Enigma: At the Forefront of Electronics

image: Haris Awang

The effects which the latest technology trends, such as 3D printing and wearable technology, are having on our everyday lives are exciting and profound. Enigma People Solutions feels privileged to be working with clients who are at the forefront of today’s technology, in fast paced industries which affect the way our world works today and the way it will look and work in the future. With clients ranging from companies specialising in the design of medical devices to music and sound products, camera and imaging technology, smart sensors, as well companies committed to the provision of greener energy.

Some of our favourite technologies that clients of ours are working on include:

Visible light communication –  one of our clients is leading the field in the use of the visible light instead of radio frequencies for wireless communication. Their goal is to create high-speed wireless access that offers substantially greater data densities than Wi-Fi along with security properties that eliminate unwanted external network intrusion. Their expectation is that combining lighting and data services will offer reduce costs, infrastructure complexity and energy consumption.

Laboratory equipment  – another client, a global developer and manufacturer of high quality, robust and innovative automated laboratory equipment for both the academic and industrial sectors of pharmaceutical and biotech research. Our client’s focus is to reduce material handling costs and put the discovery tools back in the hands of the scientist. The ability to combine cutting edge science with first rate engineering, enables this company to design and develop unique and novel products. We are excited to see the range of skills used by this company including product design conceptualization, prototyping, mechanical and software engineering to final manufacture and sale. As with many companies in this sector close relationships have been formed with academia and pharmaceutical companies to understand the technological needs of industry and to provide solutions to optimise workflow and reduce costs.

Our client working on power system solutions develops solutions that are used by power system operators and planners worldwide for improving power system security, securely increasing power transfer levels and tracking power system performance, including dynamics, model validation, tuning of power system stabilisers and more.

In short, this company is forging new ways to monitor and reduce power usage and wastage providing this with real green credentials. What has excited the people we have placed with this client is the thought that they are doing their bit to conserve energy and reduce energy wastage and in doing so making a real impact on the world today.

These technologies are fast changing the world that we live in and as always it’s an exciting time be a part of this industry. Although we are excited to see what the new trends like wearable tech and 3D printing will bring to the industry we wondered what other technology products or innovations inspire and excite you?

Do you agree that these new technologies will radically revolutionise how we live our lives? That they will continue grow to allow small UK firms to compete on an international level?

If working with these innovative and exciting technologies is what inspires you, then get in touch (hello@enigmapeople.com) and find out how you can play your part in the industry. For more information on our vacancies visit www.enigampeople.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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When Is It Time To Bring In A Recruiter?

Photo: Lauren Hammond

 

A recruitment consultancy is rarely a company’s first port of call when it comes to growing their team. As human beings we can be quite stubborn and insist that we can fix our problems ourselves. More importantly, we can fix them without spending any money.

But sometimes DIY recruitment causes more problems than it solves, and you can find yourself spending money when you’re trying to save it. You need to determine early on whether or not this is a job for you or for a recruiter.

This can be difficult to tell sometimes, so we thought we’d give you a hand in identifying the signs.

The Role Is Not Your Expertise
It’s hard to hire the best .NET Developer if you’re not actually sure what a .NET Developer does, and more importantly what they specifically need to do well in order to benefit your company. This is why specialist recruiters exist, to know exactly the type of person you need for your company when you’re not quite sure.

The Role Is Specific
If you’re looking for a role that’s flexible and that you can mould around the right person then maybe you could be better off looking on your own. However if your team is missing a specific skill set then you need someone with experience in getting those hard to find talents. Recruiters know who has those skill sets, who’s available and who would fit perfectly within your existing team.

You Don’t Have Time
Recruiting a new hire is difficult and time consuming and not something that every manager has time to do. While using a recruiter costs money, so does not having time to work on your own projects because you’re too busy trying to find your new hire. Think logically about how much time and money it will cost to focus on hiring and you might find that it would be cheaper, and much less stressful, to bring in a recruiter.

