The Enigma Weekly Roundup | 31st July 2015

The best technology, business, recruitment news stories from the week gone by:

Turing Festival – The Edinburgh International Technology Festival

• Scottish SXSW-style Tech Festival Set for Edinburgh in August – Turing 2015 will be headlined by Edinburgh Unicorns Skyscanner and FanDuel.

• Analytics, Cloud Computing Dominate Internet Of Things App Developers’ Plans – Plus many other insights are from the Internet of Things Study 2015

• Tech Partnership Urges Employers to Simplify Tech Job Ads for Grads – Helping grad candidates easily compare their skills and strengths against job descriptions.

• Reebok: ‘It’s Not That Difficult to Convert Traffic From Social Media Into Sales’ – Especially if the social media is linked to store location.

• Is The UK Electronics Industry ‘On The Up’? – UK electronic systems industry can lead product offerings in the burgeoning IoT space.

• 35 Habits That Make Employees Extremely Valuable – These traits mean you are onto a winning team.

• Your Team Can’t Read Your Mind – Communication is key.

• The 20 Weirdest Words Added to the Dictionary Because of Technology – Including Screenager, Egosurf & cyberchondriacs.

• 7 Common Sales Job Interview Questions and How to Answer Them – Sales job candidates must be intentional about the perception they create with hiring managers.

• What Do Software Engineers Who Earn $500,000 a Year Do? – Type one versus type two workers.

• Love of Learning Is the Key to Success in the Jobless Future – An engineering degree is very valuable, but the sense of empathy that comes from music, arts, literature, and psychology provides a big advantage in design.

• Edinburgh’s Electronics Research & Design Market – The capital’s potential to become a global leader in electronic research & design.

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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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The Enigma Weekly Roundup | 3rd July 2015

The best technology, business, recruitment news stories from the week gone by:

The Technology and Innovation Centre

• Queen to Open New Strathclyde University Technology Centre – Drawing together different science and technology disciplines with outside business partners, the centre has explosive economic potential.

• The Most Important Skill in Software Development -To a great extent the act of coding is one of organization.

• Data Roaming Charges to End in EU Within Two Years – The new rules also require telecom operators to treat most internet traffic equally.

• Half the Workforce Could be Freelance Soon, but Ministers Haven’t Noticed – The Office for National Statistics reports self-employment is running at a 40-year high.

• 2015 Graduates Have More Jobs to Choose From Than Last Year – Graduate-specific advertised vacancies in May 2015 are up 16.3%.

• What Engineers Taught Me About Marketing – An abridged version of everything learned from working for the other side.

• 5 Essentials When Hiring an App Developer – It’s hard work developing software in the age of mobile.

• Should Every Tester Learn To Program? – Not everyone agrees so!

• Team Building Company Brings Treasure Hunt Apps to Scotland – The software can be programmed with bespoke ‘mini-missions’, tailored questions and riddles to help players reach mystery destinations and complete complex tasks.

• Medium is Doing Away with Passwords – And its new method for logging in is shockingly simple.

• How we all Became Obsessed with Online Privacy – How did the notion of internet privacy gain so much traction, and where will it take us next?

• Dubai is Building the World’s First 3D-Printed Office Building – Not only will the exterior walls of the 2,000-square-feet structure be printed, but its interior and furniture will be as well.

• What is it Really Like to Work as a Game Developer? – Is it all fun and games?

And finally, some Friday Fun!

• Ask Siri What Zero Divided By Zero Is; Prepare To Be Burned –

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The Enigma Weekly Roundup | 26th June 2015

The best technology, business, recruitment news stories from the week gone by:

• Britain Hits Record Number of Startups as More Aspiring Entrepreneurs Take the Plunge – more than 600,000 expected to launch in 2015.

• 7 Personality Traits of Great Designers – You need more than just mastery of design skills and a good eye.

• SoundCloud is Making Things Harder for Third-Party App Developers – a major change from its current policy, which allows apps to make unlimited play requests.

• Mobile Recruitment Strategies will Shape Future – Companies need to utilise all possible avenues to ensure they are securing the right talent for their high ranking roles.

• Google for Nonprofits Launches in Scotland – Scottish Registered Charities can apply to join the programme which offers access to Google’s suite of free products and tools.

• Cambridge University To Offer Lego Professorship – The Lego Foundation gave Cambridge £2.5 million to endow a “professorship of play in education, development, and learning.”

• 5 Ways to Keep Your New Hires Happy – Candidates can be more selective and are more comfortable waiting for an offer — and job hopping when another offer comes in.

• The World’s Workforce Will Gradually Stop Growing by 2050 – Average growth over the next 35 years is expected to be just 0.3%.

• Lenovo is the Latest to Hop on the PC-on-a-stick Bandwagon – Who knew that stick computers were suddenly in vogue?

