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  • The Social Business Thought Leaders - John Hagel

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    While many European economies are on the brink of a recession between increasing taxation and mounting loss of jobs and bankruptcy filing rates, there's an understandable risk of losing sight of the deeper forces at play. Yet instead of surrendering to uncertainty and trying to survive in the short term, many organizations are feeling the urge to be better prepared to thrive in these complex times by developing a more articulated long term understanding of both the opportunities / challenges ahead. For example: What long-term economic, technological and societal changes are rolling out? Which foundational dynamics will affect our companies' performance, productivity, competition, and innovative potential in the upcoming decades? How will digital infrastructure change our business landscape? What kind of capabilities will be key to compete in a market shaped by growing turbulence, unpredictability and volatility? Breaking out from a strictly cyclical thinking, studies such as the Shift Index by John Hagel, Co-Chairman of the Center for the Edge at Deloitte & Touche (See Measuring the forces of long-term change - The 2009 Shift Index), depict a worrying performance challenge that affected every industry in the entire US economy over the last 45 years. Amidst a more than doubled competitive intensity of the market, and even with an improved labor productivity, the actual performance of US firms has consistently fallen to 25% of what it was in 1965. Most of this reported value is shifting from institutions and organizations to individuals, whether they are customers or young creative talent. To thrive in the digital economy and reverse declining performance trends, companies will have to fundamentally rethink their management approach by moving from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows, from scalable efficiency to scalable learning, from push organizations to pull organizations. Based on the outcomes of the Shift Index and on the book The Power of Pull, the first episode of the Social Business Thought-Leaders features John Hagel to provide strategic insights on how companies will succeed in the 21st century.

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  • Almost at our first year anniversary!

    - by Vizioz Limited
    It has been a hectic first year at Vizioz and things are still going from strength to strength. 11 months ago I started Vizioz with zero capital investment in the middle of a recession, which to some may seem a daunting prospect but to others including myself it was the challenge I needed to make me want to get up in the morning :) I wanted to prove that even in the curent financial climate it is still possible to start a new business.We are still experiencing the normal growing pains of a small business but this is something we just need to work our way through, it is amazing how much paperwork and administration there is running a small business, office admin, insurance, vat and for the last few months PAYE.For the last 9 months we have shared an office with another small business called Little Big Ideas. They are a design agency working across a broad spectrum of design from branding, print and digital. Last month we decided to move offices to a larger office and now have room for 8 of us, so now we need a couple more clients to help produce enough work to fill the space and grow to the next level.As well as moving office 2 months ago I blogged about my first employee Colin starting work for me, he has picked up Umbraco very well and has mastered the art of good CSS design, as the majority of our clients are large multi-nationals they still require support for IE6 which as all web developers know is the nightmare of all web browsers.This month has seen the next step in the growth of Vizioz as I have taken on another PhD graduate called Pricilla, welcome to the team!This month we plan to launch our own website to enable us to showcase some of the sites we have built over the past 11 months and to allow potential clients to see what we can offer. We might still be relatively small but we have some great case studies to show and with two PhD graduates on the team we have great talent capable of producing complex and innovative solutions for our clients. As soon as we have launched out new website I will blog again about what the future holds for Vizioz and what we can offer our prospective clients as well as e obvious Umbraco CMS solutions.

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  • Thanks All the readers and community and Happy new year to all of you.

    - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama
    This is my first blog post for new year 2011 and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the readers for making my blog very successful and accepting me a community member. As year 2010 has lots of up down in IT filed it was recession period and now we almost recovered from it. Personally year 2010 has been very successful to me as I have been awarded as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for visual C#. And It was one of the greatest achievement of my life. I would like to take this opportunity to thanks Microsoft for this and thanks all friends specially Jacob Sebastian who has given me guidance any time I required it. I have been also awarded dzone most valuable blogger this year and it was a nice surprise from dzone. I would like thanks dzone for this. Once again I am wishing you happy new year and may this year will bring success to all of you. One more thing I have found that I have met lots of people who is quite intelligent and exceptional developers and IT professionals but they are not blogging their stuff. I would say please my blog post a why a developer should write blog and Start blogging immediately because unless and until you don’t blog community will not know what you are doing.  Till then happy blogging and programming ... Stay tuned for more..

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  • .Net Logger (Write your own vs log4net/enterprise logger/nlog etc.)

    - by Jack
    I work for an IT department with about 50+ developers. It used to be about 100+ developers but was cut because of the recession. When our department was bigger there was an ambitious effort made to set up a special architecture group. One thing this group decided to do was create our own internal logger. They thought it was such a simple task that we could spend recources and do it ourselves. Now we are having issues with performance and difficulty viewing the logs generated and some employees are frustrated that we are spending recources on infrastructure stuff like this instead of focusing on serving our business and using stuff that already exists like log4net or Enterprise Logger. Can you assist me in listing up reasons why you should not create your own .net logger. Also reasons for why you should are welcome to get a fair point of view :)

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  • Taking Responsibilites too early - danger or boon?