You’ve Already Tried To Hire And Were Unsuccessful
You’ve posted your ads, gone through the applicants, maybe even interviewed a few… and still nobody is ticking the right boxes. You don’t know what’s going wrong so you need to bring in the professionals who do, and who will make sure that the next round will go right.

If you recognise any of these signs then we can help! You can email us at hello@enigmapeople.com or give us a call on 0141 332 4422.

Other Helpful Links
8 Mistakes You’re Making When Writing A Job Spec
How To Maintain Healthy Candidate/Client/Recruiter Relationships
The 3 Most Common Lies Told By Recruitment Agencies

The Year Ahead for Technology Recruitment

2014 has marked 10 years in business for Enigma and what a year it has been! We have moved to a bigger office, grown the team and won some prestigious awards along the way. Our award winning service has allowed us strengthen existing client relationships and build some great new ones, supplying tech talent to some of the UK’s most innovative companies, who are fast changing the world that we live in. One particular client who we have supplied top tech talent with since our inception, is Lumison, now known as Pulsant. Lumison was an Edinburgh based internet and communications company, with whom our client relationship has withstood the economic downturn, the competition for tech talent, and one which we are delighted to still hold today.

Towards the end of 2013 we saw demand for scarce technology talent in the UK continuing to rise, contractors stepping in to fill roles and salaries increasing.

Many of our clients have gone through growth phases this year and the highest demand has been for software and web developers and a focussed growth of digital marketing teams. This demand has increased as the year has gone on, and we are seeing the candidate market moving at an accelerated rate. We have seen candidates have the choice of multiple job offers, and many clients missing out on talent by taking too long with their recruitment processes. The demand is high due to a vast underinvestment for these technical skills in previous years and this has created a gap in the skills that employers today are demanding. Instead of addressing this issue, we have found many businesses have perpetuated the war for what little talent there is, by either competing on salaries, holding out for their definition of a ‘perfect candidate’ who either doesn’t exist or has several other job offers to choose from, or they contract in freelancers to complete projects.

Contracting is great as it allows companies to cope with the ebb and flow of demand, providing a flexible workforce to fill a gap for specialist skills. However, there has become an overreliance on contractors which is unsustainable and prevents investment in long term development of talent. We have argued that instead of taking part in the battle for talent employers must instead focus on putting a stop to the skills gap; do more to offer long term training and development and incentive programmes which will not only build up long term staff retention but help stop the “war” for talent.

2014 has seen employment rates rising steadily, despite this, it is estimated that unfilled vacancies cost the UK economy £18bn a year, which highlights the “growing importance of building a strategic recruitment function to hire quickly and efficiently, and find the right fit for each role”. These unfilled vacancies inhibit growth and hinder the potential of businesses. With the Institution for Engineering and Technology predicting that 41% of firms plan to recruit in 2015, these unfilled vacancies could continue to cost the economy billions.

In 2015 more must be done to fill vacancies and to fulfil the demand for talent in the industry. Businesses need to nurture existing talent and invest further in training and recruiting the talent coming forth from our universities, and this is something we hope to see much more of in 2015. Only then, can supply and demand of talent reach equilibrium and Scotland’s tech industry can continue to grow.

For the year ahead we hope to see more investment in talent and predict the continued growth of graduate recruitment and student work placements to fill gaps and get work done. There will be a continued high demand for specific developer talent but also more business analysis and project manager opportunities. Clients will continue to be selective but will also increase the efficiency of their recruitment processes.

Candidates will continue to have choice so there will be more wrangling, buy back and counter offers, meaning that some employers will suffer the frustration of thinking they have filled a vacancy only for that person to drop out in favour of another option. For this reason, employers will need to be careful to keep on top of their staff retention policies and programs and make sure they are motivating, enthusing and rewarding their staff as never before! In fact we believe we will see a rise in the currency of perkonomics – benefits and privileges brands use to retain customers – to help in the retention of employees.