• Lexus Says it Built a Real Hoverboard – “When technology, design, and imagination come together, amazing things can be achieved.”

• Infographic: James Bond – HR’s Nightmare Employee – How much would he really cost Mi6 in claims?

• 8 Mistakes You’re Making When Writing A Job Spec – Some helpful, friendly, free advice

• 25 Things We Did Before Smartphones – It was a simpler time…

Friday Funny! Web Designers at Work….

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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 Enigma Weekly Roundup | 19th June 2015

The best technology, business, recruitment news stories from the week gone by:

• In the Future, Employees Won’t Exist – Contract work is becoming the new normal.

• How Do Candidates Want to Be Recruited? – infographic from LinkedIn’s Talent Trends 2015.

• This Agency’s Office Literally Disappears After Hours So You Can’t Work Late – Forcing you to find a balance.

• Creative Job Applications and Tips for Your CV – Are traditional CV’s a thing of the past.

• Are Emoji Passcodes the PIN Replacements We Both Want and Need – it’s time to replace four digit PINs with a language everyone loves.

• Proportion of Women in UK Digital Workforce Falls to 27% –  According to a new report from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES).

• Win All You’ll Need to Become a Coding Expert with Intel’s IoT Challenge – Gizmodo has teamed up with Intel to create the “IoT Challenge” using Intel’s tiny Edison.

• Scientists Inject Tiny, Rolled-Up Electronics Into The Brain –  A simple injection, it seems, can now fire up a brain and help to analyze biological activity.

• 7 Productivity Tip for Coders, From Coders – Work smarter, not harder.

• Microsoft’s ‘Elite’ Controller Is Good News For Gamers With Disabilities – The Elite controller is the only official option Xbox offers for players who want (or need) to tweak the control setups.

• 9 Career Lessons I Learned From Comic Books – Unlike “business strategy” tomes, comic book wisdom is packed into the fewest words possible.

• Uber’s Latest Training and Recruitment Tool is a Video Game – Via a smartphone game that loosely mimics the experience of being an Uber driver.

Friday Funny!

• 20 Tips for Acing your Interview – You’re not an applicant, you’re an appliCAN.

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The Enigma Weekly Roundup | 9th June 2015

The best technology, business, recruitment news stories from the week gone by:

• Fiat’s Clever Digital Billboard That Helps Drivers Parallel Park – They created an interactive video billboard using custom software and ultrasonic sensors that monitored the parking space.

• How To Manage Developers – Just Because You’re In Charge Doesn’t Mean You’re In Control

• Andy Murray Teams up With Seedrs Crowdfunding Website – The Tennis champion will provide the firm with advice on firms working in the health, sport and wearable technology markets.

• Ginger Emoji Campaign Calls on Scotland’s Redheads for Backing – A petition which asks that Apple include ginger emoji has gained almost 12,000 signatures

• Why Google and Apple Made Their Own Programming Languages – For Apple, Google, and even Microsoft when to release a new programming language means an uphill battle against the habits and routines of developers.

• Director Reveals Plan to Remake Star Wars Short Film in Scotland – The feature-length version of Black Angel to be filmed in Glencoe and Skye, as well as returning to Eilean Donan.

• Why Apple Paid for a 15 Year Old Developer to Come to its Conference and Meet Tim Cook – He has more than 5 app that have been downloaded more than 60,000 times in 75 countries.

• Australian Firm Sets up Base in ‘Smart’ Glasgow – The move further establishes Glasgow as a leading technology hub after it won a £24m future cities grant from the UK Government

• New Online Drivers License System Comes Into Force – An online service is replacing the paper counterpart,

• Scottish Entrepreneurs to SCALE New Heights – Three public agencies in Scotland team up with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Harvard Business School to run the Scotland CAN DO SCALE programme.

• 25+ Most Enlightening Digital Marketing Stats From This Week – Kids of the 80s and 90s are addicted to experimenting with online retail deliveries.

• Infographic: Global Recruiting Trends – Social media has made talent more accessible than ever before.

• 13 & 15 Yrs Old Brothers Built Mobile Web Browsering Alternative To Google Chrome – The young problem solvers got tired of waiting for Google Chrome to load on their mobile phones, so decided to do something about it.

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5 Job Vacancies To Look Out For

Image: “Job Application” by phasinphoto (freedigitalphotos.net)

Guest Blog by David Farrell-Shaw

This weeks blog is guest blog by a friend of Enigma’s, David Farrell Shaw, who, whilst job hunting himself, has identified 5 different vacancy adverts job seekers should be wary of.