    - by narresh
    Just I am only six months experienced guy in software industry.Due to recession season,a large volume of employees from our company are asked to leave.This impact affects the new inexperienced guys. The problem is We have to interact with the client directly to gather the requirement We have to design all HLD and LLD ,use cases and DB Diagrams ,that should staisfy the customers who keeping the high software insdutry standards In this do or die situation (Client gives us narrow dead line),we spend most of time with interacting client (only less time is available for development and testing,even sit out for 24 X 7 won't help us to finish our task) If task will not be finished with in the expected time frame ,that will trigger poor performance ration to our profile There are two important questions flashing in our mind : (1) Quit the job and do other business (2) Face the challenge : (if the option is to face the challenge ,What are all the tools should we follow to automate requirement gathering,testing,DB diagram,Code review and the rest.(We are working on ASP.NET 3.5 with SQL Server 2005).

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  • Multiple Monitors

    - by mroberts
    At my workplace .Net developers get pretty much the same equipment. A decent Dell workstation / Desktop, mine is a Dell Precision 390. One dual core 2.40 GHz. Eight GB RAM. Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit. Two Dell 20.1 Monitors. I'm happy with this.  The machine is about 3 years old but still runs with some decent speed. New developers are getting a Dell workstation with dual quad processors. I just put in a request for myself and three other developers for an upgraded video card and two additional monitors, for a total of four monitors per person.  We suggested this card, BTW, mainly for the cost.  The move from one monitor to two was fantastic (one might even say life (or work) changing) and truly did increase productivity. Now what about going from 2 monitors to 4?  I'm sure the change is not as dramatic as one to two, but I can't help but to think four monitors is better than two.  But if four is better than two, should we have asked for six?!? Also what about mixing monitor types?  Right now my monitors are the older square type vs. wide-screen.  It's been rumored that we will be getting monitors out of current stock and they will be 22 inch wide-screens.  I understand this, recession and all.  2-20 inch square monitors with 2-22 inch wide-screen monitors...hmmmmm.  I'm thinking I'd rather get 2 additional 17 inch square monitors to put on each side of my 20's. Also, a question was raised about the layout of four monitors. By default, my thought was I'll just put them all on my desk, kinda in a line. I've heard others say they want to stack them in a 2 x 2 square. BTW, loving multi monitor support in Visual studio 2010! I’d love some comments on your experience with one, two, four, or however many monitors from a developers perspective.

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  • The 2010 Life Insurance Conference - Washington, DC

    - by [email protected]
    How ironic to be in Washington, DC on April 15 - TAX DAY! Fortunately, I avoided IRS offices and attended the much more enjoyable 2010 Life Insurance Conference, presented by LIMRA, LOMA SOA and ACLI. This year's conference offered a variety of tracks focused on the Life Industry including Distribution/Marketing Marketing, Administration, Actuarial/Product Development, Regulatory, Reinsurance and Strategic Management. President and CEO of the ACLI, Frank Keating, opened the event by moderating a session titled "Executive Viewpoint on new Opportunities." Guest speakers included Ted Mathas, President and CEO of NY Life, and John Walters, President and CEO of Hartford Life. Both speakers were insightful as they shared the challenges and opportunities each company faces and the key role life insurance companies play in our society and the global economy. There were several key themes that were reiterated in multiple sessions throughout the conference - the economy is on the rebound, optimism is growing, consumer spending is up and an uptick in employment is likely to follow. The threat of a double dip recession has seemed to passed. Good news for our industry, and welcomed by all in attendance. Of special interest to me, given my background, was some research shared by both The Nolan Group and Novarica in separate sessions. Both firms indicate that policy administration upgrades/replacement projects remain a top priority in 2010. Carriers continue to invest in modern technology. Modern ultra-configurable systems enable carriers to switch from a waterfall to an agile project methodology, which often entails a "culture change" within an organization. Other themes heard throughout the two-day event: Virtually all sessions focused on People, Process and Technology! Product innovation, agility and speed to market are as important as ever. Social Networks and Twitter are becoming more popular ways of communicating with both field and dispersed staff. Several sessions focused on the application, new business and underwriting process. Companies continue looking for ways to increase market agility, accelerate speed to market, address cost issues and improve service levels across the process. They recognize the need to ease the way to do business with both producers and consumers. Author and economic futurist Jeff Thredgold presented an entertaining, informative and humorous general session on Wednesday afternoon that focused on the US and global economies, financial markets and retirement outlook. Thredgold did not disappoint anyone with his message! The Thursday morning general session was keynoted by Therese Vaughan (CEO - NAIC) and Thomas Crawford (President of C2 Group). Both speakers gave a poignant view of the recent financial crisis and discussed "Putting the Pieces Back Together." Therese spoke of the recent financial turmoil and likely changes to regulations to the financial services sector. Tom's topics focused on economic recovery and the political environment in Washington, and how that impacts our industry. Next year's event will be April 11-13, 2011 in Las Vegas. Roger A.Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, is the Senior Director of Insurance Strategy, Oracle Insurance.

