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TECHNOLOGY & CORONA VIRUS

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TECHNOLOGY CAN REDUCE THE IMPACT OF CORONA VIRUS WITHIN THE WORKPLACE.

The Corona virus outbreak has had a huge impact on the world. Continued precautions recommended by health experts have seen the postponement of many public events. Sporting events, movie releases, music concerts have all been cancelled. It has even led to the Special Olympics being postponed.

One environment in particular facing absolute disruption is the workplace as workers are being sent home or businesses are shutting down until the outbreak has ceased. The hospitality sector is a clear example of this. Hotels bookings have dropped 15% throughout the UK and custom for restaurants has also declined with the postponement of the six nations Rugby Match against Italy. Premiership games set to play out this week have also been called off.

Companies are looking at other options such as working remotely from home. Working remotely is now a more common practice and has been made more possible by the rise of technology.

Best cloud computing services – at a glance

  1. Amazon Web Services
  2. Microsoft Azure
  3. Google Cloud
  4. IBM Cloud
  5. Oracle Cloud

The cloud has also proven to have become a huge asset in the midst of this outbreak and become a solution to the problems faced by businesses and schools. Team meetings and collaborations are now being hosted via the cloud. Education has now too joined the cloud so students can still keep learning whilst being at home without their education being disrupted by the corona outbreak. Indeed technology has proven how in the face of a crisis like this it can provide solutions that will benefit both employees and employers.

In the meantime, here are three tips to reduce the impact of Coronavirus within the business.

  1. Build resilience into your businesses. Form you own continuity plans on how your business will deal with COVID-19. Having good plans in place is just good business practice so if you haven’t any in place then taking a bit of time now to do so will be best for your business all round. Some of this summary by Allen & Overy is perhaps aimed at large businesses but a lot may be relevant to consider for SME’S also:

A few points to have in mind would be:

  • How will you continue to operate your business should home-working be required?
  • How will you manage resources should someone in your business have COVID-19 or need to self-isolate?
  • How will you manage contractual risks should you default due to COVID-19?
  • How will you manage finances should COVID-19 impact your business?
  • How will you manage your supply chain?
  • How will you managing your customer/client relationships?
  • Have you got business continuity insurance in place?
  1. Keep up to date with government advice and information. Of particular interest to you will be the advice in respect to employers and businesses:
  2. Please keep the your  Team informed of:
  • Recent and future travel plans for your staff
  • Any instances of self-isolation,
  • Any instances of suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19.

As an employability business, we work with cloud technologies to allow us to conduct client meetings and candidate interviews. This will reduce the amount of travel and face to face connection required throughout the recruitment process. For more information on how we can help you meet your recruitment demands virtually please get in touch with one of our consultants via  hello@digiskills.agency

 

Why is January the Best Time to Find a Job?

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January 2020 – Is the Best Time to Find a Job

During the Christmas period it can be a struggle to search for a new job, but once that’s over it is a brand-new year, and some say it is the perfect opportunity to find a new career. January has been classed as the hunting season when it comes to finding a new job. So, if you are one of those people that has ‘find a new job’ on their New year’s resolution list then listed below are some reasons why January is the perfect month to job hunt and what you can do to prepare yourself.

Why is it the best month?

Employers are looking for new employees

In the New Year employers are feeling motivational and are eager to see what talent they can employ. They have a clearer mindset at this time of the year as they are less likely to be tied down to deadlines and projects. As January is the month for job hunting, there is a lot more competition for employers to choose from. Having a greater talent pool will enable employers to choose carefully resulting in a greater chance of your CV needing to impress them.

New budgets

The first few months of the year are normally the best times to apply for new jobs. Many job deadlines close at the end of January, so it allows for candidates plenty of time to apply within the New Year. Employers are also given a new budget at the start of every year, so this gives candidates a better chance at finding a new job and being hired. The salary is the main factor a candidate will look at when applying for a new job, so linking this with a company’s new budgets may mean the company will have more money to give to candidates.