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Wot We Rote This Weak

Writing skills and the correct use of the English language is a skill which can’t be underestimated regardless of how much autocorrect and spell checkers seemingly make it easier for us; so last week we were absolutely delighted that our written submission to the national Marketing and Advertising Recruitment Awards 2014, for Best Regional Agency, won us a “Highly Commended”, with judges commenting they had to highly commend us for our “superb entry”.

The use of the English language and importance of communication seems to be a hot topic, with a number of articles popping up on my news feeds recently. The BBC talks about why, apparently, typos in written language don’t really matter. It’s interesting to read that mistakes are due to our brains reading what we think we have written, rather than down to carelessness.

“Writing is a sophisticated job and our brains focus on the structure, the sentences and the phrases, leaving the close-up work to be done on autopilot…..”

The article goes on to say that if human beings have any remaining competitive advantage over the machines, it is not our skill at crossing i’s and dotting t’s, it is our ability to write something that provokes a response – and not just because it contains a spelling mistake.

We all know that if we want our content to provoke a response, it needs to be seen – and that’s where SEO and PPC comes in. It can be argued that SEO is in fact more important than the actual content (typos and all!).

This is all very well, but what happens when you are writing away (with SEO in mind) and then boom, you realise the British English spelling of a keyword is different to the American English?

Colour or color, socks or sox, centre or center, analogue or analog

What do you do? Which do you use? Do you alter it depending on your audience or do you avoid it all together?

In the office, David is forever being pedantic and pernickety about the importance of communication and the correct use of words; in fact I’m pretty sure one of his proudest moments was when one of us correctly identified a juxtaposition! (that was me 🙂). So, last week when the discussion turned to the correct use of collective nouns, a quick look on Wikipedia provided us with a list of some slightly amusing and unusual collective nouns and a few of our favourites (or favorites) were:

A bellowing of bullfinches

A drunkenship of cobblers

A murder of crows

A business of ferrets

A bevy of larks

A parliament of owls

A pandemonium of parrots

An escargatoire of snails

A dazzle of Zebra’s

This of course got us thinking about our own sphere of technology roles where we identified the following collective nouns for the talented bunch that we recruit for:

A bushel……..of iOS Developers?

A scrum……..of Project Managers?

A pride……..of Sales Executives?

A sprint……..of Developers?

A sketch……..of Designers?

A storyboard……..of Producers ?

A swarm……..of Test Engineers?

A drive……..of Hardware Engineers? 

A cluster……..of Server Engineers?

A library……..of Front End Developers?

A cloud……..of Architects?

A school……..of Tutors ?

And finally (my favourite!)

A group, team, collection, division, section, bunch, gathering, congregation, cluster of SEO managers…….

Any other suggestions?? Let us know hello@enigmapeople.com!

Androidify Yourself

Android’s latest update to the Androidify App lets you create your own android version of yourself with some cool new features! So we decided to create the Enigma People Solutions team as robot versions of ourselves.

The new features to the app include new accessories, clothes, and animations to make your droid dance, jump or even play the air guitar. The update also makes it easier to share these via Google+, Twitter etc or upload it to their gallery.

The best part of the Androidify App update is it allows you to enter your droid into a competition. So it could appear on a billboard in New York’s Time Square (don’t worry they notify you if you are chosen!)

For now I think Laura wins the competition for making the best use of the apps features! (yet it’s still so life like).