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  • A Hot Topic - Profitability and Cost Management

    - by john.orourke(at)oracle.com
    Maybe it's due to the recent recession, or current economic recovery but a hot topic and area of focus for many organizations these days is profitability and cost management.  For most organizations, aggressive cost-cutting and cost management were critical to remaining profitable while top line revenue was flat or shrinking.  However, now we are seeing many organizations taking a more "surgical" approach to profitability and cost management, by accurately allocating revenue and costs to individual product lines, services, customer segments, locations, channels and other lines of business to understand which ones are truly profitable and which ones are not.  Based on these insights, managers can make more informed decisions about which products or services to invest in or retire, how to price their products or services for different customer segments, and where to focus their marketing and customer service resources. The most common industries where this product, service and customer-focused costing and profitability analysis is being adopted include financial services, consumer packaged goods, retail and manufacturing.  However we are seeing adoption of profitability and cost management applications in other industries and use cases.  Here are a few examples: Telecommunications Industry:  Network Costing and Management to identify the most cost effective and/or profitable network areas, to optimize existing resources, infrastructure and network capacity.  Regulatory Cost Accounting to perform more accurate allocations of revenue and costs across services and customer segments, improve ability to set billing rates for future periods, for various products and customer segments and more easily develop analysis needed for rate case proposals. Healthcare Insurance:  Visually, justifiable Medical Loss Ratio results, better knowledge of the cost to service healthcare plans and members, accurate understanding of member segment and plan profitability, improved marketing programs through better member segmentation. Public Sector:  Statutory / Regulatory Compliance:  A variety of statutory and regulatory documents state explicitly or implicitly that the use of government resources must be properly tracked and tied to performance goals.  Managerial costing methods implemented through Cost Management applications provide unparalleled visibility into costs and shared services usage throughout a Public Sector agency. Funding Support:  Regulations require public sector funding requests to be evaluated based upon the ability to achieve performance goals against the associated cost.   Improved visibility and understanding of costs of different programs/services means that organizations can demonstrably monitor performance and the associated resource costs improve the chances of having their funding requests granted. Profitability and Cost Management is one of the fastest-growing solution areas in Oracle's Enterprise Performance Management product line and we are seeing a growing number of customer successes across geographies and industries.  Listed below are just a few examples.  Here's a link to the replay from a recent webcast on this topic which featured Schroders Plc, a UK-based Financial Services company: http://www.oracle.com/go/?&Src=7011668&Act=168&pcode=WWMK10037859MPP043 Here's a link to a case study on Shenhua Guohua Power in China: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/customers/shenhua-snapshot-159574.pdf Here's a link to information on Oracle's web site about our profitability and cost management solutions: http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/performance-management/profitability-cost-mgmt/index.html

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  • Goodbye, Spreadsheets and Hello Modern ERP

    - by Christine Randle
    By: Steve Cox, Vice President, Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies     Signs of the resurging economy continue to sprout, with green shoots rising across different sectors and industries. With the economy on the rebound, businesses are increasing their investment in technology to keep up with growth and evolving demands; as proof, Gartner recently increased its worldwide IT spending forecast for 2012 to $3.6 trillion, anticipating a 3 percent increase from 2011 spending.   One of the segments most reliant on technology to catapult growth is midsize companies – established businesses leveraging every competitive efficiency and advantage to compete with much larger enterprises. We find that to compete against the big guys, they need to create an internal technology infrastructure to fuel that growth. Goodbye, spreadsheets and hello modern ERP.   While many businesses postponed upgrading or replacing financial and HR management systems during the recession, now some have started dusting off RFPs and revisiting technology options. Years ago, midsize organizations used spreadsheet-based systems and processes to manage employees, customers, partners, products and revenue. We’ve found that as companies scale up, they are apt to avoid heavily customizing their existing systems, and instead are more prone to standardize on a modern, enterprise-class ERP system.   Modern ERP platforms enable growing companies to immediately address the most pressing challenges – accounting, talent management, customer retention, et. al. Midsize companies implement these systems and processes to help them earn more, go public or expand globally.   And today, choice is a primary factor when selecting an ERP solution. Businesses have more deployment options now than ever before, depending on their unique structures and needs. Whether the preference is on demand, cloud, hosted or on premise, a modular, scalable deployment is available to meet the need.   With modern ERP systems, business that once struggled to do more with fewer resources have access to the same quality tools as larger competitors. By adopting top tier ERP systems tailored to individual business needs, midsize companies can support business operations while creating an enterprise system that seamlessly scales up to fuel future growth. Meaning that the ERP decision that your company makes today, will have legs to serve your business for years to come.