1. The Fishing Job:- the recruitment agency posts numerous similar sounding jobs that sound attractive. The purpose is to get a hold of CVs and build a database of contacts.
2. The Budget Job:- the job comes with a fixed salary. Picking someone up on the cheap is a key priority. Never mind that staff turnover and constant recruitment will cost them more in the long run. They don’t care. This is a company living month to month. Their first question is always how much are you currently getting paid.
3. The Bi Polar Job:- They advertise for say, an SEO expert. They don’t know what one is – or even why they need one. (90% of the time they wouldn’t know what to do with one even if they found them). This type make their snap decision on what tie you are wearing or the fact you can be an ‘expert’ that costs £20k less than that other ‘expert’.
4. The Impossible Job:- Similar to Budget Job. This one needs an SEO, E-business, PPC, content creating, DBA, Customer Experience expert who ‘knows’ Agile plus ‘must have’ experience of every programming language that ever existed. Oh and Powerpoint. You need to be highly skilled in Powerpoint.
5. The Internal Job:- It has already been filled. Key clues are quick closing date (tomorrow at 9 am), or 5 years experience in (insert internal process or software here)

David’s advice?

“Find a good Agency. They do exist. They will get you in front of the right people. Then it is up to you.”

Finding a good recruitment agency to work on your behalf can make the biggest difference to your job search. Any good agency will not put your CV forward for a role without your consent, without evaluating your skills against the job spec and your personality against the company culture. They will have in depth knowledge of their clients business and know who is serious about adding talent to their teams and who isn’t. Working with a reputable agency means you can avoid these 5 types of job vacancies.

You might also like:

• The 3 Most Common Lies Told In Job Descriptions
• 6 Ways a Recruiter Can Help Your Job Search
• Writing Cover Letters – Back to Basics
• 6 Things Great Candidates Do

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The Enigma Weekly Roundup | 5th June 2015

The best technology, business, recruitment news stories from the week gone by:

• SanDisk fits 128GB in a Dime-Sized Drive – That’s the same storage as a MacBook Air or top end iPhone.

• An ‘Army’ Of Seals Gather Data In Antarctica – Boldly Going Where No Seal Has Gone Before.

• The Digital Divide: Attracting, Retaining and Future Proofing Your Workforce – Unleash the talent from within.

• Intel to Acquire Altera in a $16.7 Billion Deal – The deal is expected to enable new products that meet customer needs in the data center and Internet of Things (IoT) market.

• ‘The Big Bang Theory’: How the cast and crew are helping STEM students – $4 million has been donated to the Big Bang Theory Scholarship Endowment at UCLA.

• Hashtag Named UK Children’s Word of the Year – The research has shown that children are true innovators and that they are using more vocabulary, not less.

• Meet Margaret Hamilton, the Badass ’60s Programmer who Saved the Moon Landing – It’s just her and her code.

• Using Psychological Techniques in Digital Marketing – It’s use in b2b is often overlooked.

• The Beer Scientists – Utilizing the Human Palate as a Lab Tool

• Entrepreneurs Sink Their Teeth Into Gaming – The app connected toothbrush designed to teach children brushing habits and oral hygiene.

• Computers Can Tell How Much Pain You’re in by Looking at Your Face – The tech is up to the level of an astute nurse.

• Edinburgh Can Be Intelligent City of the Future – CEO at Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce tells us why the city could be a leading gigabyte city. 

• Scotland IS – The Scottish IT Trade Board Confident of Sector Success – “We are definitely seeing more technology-enabled companies in Scotland with world-class potential”

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The Enigma Weekly Roundup | 22nd May 2015

The best technology, business, recruitment news stories from the week gone by:

• Wounded Sea Turtle Gets 3D Printed Jaw – A Titanium Turtle Jaw.

• United Airlines Offers Rewards for Spotting Bugs in Software – The most obvious caveat, you can’t get a reward if you are the source of the bug.

• ‘Cyber-Archaeology’ Salvages Lost Iraqi Art – Applying new technology to cultural heritage.

• JAVA Turns 20 – Happy Birthday Java.

• Why Clarks is Measuring Feet With iPads – Tic Tech Toe.

• Female Developers on the Rise in Britain – Women are entering the field at a faster rate than in the past.

• Don’t Invest in UK until EU Exit Vote, Warns German industry Boss – This comes after Deutsche Bank considers moving parts of its British division to Germany if the UK votes to leave the EU.

• Planet Earth Now Has a Flag for When We Reach Mars – Centred in the flag, seven rings form a flower, a symbol of the life on Earth.

• Reflections from Gartner Digital Marketing Conference 2015 – Business require to match digital thinking with digital doing.

• Propose To Your Beloved With This Bitcoin Engagement Ring – A 3D-printed piece of jewelry with a QR code.

• Supermarket’s “Indoor Sat-Nav” Guides Shoppers to Discounts – The LED-based technology provides in-store directions to shopping list items via their phones.

• 5 Fascinating Start-ups From Edinburgh’s Tech Sector – Edinburgh has grown to become one of the most interesting places to do business in the whole of Europe.

And Finally Some, Friday Fun…

• The Latest in Aquatic Ridables, The Electric Wakeboard – Nobody messes about in a boat any more.

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