What you can do to prepare yourself

Update your CV

When applying for new job in January it is essential that you keep your CV updated to keep track of your most recent skills and progression. Your CV is the first thing an employer will look at and it is your chance to stand out from the crowd, therefore making it a crucial factor when you are trying to start a new career. The key areas of your CV that you will need to keep updated are:

  • Your skills (technical and soft)
  • Employment history
  • Work experience
  • Qualifications

Once you have updated your CV it is important for you to understand exactly what job you are looking for. Applying for jobs you are marginally interested in will not benefit you in the future as this will impact your engagement, performance and success. Instead of applying for any job, try and find roles that you are passionate about and perhaps create a list that aligns with your personality, skills and interests. From this you are able to understand what companies you want to apply for and why.

You can also register with a recruitment agency that specialise in your area of interest and skills. Having a professional confidant in the industry can help you find jobs that may not be advertised on generic job boards.

 

Practice interview answers

For some it may have been a while since you have been interviewed and therefore it will be beneficial to practice some generic interview questions. If you have been invited for an interview, do not wait until the night before to go through potential interview questions, you should start preparing as soon as you can. The majority of employers will always start with questions about yourself such as ‘Tell me about yourself’ or ‘What do you do in your spare time’. Following this they may ask you some competency questions which are based on your previous experience and certain situations you may have found yourself in. Competency based interview questions are a good way of an employer finding out how you would handle certain situations if they were ever to arise, and this can say a lot about you. It is also a good idea to know what you are looking for from the jobs you have applied for. This way if you are asked during the interview process, you can answer in a matter of seconds.

Some companies will have a long interview process which can last a few months, whereas other companies may invite you in for an interview within the next week. Therefore, you should always be prepared and have an interview outfit ready, so you feel well equipped for when the day comes. You can check out other interview hint and tips here: https://www.digiskills.agency/interview-hints-tips/

 

Update your social presence

Although your CV and cover letter will be the first documents an employer will look at, it is also beneficial to keep your social channels up to date. Recruiters may look at your LinkedIn for example to see if your experience matches up with your experience on your CV. More employers are using LinkedIn and may want to view your profile before calling you. You should ensure that you have a professional photo on your profile, your work experience is up to date and you have the relevant skills listed as this can be a decider for some employers.

 

Good luck! We wish you the best in achieving your career goals this year, and hope you’ll be in touch with us if you’re looking for a change so we can help.

IBM Has Patented a Coffee Delivery Drone that Knows When You’re Tired

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Do we really need a drone to read our heart rates and eye movements to know we need a cup of java?

f you’ve grown weary of neck-bearded baristas in flannel and waiting in line for £5 eight-ounce cold brews, then you’ll be happy to know that soon you may be able to avoid that experience altogether in order to get your morning caffeine fix. The harbinger of death for the third-wave coffee shop has arrived, and it has taken the form of a coffee-delivering drone, designed by none other than IBM. And it knows when you need a jolt probably before you even do.

According to a patent document made available to the public by the US Patent and Trademark Office, IBM was granted a patent for an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, that delivers coffee or another “caffeine containing drink” to an individual who has placed an order, or to an individual in a crowd “for whom an electronic analysis of sensor data indicates to be in a predetermined cognitive state” requiring caffeine. All this means that a coffee-carrying drone could use various forms of electronic analysis to predict who needs a pick-me-up and who doesn’t, including motion sensors to know if someone’s head might be drooping in a mid-afternoon lull, or reading Fitbit data to know what time someone might have just woken up and be in need of a jolt. If given access to your medical data, it would know if you’re taking medication that interacts badly with caffeine, and would skip you over.

The patent for this drone, designed with office buildings or public event spaces like convention halls or festivals in mind, was first filed back in 2015 by IBM, the company known for creating business technologies that changed the way the world does work. The company currently holds record for the most US patents generated by a business for 25 consecutive years, according to Wikipedia.