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  • Retail CEO Interviews

    - by David Dorf
    Businessweek's 2012 Interview Issue has interviews with three retail CEOs that are worth a quick read.  I copied some excerpts below, but please follow the links to the entire interviews. Ron Johnson, CEO JCPenney Take me through your merchandising. One of the things I learned from Steve [Jobs]—Steve said three times in his life he had the chance to be part of the change of an interface. If you change the interface, you can dramatically change the entire experience of the product. For Steve, that was the mouse, the scroll wheel on the iPod, and then the [touch]screen. What we’re trying to do here is change the interface of retail. What we call that is the street, and you’re standing in the middle of it. When you walk into a store today, you’re overwhelmed by merchandise. There is a narrow aisle. Typically, it’s filled with product on tables and you’re overwhelmed with the noise of signs and promotions. Especially in the age of the Internet, the idea of going to a very large store and having so much abundance is actually not very appealing. The first thing you find here is you’re inspired. I have used the mannequins. The street is actually this new navigation path for a retail store. So if you come in here—you’ll notice that these aisles are 14 feet wide. These are wider than Nordstrom’s (JWN). Slide show of JCPenney store. Walter Robb, co-CEO Whole Foods What did you learn from the recent recession about selling groceries?It was a lot of humble pie, because our sales experienced a drop that I have never seen in 32 years of retail. Customers left us in droves. We also learned that there were some very loyal customers who loved Whole Foods (WFM), people who said, “I like what you stand for. I like coming here. I like this experience.” That was very affirming. I think the realization was that we’ve got some customers, and we need to make sure we know who they are. So instead of chasing every customer out there, we started doing customer discussion groups. We were growing for growth’s sake, which is not a good strategy. We were chasing the rainbow. We cut the growth in half overnight and said, “All right, slow down. Let’s make sure we’re doing this better and more thoroughly and more thoughtfully.” This company is a mission-based company. This company started to change the world by bringing healthier food to the world. It’s not about the money, it’s about the impact, and this company is back on track as a result of those experiences. Video of Whole Foods store tour. Kay Krill, CEO Ann Taylor You’ve worked in retail all your life. What drew you to it?I graduated from college, and I did not know what I wanted to do. Macy’s (M) came to campus to interview for their training program, and I thought, “Let me give it a try.” I got the job and fell in love with the industry. The president of Macy’s at the time said, “If you don’t wake up every morning dying to go to work, then retailing is not for you; it has to be in your blood.” It was in my blood. I love the fact that every day is different. You can get to be creative one day, financial the next day, marketing the next. I love going to stores. I love talking to associates. I love talking to clients. There’s not a predictable day.

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  • Are we in demand?

    - by dotnetdev
    I was made redundant in the end of November. This wasn't because I lacked required skills (although I'm a youngster and in career levels a junior dev - though I knew a lot more than was called for in my job). Anyway, I was laid off due to the whole recession/credit crunch thing going on. I worked for a small company and money got tight and I had to go. I haven't made a thread about this but I have seen threads about others being laid off and experiencing a similar fate. This leads me to the question: What is the job market like for developers? Are we in demand? I ask this question on a global level, but I live in London UK (in case anyone comes across this thread from the same area). I am a .NET dev but my secondary skillset is Flex (actionscript too) and Java, which my personal portfolio is made with. I hope to be strong enough in this to do this commercially, with a few more months of practise. Then I will have more jobs applicable to me. Unfortunately, I use agencies and sites like Jobserve/Monster.com but no new jobs are ever posted on there so when you apply to all the relevant jobs, then what? Whatsmore, a lot of companies are putting a freeze on recruitment. Thanks

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  • Session Report - Modern Software Development Anti-Patterns