Images in order: Laura, Natalie, David, Anndeep, Scot, Daria, Ben

        

The Enigma Weekly Roundup | 7th November 2014

A roundup of our favorite technology, business and recruitment news from the past 7 days:

• The World’s First Solar Road Is a Bike Path in the Netherlands
• Alcohol Scientists Exist And They Have An App
• Ikea’s New Motorised Standing Desk Will Get You Out of Your Chair
• Happy 20th Birthday to the Banner Ad
• Bionic Bird Is An App-Controlled Drone That Flies Like A Flappy Bird
• Sony Replaces Mobile Chief and Slashes Smartphone Sales Forecast
• This Adhesive Patch Absorbs And Analyses Your Sweat To Monitor Your Health
• Which Falls first? The Ball Or The Feather?
• This Portable Raspberry Pi Console Will Bring Back The Arcade Games Of Your Misspent Youth
• The Future of Books is on Your Phone, Not Your Tablet
• Careers Advice Not Keeping Pace With Digital & ICT Industry
• BAE Launches Major Apprentice Recruitment Drive
• Edinburgh Trams Become Latest Tourist Attraction
• Say Hello to the Newest Member of the Enigma Team – Scot! 

   

Halloween Technology Treats!

In the spirit of Halloween, we bring you a run down of some scary apps and mobile games which have us truly terrified!

• Race Yourself – Google Glass App that lets you race against giant boulders, zombies, fire, virtual friends, and even an oncoming train.
• Zombie Rig – Sony Pictures Animation gives you a fun opportunity to animate using an actual character rig from one of their feature films, Hotel Transylvania.
• The Walking Dead – Turn yourself into a photo-realistic Walker zombie from The Walking Dead with the official free app.
• Halloween Jungle Run – Halloween Jungle Run is an endless running game with terrific backgrounds, coffins, ghosts, holy water, spiders, witches, pumpkins and more.
• Waterstones’ Halloween Themed ‘Blogger Mystery’ Game – an online horror game in which five bloggers will, over the next fortnight, fall victim to an ‘unknown horror’ in the manor they have become guests of.
• Halloween City –  iTunes app which lets you create your own Halloween-themed City! Decorate your city with lots of amazing Halloween Characters including Witches, Vampires, Pumpkins, Monster Plants, Werewolves, Mummies, Zombies etc.
• Make Me A Zombie – upload a photo of yourself and make yourself a zombie.
• Free Halloween Sounds Pro – iTunes app creates a bunch of spooky Halloween sounds remotely!
• 63 Most Amazing Pumpkin Carvings – Here are some of the best examples of pumpkin carving art in the world.

Happy Halloween from Enigma People Solutions!

Scottish Businesses Celebrate Digital Success in Style

Scotland’s digital industry was out in full force on Thursday 24^th October at this years Herald Scottish Digital Business Awards. Held in Glasgow’s rather luxurious Grand Central Hotel, the awards once again brought together Scottish businesses to celebrate their digital success in style.

Now in their sixth year, the awards recognise businesses of all sizes, and from all sectors, that have enhanced their business and client base through the use of digital technology and the internet. From almost 100 entries, winners were selected for each category based on their exceptional execution of projects across games, mobile technology, business software, public installations and social media campaigns. Event judge and Enigma People Solutions Director David Mains tells me that some of the categories were excruciatingly close with some taking hours to decide on a winner!

The high profile event consisted of up to 250 guests, all in their glad rags and sipping champagne, eagerly waiting for event host, BBC news reader Catriona Shearer, to announce the winners. The winners on the night were:

Business to Business Award:  Nucleus

Retail/E-Commerce Award: Dojo Design Limited

Public Sector Award include Charity/Not-for-Profit: Blue2

Best Mobile Application Award: 21 Awake

Consumer Engagement Award: Chunk Digital

Education &Training Award: Storm ID

Student Award: The Royal Albert Hall, Lockdown (Ryan Allan, Mark Phillips, Jordan Pollock

Best Use of Social Media Award: Nucleus

The 2014 awards also saw the introduction of the Digital Professional Award to honour the work of one outstanding individual in the industry. This prestigious award was presented to Scott Walker, Digital Design Director at Lewis, the Edinburgh based creative design and digital agency behind Hunter Boots and Scottish Power. He was awarded for his instrumental success in projects such as these and is described as the “best creative director of all time” by colleagues.