 

It’s not the first company to develop a coffee delivery system that uses drones. Last year, a drone-focused logistics company called Matternet tested its coffee delivery via drone in the skies of Zurich, Switzerland. Back in 2014, an Amsterdam-based company called Coffee Copter demonstrated a version of its own system, which relied on an app as the user interface for placing coffee orders in an office setting. Just this past Monday, Wing, another drone delivery logistics company out of Australia, demonstrated its product for a local member of the Australian parliament in Canberra.

What those delivery systems lack, however, is the “smart” technology that IBM designed to read an individual’s vitals and predict when they’ll need a caffeine fix. Other coffee-focused drone companies are merely semi-automated delivery guys who still rely solely on you placing the order first.

This patent enters the world just as increasingly common work perks in the tech industry such as in-office free cafeterias and gyms are being reconsidered, or at least reframed as a means for companies to keep employees working as long as possible rather than just well-meaning offerings from our corporate overlords.

Is it better that a drone use facial recognition software to detect that your eyes are drooping around 4:30 and bring you a flat white, or should we be getting our blood flowing with a quick jaunt to the local coffee shop? That’s for you and your Fitbit to decide—you still need to get your steps in, after all.

 

  • Munchies 

Millennials vs Xennial’s, Who Is More Tech Savy?

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Xennials: the generation sandwiched between gen-Xers and millennials

There’s a new micro generation seeping into pop culture, and it’s geared towards those who don’t feel like they identify with millennials or generation X.

Xennial is a term being used to describe people born between 1977 and 1983. The micro generation is a mix between the “pessimistic gen-X” and “optimistic millennial,”

The years that make up the millennial generation vary. Many experts have defined the generation as anyone born between 1981 and 2004.

Generation X is the group following the baby boomer generation (1946 to 1964) and preceding the millennials. The parameters that make up generation X range from 1965 to 1984 (but the dates are not set in stone).

Then there are the xennials, known to be born when the first Star Wars trilogy was released.

The xennial generational category isn’t a new idea. It was written about in a 2014 article in Good Magazine by Sarah Stankorb and Jed Oelbaum.

“Between generation X and the millennials, there’s a group of people currently in their late 20s and early 30s who don’t identify with either label. We call them the xennials — a micro-generation that serves as a bridge between the disaffection of gen-X and the blithe optimism of millennials,” the authors wrote.

But the term xennials seems to be sticking.What makes the generation stick out, is the group’s interaction with technology,

“We hit this social media and IT digital technology boom in our 20s,” he said in the article. “It was a particularly unique experience. You have a childhood, youth and adolescence free of having to worry about social media posts and mobile phones.”

Even Babies have their own social media accounts

“Then we hit this technology revolution before we were maybe in that frazzled period of our life with kids and no time to learn anything new. We hit it where we could still adopt in a selective way the new technologies,”  – xennial – Global News

Others have taken to social media to express their thoughts on the generation classes. What’s yours? Who do you think are the most tech Savy out of the two Generation?

What is 5G?

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The next evolution of mobile data could be the last step-change we see in mobile data transmission – but when will 4G switch to 5G?

Mobile data use has rocketed over the past five years – increasing 74 per cent alone in 2015 – taking the overall global figure to around 3.7 exabytes per month. This will increase even further when 5G is released.

Underpinning this explosion is the growth of streaming services, both audio and video, and people’s growing use of apps – all underwritten by the expectation of having a high-speed data connection at all times, even when away from Wi-Fi.

With 4G now entrenched as a global standard for our immediate future in developed markets, it is set to be usurped by 5G, but what does that mean for you? In short: faster speeds and more capacity, due to a more resilient network.

 

What is 5G?

Next-generation mobile networks are expected to handle much more data volume, connect many more devices, significantly reduce latency and bring new levels of reliability.

5G has been designed to meet these needs by pooling bandwidth to boost range and speed.

How much faster is 5G compared to 4G?