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    In this standing-room-only session, building upon his 2011 JavaOne Rock Star “Diabolical Developer” session, Martijn Verburg, this time along with Ben Evans, identified and explored common “anti-patterns” – ways of doing things that keep developers from doing their best work. They emphasized the importance of social interaction and team communication, along with identifying certain psychological pitfalls that lead developers astray. Their emphasis was less on technical coding errors and more how to function well and to keep one’s focus on what really matters. They are the authors of the highly regarded The Well-Grounded Java Developer and are both movers and shakers in the London JUG community and on the Java Community Process. The large room was packed as they gave a fast-moving, witty presentation with lots of laughs and personal anecdotes. Below are a few of the anti-patterns they discussed.Anti-Pattern One: Conference-Driven DeliveryThe theme here is the belief that “Real pros hack code and write their slides minutes before their talks.” Their response to this anti-pattern is an expression popular in the military – PPPPPP, which stands for, “Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance.”“Communication is very important – probably more important than the code you write,” claimed Verburg. “The more you speak in front of large groups of people the easier it gets, but it’s always important to do dry runs, to present to smaller groups. And important to be members of user groups where you can give presentations. It’s a great place to practice speaking skills; to gain new skills; get new contacts, to network.”They encouraged attendees to record themselves and listen to themselves giving a presentation. They advised them to start with a spouse or friends if need be. Learning to communicate to a group, they argued, is essential to being a successful developer. The emphasis here is that software development is a team activity and good, clear, accessible communication is essential to the functioning of software teams. Anti-Pattern Two: Mortgage-Driven Development The main theme here was that, in a period of worldwide recession and economic stagnation, people are concerned about keeping their jobs. So there is a tendency for developers to treat knowledge as power and not share what they know about their systems with their colleagues, so when it comes time to fix a problem in production, they will be the only one who knows how to fix it – and will have made themselves an indispensable cog in a machine so you cannot be fired. So developers avoid documentation at all costs, or if documentation is required, put it on a USB chip and lock it in a lock box. As in the first anti-pattern, the idea here is that communicating well with your colleagues is essential and documentation is a key part of this. Social interactions are essential. Both Verburg and Evans insisted that increasingly, year by year, successful software development is more about communication than the technical aspects of the craft. Developers who understand this are the ones who will have the most success. Anti-Pattern Three: Distracted by Shiny – Always Use the Latest Technology to Stay AheadThe temptation here is to pick out some obscure framework, try a bit of Scala, HTML5, and Clojure, and always use the latest technology and upgrade to the latest point release of everything. Don’t worry if something works poorly because you are ahead of the curve. Verburg and Evans insisted that there need to be sound reasons for everything a developer does. Developers should not bring in something simply because for some reason they just feel like it or because it’s new. They recommended a site run by a developer named Matt Raible with excellent comparison spread sheets regarding Web frameworks and other apps. They praised it as a useful tool to help developers in their decision-making processes. They pointed out that good developers sometimes make bad choices out of boredom, to add shiny things to their CV, out of frustration with existing processes, or just from a lack of understanding. They pointed out that some code may stay in a business system for 15 or 20 years, but not all code is created equal and some may change after 3 or 6 months. Developers need to know where the code they are contributing fits in. What is its likely lifespan? Anti-Pattern Four: Design-Driven Design The anti-pattern: If you want to impress your colleagues and bosses, use design patents left, right, and center – MVC, Session Facades, SOA, etc. Or the UML modeling suite from IBM, back in the day… Generate super fast code. And the more jargon you can talk when in the vicinity of the manager the better.Verburg shared a true story about a time when he was interviewing a guy for a job and asked him what his previous work was. The interviewee said that he essentially took patterns and uses an approved book of Enterprise Architecture Patterns and applied them. Verburg was dumbstruck that someone could have a job in which they took patterns from a book and applied them. He pointed out that the idea that design is a separate activity is simply wrong. He repeated a saying that he uses, “You should pay your junior developers for the lines of code they write and the things they add; you should pay your senior developers for what they take away.”He explained that by encouraging people to take things away, the code base gets simpler and reflects the actual business use cases developers are trying to solve, as opposed to the framework that is being imposed. He told another true story about a project to decommission a very long system. 98% of the code was decommissioned and people got a nice bonus. But the 2% remained on the mainframe so the 98% reduction in code resulted in zero reduction in costs, because the entire mainframe was needed to run the 2% that was left. There is an incentive to get rid of source code and subsystems when they are no longer needed. The session continued with several more anti-patterns that were equally insightful.

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  • 7 Steps To Cut Recruiting Costs & Drive Exceptional Business Results

    - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies
    By Steve Viarengo, Vice President Product Management, Oracle Taleo Cloud Services  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In good times, trimming operational costs is an ongoing goal. In tough times, it’s a necessity. In both good times and bad, however, recruiting occurs. Growth increases headcount in good times, and opportunistic or replacement hiring occurs in slow business cycles. By employing creative recruiting strategies in tandem with the latest technology developments, you can reduce recruiting costs while driving exceptional business results. Here are some critical areas to focus on. 1.  Target Direct Cost Savings Total recruiting process expenses are the sum of external costs plus internal labor costs. Most organizations can reduce recruiting expenses with direct cost savings. While additional savings on indirect costs can be realized from process improvement and efficiency gains, there are direct cost savings and benefits readily available in three broad areas: sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting. 2. Sourcing: Reduce Agency Costs Agency search firm fees can amount to 35 percent of a new employee’s annual base salary. Typically taken from the hiring department budget, these fees may not be visible to HR. By relying on internal mobility programs, referrals, candidate pipelines, and corporate career Websites, organizations can reduce or eliminate this agency spend. And when you do have to pay third-party agency fees, you can optimize the value you receive by collaborating with agencies to identify referred candidates, ensure access to candidate data and history, and receive automatic notifications and correspondence. 3. Sourcing: Reduce Advertising Costs You can realize significant cost reductions by placing all job positions on your corporate career Website. This will allow you to reap a substantial number of candidates at minimal cost compared to job boards and other sourcing options. 4.  Sourcing: Internal Talent Pool Internal talent pools provide a way to reduce sourcing and advertising costs while delivering improved productivity and retention. Internal redeployment reduces costs and ramp-up time while increasing retention and employee satisfaction. 5.  Sourcing: External Talent Pool Strategic recruiting requires identifying and matching people with a given set of skills to a particular job while efficiently allocating sourcing expenditures. By using an e-recruiting system (which drives external talent pool management) with a candidate relationship database, you can automate prescreening and candidate matching while communicating with targeted candidates. Candidate relationship management can lower sourcing costs by marketing new job opportunities to candidates sourced in the past. By mining the talent pool in this fashion, you eliminate the need to source a new pool of candidates for each new requisition. Managing and mining the corporate candidate database can reduce the sourcing cost per candidate by as much as 50 percent. 6.  Assessments: Reduce Turnover Costs By taking advantage of assessments during the recruitment process, you can achieve a range of benefits, including better productivity, superior candidate performance, and lower turnover (providing considerable savings). Assessments also save recruiter and hiring manager time by focusing on a short list of qualified candidates. Hired for fit, such candidates tend to stay with the organization and produce quality work—ultimately driving revenue.  7. Green Recruiting: Reduce Paper and Processing Costs You can reduce recruiting costs by automating the process—and making it green. A paperless process informs candidates that you’re dedicated to green recruiting. It also leads to direct cost savings. E-recruiting reduces energy use and pollution associated with manufacturing, transporting, and recycling paper products. And process automation saves energy in mailing, storage, handling, filing, and reporting tasks. Direct cost savings come from reduced paperwork related to résumés, advertising, and onboarding. Improving the recruiting process through sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting not only saves costs. It also positions the company to improve the talent base during the recession while retaining the ability to grow appropriately in recovery. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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  • And What's Your Brand Worth? ...anything?