Enigma People Solutions was proud to sponsor the Digital Agency Award, the final award of the night. Judges were looking to reward an agency who they felt carried out the most advanced digital innovation in Scotland, using digital to excite, enthuse and inspire. This award was presented to Glasgow’s Screenmedia. They impressed judges with the overall excellence of their entry, detailing their market leading mobile apps, bespoke mobile web solutions and innovation for internet of things, amongst many other talents.

So there you have it folks!

We’d like to congratulate all the winners and finalists on their achievements! It is the work of these individuals and business which reaffirms our belief in the exceptional talent in Scotland’s digital sector. It makes us proud to be a part of, and help grow, a sector which is a such major contributor to Scotland’s economy. The Herald Scottish Digital Business Awards are a fantastic opportunity to showcase such talents and an event we very much enjoy being a part of. Given the successful growth of this exciting market and how this is reflected in the growth of the awards, I can only imagine how much bigger and better next years awards will be!

Full coverage is on heraldscotland.com – http://www.heraldscotland.com/business/company-news/screenmedia-wins-top-prize-at-herald-digital-business-awards.25679272

For the latest industry news and digital vacancies follow Enigma People Solutions on LinkedIn and Twitter @enigmapeople

The Enigma Weekly Roundup | 24th October 2014

We bring you a roundup of the best technology, recruitment and business news from the past 7 days:

• Vatican Library’s Digital Archives Now Available Online
• IBM Pays £931m To Offload Semiconductor Business
• How Tech Companies Can Help Their Coders
• ARM Powers Ahead with IoT
• Students Frustrated by Lack of Tech in Classrooms 
• Graduate Recruitment: What Other Industries Can Learn From The Digital Industry
• UK Trials New Wireless Technology
• EE Plans Job Cuts for the Good of its Customers
• The ‘Magic Glass‘ That Fixes Bad Eyesight
• Google Just Released Hundreds of Cool Icons That You Can Use For Free
• Edinburgh Tech Hub Eyes Glasgow & Aberdeen
• European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes on Europe’s Digital Future 
• River Sensors to Clean Up Waterways
• The Young at Work Aren’t Dumb as We think – Corporate Handyman Blog

For the latest news on the IT, Digital and Electronics industry in Scotland follow Enigma People Solutions on LinkedIn and Twitter @enigmapeople

Record Number of Scottish Businesses Enter the Herald Scottish Digital Business Awards 2014

There isn’t long left until this years Herald Scottish Digital Business Awards and the team here couldn’t be more excited. For some members of the team it will be their first time attending this event and after hearing how great it was last year they are eagerly looking forward to it.

This year the awards have seen a record number of entries. This not only reflects on how this has grown to become such an important event for businesses in Scotland but also conveys just how successful this industry has become, now a key player in the global market.

It has no doubt been a tough job for this years judges to narrow down almost 100 entries to the lucky few who have been shortlisted for the following categories:

• Business to Business Award sponsored by Jumpstart UK
• Retail/E-Commerce Award
• Public Sector Award include Charity/Not-for-Profit
• Best Mobile Application Award
• Consumer Engagement Award sponsored by Hillington Park Innovation Centre
• Education &Training Award sponsored by The University of Glasgow
• Student Award sponsored by Metadigital
• Best Use of Social Media Award
• Digital Professional of the Year
• Digital Agency Award sponsored by Enigma People Solutions

To see details of which agencies or businesses made the cut, the shortlist can be found on the The Herald Scottish Digital Business Awards website.

Enigma People Solutions director David Mains sat on the judging panel and was “astounded at the calibre of entries” presented, stating ‘each of the nominees has demonstrated creative excellence and innovation in their entries and are all highly deserving of this recognition in the industry.”

This years event will be held on Thursday October 23rd at Glasgow’s Grand Central Hotel. If you are too excited and can’t wait until then, you can read my write up of last years event here! For more information or to attend the event contact Lyndsay Wilson – lyndsay.wilson@heraldandtimes.co.uk.