At first, 5G will likely average speeds of 100Mbps, which isn’t a huge step up from the maximum for networks already using LTE-Advanced, which tend to deliver download speeds of between 30-50Mbps in real-world conditions. In lab conditions, the technology most widely in use today can handle up to a theoretical maximum of 150Mbps. This maximum depends on the category of the device and connection, however. Category 4 LTE maxes out at 150Mbps, but Cat 9 goes up to a theoretical maximum of 450Mbps.

Just to confuse things a little further, due to the technical definitions of wireless technologies – and the lack of a universal standard – you could see LTE-Advanced marketed as 5G, or 4G+, or LTE-Advanced+ or by some other as yet undefined name. In summary, it’s a marked improvement but the exact numbers will vary.

 

How is it so much faster?

4G LTE-Advanced, 5G or whatever else you want to call it splits the data into bands, each of which has its own particular bandwidth limitations. By aggregating these different bands and pooling the bandwidth (essentially), the end-user should get speeds far closer to 100Mbps and beyond as the technology develops.

5G, however, could be the last step-change in mobile technology, with some predicting a more additive and iterative upgrade process would remove the need for a full jump to ‘6G’. The current process is one of evolution (rather than revolution) for both hardware and software, but one that’s aiming at a potential 100 times increase in speeds… eventually.

 

Who is working to introduce 5G to the masses?

Nokia recently took a step closer to 5G mobile networks by announcing it is bringing 4.5G Pro to mobile operators by the end of 2016. According to the firm, 4.5G Pro delivers ten times the speeds of conventional 4G networks, allowing network operators to offer peak speeds of one gigabit (1,000 megabits) per second.

Although the Finnish firm hasn’t announced a release date yet, Nokia is also poised to release 4.9G in the ‘near future’ – an upgrade which it says will push data speeds to several gigabits per second.

In the US, AT&T and Verizon have begun trialing 5G across a controlled number of sites and will roll this trial out further over the next decade, starting in 2017. The trial and roll out formed part of the Obama administration’s Advanced Wireless Research Initiative led by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

More recently, Ericsson and Orange announced they are working on the development and test of selected 5G use cases based on Orange’s network, using Ericsson 5G technology.

The partnership will enable so-called “5G technology building blocks”, proof of concepts, and pilots across Europe from 2017 onwards. These include wireless multi-gigabits internet access, “ultra large mobile coverage solutions” and connected cars.

As well as Orange, Ericsson is partnering with NTT DOCOMO and Intel to build a 5G trial environment in central Tokyo, starting next year. The purpose of the trials is to test use case applications and radio performance. Ericsson will provide 5G end-to-end systems including 5G radio and core networks, and Intel will contribute its chipset in user devices.

The trial will be conducted using the 28GHz frequency band; a candidate band which the Japanese government is considered designating for use by commercial 5G networks in Japan.

 

What about in the UK?

The UK Chancellor, Philip Hammond, announced a commitment to 5G in the recent Autumn Statement in November. He has dedicated around £740m to be used for the development of 5G, but mentioned no set launch date for the 5G service.

 

And when can we expect it to arrive?

As it stands now, 5G is expected to start rolling out globally sometime in 2020, with Ovum’s figures suggesting there will be 24 million 5G subscribers by 2021. It says that less than 10 per cent of those connections will be in Europe though. It could be even fewer than that if operators follow through on threats to delay 5G rollouts if strong net neutrality laws are adopted.

Europe lagging a little behind isn’t too surprising – countries like South Korea have been considering the specifications, implementation and deployment of 5G since as far back as 2008. Previously, UK networks like a EE were looking at a 2022 time-frame for deploying the new standard; though that could theoretically move forward a little, it’s unlikely to be by much.

A formalised standard should be in place by 2018 ahead of early rollouts in 2020 – but as of now, there’s no single definition. This leads to a potential problem for both business and users.

To try to side-step some of these issues (largely incompatible hardware issues) various interested parties (handset manufacturers, the 3GPP and others) around the world are working together to ensure a non-fragmented user experience when it does arrive.

Elsewhere, Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia and Qualcomm recently announced the formation of the “5G Automotive Association”.

The goal is to address the issues around connected mobility and road safety with apps including connected automated driving, access to services and integration into smart cities and intelligent transports.