    - by [email protected]
    100 Best Global Brands from Business Week Story: The Great Trust Offensive Slide Show: Top Brands 2009 Methodology: Picking the Winners The recession has presented marketing executives around the world with the toughest test of their careers. Some brands have prospered amid the hard times--or at least held their own. Others have slipped a surprising number of places on our ninth annual ranking, compiled by consultancy Interbrand. But for seven brands, impressive performances saw them race up the charts to take their place on this year's list. Here are the numbers behind the rankings Rank 2009 Rank 2008 Employer 2009 Brand value($millions) 2008 Brand value($millions) Percent change(%) Country of Ownership 1 1 Coca-Cola  68,734  66,667  3 U.S. 2 2 IBM  60,211  59,031  2 U.S. 3 3 Microsoft  56,647  59,007  -4 U.S. 4 4 GE  47,777  53,086  -10 U.S. 5 5 Nokia  34,864  35,942  -3 Finland 6 8 McDonald's  32,275  31,049  4 U.S. 7 10 Google  31,980  25,590  25 U.S. 8 6 Toyota  31,330  34,050  -8 Japan 9 7 Intel  30,636  31,261  -2 U.S. 10 9 Disney  28,447  29,251  -3 U.S. 11 12 Hewlett-Packard  24,096  23,509  2 U.S. 12 11 Mercedes-Benz  23,867  25,577  -7 Germany 13 14 Gillette  22,841  22,069  4 U.S. 14 17 Cisco  22,030  21,306  3 U.S. 15 13 BMW  21,671  23,298  -7 Germany 16 16 Louis Vuitton  21,120  21,602  -2 France 17 18 Marlboro  19,010  21,300  -11 U.S. 18 20 Honda  17,803  19,079  -7 Japan 19 21 Samsung  17,518  17,689  -1 S. Korea 20 24 Apple  15,443  13,724  12 U.S. 21 22 H&M  15,375  13,840  11 Sweden 22 15 American Express  14,971  21,940  -32 U.S. 23 26 Pepsi  13,706  13,249  3 U.S. 24 23 Oracle  13,699  13,831  -1 U.S. 25 28 Nescafe  13,317  13,055  2 Switzerland 26 29 Nike  13,179  12,672  4 U.S. 27 31 SAP  12,106  12,228  -1 Germany 28 35 Ikea  12,004  10,913  10 Sweden 29 25 Sony  11,953  13,583  -12 Japan 30 33 Budweiser  11,833  11,438  3 Belgium 31 30 UPS  11,594  12,621  -8 U.S. 32 27 HSBC  10,510  13,143  -20 Britain 33 36 Canon  10,441  10,876  -4 Japan 34 39 Kellogg's  10,428  9,710  7 U.S. 35 32 Dell  10,291  11,695  -12 U.S. 36 19 Citi  10,254  20,174  -49 U.S. 37 37 JPMorgan  9,550  10,773  -11 U.S. 38 38 Goldman Sachs  9,248  10,331  -10 U.S. 39 40 Nintendo  9,210  8,772  5 Japan 40 44 Thomson Reuters  8,434  8,313  1 Canada 41 45 Gucci  8,182  8,254  -1 Italy 42 43 Philips  8,121  8,325  -2 Netherlands 43 58 Amazon  7,858  6,434  22 U.S. 44 51 L'Oreal  7,748  7,508  3 France 45 47 Accenture  7,710  7,948  -3 U.S. 46 46 eBay  7,350  7,991  -8 U.S. 47 48 Siemens  7,308  7,943  -8 Germany 48 56 Heinz  7,244  6,646  9 U.S. 49 49 Ford  7,005  7,896  -11 U.S. 50 62 Zara  6,789  5,955  14 Spain   Valuations do not represent a guarantee of future performance of the brands or companies. Data: Interbrand, BusinessWeek

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  • SQL Sentry First Impressions

