant remediation across workstations, mobile, servers and clouds, to respond without having to push new desktop images.

3. Personalise security

With attack vectors ever evolving, it’s getting increasingly difficult for IT and security professionals to differentiate the malignant from the benign security attacks. Targeted attacks go after individuals with personalised messages from a seemingly trusted source, and organisations are at risk when an attacker finds a vulnerable target.

More workplace education is necessary, but it can only do so much. Organisations that are hardening must reduce their default attack surface as much as possible, and containment strategies will help to keep security attacks at bay.

4. Expect breaches 

Breaches are now a reporting requirement for many organisations, despite being formerly denied and discussed in secret. A prescribed approach to incident management includes both technical and reputational responses, and virtualising all browser-based access has become a leading practice for containing attacks against popular entry points for organisational breach. Containing breaches and their impact has been a deciding use case for app virtualisation across governments, healthcare and financial services.

5. End-to-end encryption is essential

Criminals are aware of the value of encryption, with ransomware leveraging encryption as a weapon. It is therefore crucial for encryption to protect sensitive data within and between applications from desktops to mobile. Control encryption for endpoints through app and desktop virtualisation, on mobile devices with enterprise mobility management, and for cloud and web apps with an application delivery controller with an embedded web app firewall.

6. Security begins with access

A deep understanding of highly situational context is necessary to control identity, authentication, authorisation and access control. IT professionals must ensure they implement the ‘5Ws of access’ for employees and non-employee access. It is also important to use virtualisation to provide fine-grained access control for privileged users and to ensure that there is no direct access to sensitive data.

7. IT has competition

Many end users think they can do computing better themselves and in many ways, they can – but not for security. To stay ahead of the competition, ensure that shadow IT, unsanctioned BYO and the use of consumer-grade apps, clouds and services for sensitive data are replaced with IT-controlled and sanctioned offerings. This can be simplified for users by enabling single sign-on, improving their access and automating a superior experience across devices.

This is by no means a prescriptive or even exhaustive list. The demands on information security teams will not ease anytime soon. Organisations cannot afford to ignore the growing threat of attack vectors, as the methods in which they seek to exploit will grow exponentially with the arrival of more and more connected devices, people and locations.

What does the future hold for information security? When looking back in the future, today will likely appear comparatively easy up against what’s to come. With the small matter of the Internet of Things on the horizon, the challenge to protect data has never been more relevant.

Source: InformationAge

Preparing for interviews should be straight forward. Research the company, research the role and compare the job specifications to your skills. But how do you prepare after you have been invited to an interview?

The Interview is a major part in whether an employer would like you to be a part of their team. It provides them with further information about your skills and a clearer insight to the type of person you are. This process is completed by asking questions, a lot of questions. So to prepare for the interview you need to think one step ahead and put yourself in the shoes of the interviewer. What details would you like to know that would get you the position?

There are a copious amount of questions that can be asked within an interview, to start off you should think of answers to the most commonly used interview questions and prepare your response.

Common interview questions to prepare for:

Common #interview question asked by employers.#recruitment pic.twitter.com/j0yg7McMmo

— CertesNews (@CertesNews) April 20, 2015

#Tip: Practice answering questions as though you are in an interview until you feel confident in answering questions that may come up.

In an interview the interviewer(s) may not have asked you questions you wanted asked. You should prepare a list of questions that would like answers to. There is an exhaustive amount of possible questions that you can ask and the position that you’re interviewing for can determine the type of questions that you want answered. Before hand, devise a list of questions that you would like to ask. If the interviewer doesn’t ask any of the questions on your list, this is you opportunity to reverse the roles.

Questions you may want to ask:

Questions you might want to ask in an #interview. #interviewtips pic.twitter.com/0T8Flgelvo

— CertesNews (@CertesNews) April 20, 2015

Remember the question portion of the interview allows the interviewer(s) to see the type of person you are as well as what you are capable of. If you fail to answer their questions your chances of leaving a memorable positive impression, being shortlisted for a possible second interview or securing the job role is greatly decreased. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.