 

What is causing the delay?

The main reason for ensuring global compatibility is that otherwise devices made for one country won’t necessarily work on the same spectrum bands in other countries. This is particularly vital for the success of the Internet of Things (IoT) and connected-devices in general; each of them will need a low-latency, high-capacity, and highly reliable connection to truly reach their potential.

The concession to this point of harmonisation is that LTE-Advanced/5G should be backwards compatible, provided the right groundwork is laid down ahead of the rollouts. For example, a device that supports Cat 4LTE, but not faster Cat9 will still use LTE-Advanced technology, but won’t get the full benefits of that carrier aggregation. It’ll still be a whole lot better than current 4G (and most certainly 3G) speeds though.

With live deployments not yet under way and technical terms still not yet defined, there’s still time for everything to change again before 5G actually arrives – and of course, there’s still time to introduce another completely new acronym.

If you found this article interesting, check out our ‘Latest Industry News’ page for more Technology insights. You can view it by clicking on this link!

– Ben Woods

How to choose the right Recruitment Agency

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Discover in this article how to choose the right Recruitment Agency most suitable to your Business needs.

Whether you are a candidate seeking a new role or a client looking to hire, identifying a good recruitment agency is the first vital step in making this often tedious process a pleasant and fruitful experience.

Applying for a job is hard work, time consuming and extremely competitive. Despite having an outstanding CV, hiring managers may never get to see it even if you have the right qualifications and experience. In order to maximize their chances, candidates are turning to a recruitment agency to help them in their search for their dream job.

So, how should you go about identifying a recruiter who is right for you? A quick Google search will bring up a myriad of results, and a scan of positions available may be one way of choosing who to entrust your CV to, however, this isn’t necessarily the best approach. When you research agencies, many of them will have things in common – but you need to find the one that will best serve you in your search for a new job.

The first thing to consider whether you are a client or candidate is the agency’s approach. Do they really care about you? A good agency will be keen to speak to you, find out about you and your motivations behind looking for a new job as well as quizzing you about your career goals. The same principle goes for clients who are looking to place a role with a recruitment consultant. Recruiters should be inquisitive about your organisation, the sort of culture you have there and the type of person that would fit in, as well as the usual job description.

An ability to sell is essential in a recruiter. They are your representatives in front of your potential new employer and as such, when they find you a great role, you want them to pitch you as the perfect candidate, with the right skills and personality for the role on offer.

Furthermore, you need to conduct your job search with an enthusiastic recruitment agency. Job-hunting is not an easy process, so working with someone who is positive and who motivates you when the going gets tough will make life better all round.

A recruitment agency that has genuine experience in the sector you are interested in is vital. They must understand the jobs they are recruiting for and the needs of the client entrusting them with finding the perfect candidate. There is nothing worse than being put up for a job by a recruiter who doesn’t understand the industry they are recruiting into.

A good agency should be able to help you tailor your CV so that it stands out and meets the employer’s needs, as well as offering you tips for interviews. They should be able to get you in front of great companies, respect the confidentiality of your CV and only send your details to companies with your permission.

So in short, you are looking for a recruitment agency that is enthusiastic and highly motivated to help you develop your career.

They should take the time to understand your experience and requirements, and offer you advice and support throughout the process – helping you secure your next brilliant role.

If you’re a Business Owner or Hiring Manager, ensure you select a recruitment agency that displays genuine interest in your Business and how it operates. A detailed understanding of your Business will enable a recruitment agency to fine tune their image of your desired candidate.

Finding the right talent is extremely important for growing and established Businesses. Recruitment Agencies are a highly effective way for Businesses to obtain high quality talent that is matched to Business needs, values and culture.

Graffiti Recruitment offer IT Recruitment Solutions for Businesses seeking talented candidates in the areas of operations, support and development.

Get in touch with us on 0330 22 33 047 or E-mail us at hello@graffitirecruitment.co.uk to discover how we can help you!

 

– Sarah Bloomfield

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