More Interaction, Less Automation: Job Search Analysis Week (Job SAW)

Top 5 Market Challenges

CV Workshop

Trading and Risk Management (TRM) Workshop

Job Search Analysis Week (Job SAW) is a new concept of event that 7C Alliance piloted on Thursday 10th September 2009 in West London and which, despite short notice to hold it, had full attendance at every workshop presented.

It is an event that involves a series of small workshops where presenters are organised to present their view or experience of the market, giving some advice in the process on best practice or expectations of delivery requirements, and all attendees are invited to share their experiences and observations in response to the presentation or advice given.

Why Job SAW?
Job SAW is intended to enable greater face-to-face interaction between not only IT professionals but also IT recruiters and IT training companies. It could prospectively include HR staff who are considering recruiting new staff – but perhaps don’t understand skills, experience and training needed – and also even the management who are doing the hiring too and need to know both candidates’ and recruiters’ views of what might be relevant and important to an area of the market that they are considering initiating a project or service in!

Thus Job SAW focuses not just on jobs that are currently available in the market – and so have been seen through advertisements online or through email-shots (and hence the event name “Job SAW”) – but, also, those jobs that might be - and how participants in the market might more openly collaborate together, in advance of contract requirements being defined and issued, in helping to make them happen and so ensure that contract requirements themselves are better quality….

The Future of Job SAW
Future Job SAW workshops will look at different aspects of the market as follows, from:

- How to manage different styles and ways of preparing CVs relevant to the market (as exemplified by Mark Compton’s CV Workshop last week); to

- Different styles of interviews and how to approach the market for your type of contract work (including the difference between approaches to do independent IT consulting and services work to that of an independent IT contractor working alone as someone with IT expertise and experience that they re-use through use of a third party to engage them with end-clients); to

- What skills, knowledge, experience and training that different industries or particular businesses are seeking and how best to present these so that they are meaningful to any one of an agency, consultancy or end-client (ACE) alike; as well as

- How to acquire Capability, perhaps as indicated in any of the above workshops, through regular industry training or upskilling using either 7C Alliance’s proof-of-capability or proof-of-concept projects that have been defined and managed by leading 7C Alliance members who already have proven capability and experience in the chosen field. N.B. Funding of contractors being trained in new skills is possible too and can be facilitated through effective understanding and analysis of each individual contractor’s capability in line with better understanding and analysis of their needs and goals.

- Finally, as a bonus for leading members of the 7C Alliance, there is also the opportunity at Job SAW for “Blue Sky Thinking” where attendees can analyse what potential there might be for wholly new projects and services to be offered in the market - and how it might be possible to define and initiate them. 7C Alliance, and its approved Alliance Partners, can then consider good ideas and how they might support developing or funding them with support from some of the great services provided by Business Link, the new BIS Department and other sources that have been identified by 7C Alliance’s 5 years of market research into supporting contractors’ needs and goals.

Thoughts Sought on Future Workshop Themes
Besides Job SAW’s IT HR Supply Chain Challenges and Solutions, Job Application Support and Industry Focus themes (as exemplified by the Top 5 Market Challenges, CV and TRM workshops respectively), as well as those yet-to-be-presented about Capability Awareness and Blue Sky Thinking, the 7C Alliance is interested to get your ideas on what other aspects of the market that you would like us to focus on. We will then canvass the independent IT contractor and consulting communities on these themes and determine who is most interested – and ideally best suited – to present workshops.

Registration of Interest in Job SAW
For queries about Job SAW, future Job SAW workshops, and registration of interest in them then please select Study Group from dropdown menu of the Contact Us page on 7C Alliance’s web-site and put “Interested in Job SAW” in the query section, along with your query and interest to attend at a future Job SAW as well as suggestions for themes of workshops you like and specific topics you would be interested in.

Tags: banking, contract, contractor, CV, IT, job, jobs, Recruitment, risk management, supply chain, trading, Workshops