    - by AjarnMark
    After struggling to defend my SQL Servers from a political attack recently, I realized that I needed better tools to back me up, and SQL Sentry is the leading candidate. A couple of weeks ago, seemingly from out of nowhere, complaints from the business users started coming in that one of the core internal applications was running dramatically slower than normal, and fingers were being pointed at the SQL Server.  Unfortunately, we don’t have a production DBA whose entire job is to monitor and maintain our SQL Servers.  The responsibility falls to me to do the best I can, investing only a small portion of my time, because there are so many other responsibilities to take care of, and our industry is still deep in recession.  I inherited these SQL Servers and have made significant improvements in process and procedure, but I had not yet made the time to take real baseline measurements or keep a really close eye on the performance.  Like many DBAs, I wrote several of my own tools and used the “built-in tools” like Profiler, PerfMon, and sp_who2 (did I mention most of our instances are SQL Server 2000?).  These have all served me well for in-the-moment troubleshooting and maintenance, but they really fell down on the job when I was called upon to “prove” that SQL Server performance was acceptable and more importantly had not degraded recently (i.e. historical comparisons).  I really didn’t have anything from a historical comparison perspective, but I was able to show that current performance was acceptable, and deflect attention back onto other components (which in fact turned out to be the real culprit). That experience dramatically illustrated the need for better monitoring tools.  Coincidentally, I had been talking recently to my boss about the mini nightmare of monitoring several critical and interdependent overnight jobs that operate on separate instances of SQL Server.  Among other tools, I had been using Idera’s SQL Job Manager which is a free tool and did a nice job of showing me job schedules and histories in a nice calendar view.  This worked fairly well, and for the money (did I mention it was free?) it couldn’t be beat.  But it is based on the stored job history in MSDB, and there were other performance problems that we ran into when we started changing the settings for how much job history to retain, in order to be able to look back a month or more in the calendar view.  Another coincidence (if you believe in such things) was that when we had some of those performance challenges, I posted a couple of questions to the #sqlhelp hashtag on Twitter and Greg Gonzalez (@SQLSensei) suggested I check out SQL Sentry’s Event Manager.  At the time, I just thought he worked there, but later found out that he founded the company.  When I took a quick look at the features & benefits, the one that really jumped out at me is Chaining and Queueing which sounded like it would really help with our “interdependent jobs on different servers” issue. I know that is a lot of background story and coincidences, but hopefully you have stuck with me so far, and now we have arrived at the point where last week I downloaded and installed the 30-day trial of the SQL Sentry Power Suite, which is Event Manager plus Performance Advisor.  And I must say that I really like what I see so far.  Here are a few highlights: Great Support.  I had two issues getting the trial setup and monitoring a handful of our servers.  One of which was entirely my fault (missed a security setting in SQL 2008) and the other was mostly my fault (late change to some config settings that were apparently cached and did not get refreshed properly).  In both cases, the support staff at SQL Sentry were very responsive and rather quickly figured out what the cause and fix was for each of them.  This left me with a great impression of the company.  Kudos to them! Chaining and Queueing.  While I have not yet activated this feature, I am very excited about the possibilities.  We have jobs on three different instances of SQL Server that have to be run in a certain order, and each has to finish before the next can successfully begin, and I believe this feature will ensure just that.  It has been a real pain in the backside when one of those jobs runs just a little too long and does not finish before the job on another instance starts, thus triggering a chain reaction of either outright job failures, or worse, successful completion of completely invalid processing. Calendar View.  I really, really like the Event Manager calendar view where I can see all jobs and events across all instances and identify potential resource contention as well as windows of opportunity for maintenance activity.  Very well done, and based on Event Manager’s own database of accumulated historical information rather than querying the source instances every time. Performance Advisor Dashboard History View.  This view let’s me quickly select a date and time range and it displays graphs of key SQL Server and Windows metrics.  This is exactly the thing I needed to answer the “has performance changed recently” question at the beginning of this post. Reporting Services Subscription Jobs with Report Name.  This was a big and VERY pleasant surprise.  If you have ever looked at the list of SQL Server jobs that SQL Server Reporting Services creates when you make a Subscription, you will notice that they all have some sort of GUID as the name of the job.  This is really ugly, and really annoying because when you are just looking at the SQL Agent and Job Activity Monitor, if you see that Job X failed, you really do not have any indication in the name or the properties of the Job itself, as to what Report that was for.  But with SQL Sentry Event Manager you do.  The Jobs list in the Navigator pane in SQL Sentry, amazingly, displays the name of the Report that the Subscription Job is for.  And when you open it to see more details, it shows you the full Reporting Services path to that Report, so you can immediately track it down in the Report Manager in case you want to identify/notify the owner or edit the Subscription information.  I did not expect this at all, but I sure do like it.  HOORAY! That is just my first impressions from using the tools for a few days.  And I haven’t even gotten into how it showed me where I was completely mistaken about one aspect of my SQL Server disk configurations.  I’ll share that lesson in another blog entry.  But I have to say it again, the combination of Event Manager and Performance Advisor working together have really made me a fan.

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  • How to find an entry-level job after you already have a graduate degree?

    - by Uri
    Note: I asked this question in early 2009. A couple of months later, I found a great job. I've previously updated this question with some tips for whoever ends up in a similar situation, and now cleaned it up a little for the benefit of the fresh batch of graduates. Original post: In my early 20s I abandoned a great C++ development career path in a major company to go to graduate school and get a research masters (3 years). I did another year in industrial research, and then moved to the US to attend graduate school again, getting another masters and a Ph.D in software engineering from a top school (another 6 years down the drain). I was coding the whole way throughout my degrees (core Java and Eclipse plug-ins) and working on research related to software engineering (usability of APIs). I ended up graduating the year of the recession, with a son on the way and the prospects of no healthcare. Academic jobs and industrial research jobs are quite scarce. Initially, I was naive, thinking that with my background, I could easily find a coding job. Big mistake. It turns out that I'm in a complicated position. Entry level positions are usually offered to college undergraduates. I attended my school's career fairs, but you could immediately see signs of Ph.D. aversion and overqualification issues. Some of the recruiters I spoke with explicitly told me that they wanted 20 year olds with clean slates, and some were looking for interns since they are in various forms of hiring freezes. I managed to get a couple of interviews from these career fairs and through recruiters. However, since I've been out of school for a long time and programming primarily in Java, I am also no longer proficient in C/C++ and the usual range of college-level interview questions that everyone uses. I had no problems with this when I was 19 and interviewing for my first job since a lot of what you do in C is manipulate pointers and I was coding C++ for fun and for school. Later I was routinely doing pointer manipulation on the job, and during my first masters taught college courses with data structures and C++. But even though I remember many properties of C++ well, it's been close to ten years since I regularly used C++ and pointers. As a Java developer I rarely had to work at this level, but experience in OOD and in writing good maintainable code is meaningless for C++ interviews. Reading books as a refresh and looking at sample code did not do the trick. I also looked at mid-to-senior level Java positions, but most of them focused on J2EE APIs rather than on core Java and required a certain number of years in industrial positions. Coding research tools and prior C++ experience doesn't count. So that sends me back to entry-level jobs that are posted through job-boards, and these are not common (mostly they are Monster junk), and small companies are even less likely to answer a Ph.D. compared to the giants who participate in top-10 career fairs. Even worse, in many companies initial screening is done by HR folks who really don't want to deal with anything anomalous like a Ph.D. Any tips on how I should approach this intractable position? For example, what should I write in cover letters? Note that while immigration is not an issue for me, I cannot go freelance as I need the benefits (and in particular group health insurance). During my studies I had no time to contribute to open-source projects or maintain a popular blog, so even if I invested in that now there would be no immediate benefit. Updates: In the two months after posting this I received several offers to work as a core Java developer in the financial industry and accepted one from a firm where I am working to this day. For those who find themselves in similar situations, here are my tips: Give up on trying to find an entry level positions. You can't undo time. Accept the fact that there is Ph.D. discrimination in the job market (some might say rightfully so). It is legal to discriminate based on education. No point fighting it. The most important tip is to focus on the language you are comfortable with. The sad truth about programming in a particular language is that it is not like riding a bike. If you haven't used a language in the last few years, and can't actually apply it routinely (not just as a refresher) before you start your search, it is going to be very difficult to do well in an interview. Now that I'm interviewing others, I routinely see it in folks with a mixed C++/Java background. We maintain "a shadow" of the old language but end up with a weird mix that makes it hard to interview on either. Entry-level folks are at an advantage here since they usually have one language. Memory can help you do great in a screening interview, but without recent day-to-day experience, code tests will be difficult. Despite the supposed relation, core Java programming and J2EE programming are two different things with different skillsets. If you come from academia, you likely have very little J2EE experience and may find it hard to get accepted for a J2EE job. J2EE jobs seem to have a larger list of acronyms in their requirements. In addition, from interviewing J2EE developers it seems that for many there is a focus on mastering specific APIs and architectures, whereas core Java development tends to be secondary. In the same way that I can no longer manipulate pointers well, a J2EE developer may have difficulties doing low level Java manipulation. This puts you at a relative advantage in competing for core Java jobs! If you are able to work for startups (in terms of family life and stability) or migrate to startup-rich areas such as the west coast, you can find many exciting opportunities where advanced degrees are a benefit. I've since been approached by several startups, although I had to decline. Work through a recruiter if possible. They have direct contacts with the hiring parties, allowing you to "stand out". It is better to get a clear yes/no confirmation from a recruiter on whether a company might be interested in interviewing you, than it is to send your resume and hope that someone will ever see it. Recruiters are also a great way of bypassing HR. However, also beware of recruiters. They have a vested interest and will go to various shady practices and pressure tactics. To find a good recruiter, talk to a friend who declined a job offer he got through a recruiter. A good recruiter, to me, is measured in how they handle that. Interview for the jobs that require your core strength. If you're rusty or entirely unfamiliar with a technology around which the job revolves, you're probably not a good match. Yes, you probably have the talent to master them, but most companies would want "instant gratification". I got my offers from companies that wanted core Java developer. I didn't do well on places that wanted advance C++ because I am too rusty and not up to date on recent libraries. I also didn't hear from companies that wanted lots of J2EE experience, and that's ok. Finding companies that want core Java without web is harder, but exists in specific industries (e.g., finance, defense). This requires a lot more legwork in terms of search, but these jobs do exist. There are different interview styles. Some companies focus on puzzles, some companies focus on algorithms, and some companies focus on design and coding skills. I had the most success in places where the questions were the most related to the function I would have been performing. Pick companies accordingly as well.

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