During the Olympics, UK businesses will find themselves affected by a number of different factors, least not of all, potential staffing issues. It is vital contingency plans are in place well in advance of the games, if not already in full

The Olympics 2012 are just around the corner - does your business have contingency plans in place yet?

motion. To ensure smooth running for your business, and avoid potentially major troubles, appropriate review and plans should be made for flexible working, annual leave, and increased travel times.

If not in place already, the opportunity for flexible working hours would be ideal to allow your staff to experience the excitement of the Olympics, as well as ensuring those with personal responsibilities such as child care, can still fulfil them. Staff should also be made aware of any instances where their presence is required on site so they can forward plan for every eventuality. Volunteers from your workforce who do not have such responsibilities and can guarantee their attendance can be recruited as cover for other staff members.

If working from home is a viable option for your business, ensure that all staff have the correct level of remote access required for internal systems and are trained so that they can complete their duties efficiently off site. It is important to ensure all equipment is in place well in advance of agreed home working days to avoid uncompleted tasks and delayed timescales.

Annual leave will also be popular, with many hoping to catch the Games from home or for those lucky enough, in person. It may prove useful to have all annual leave requests confirmed as soon as possible to ensure sufficient absence cover is arranged. You may find in this instance that temporary staff will be required to help cover leave, should you not have a Managed Service provider to assist you with this cover. It is essential you build relationships with temporary agencies so to understand your employee cover needs. Recruiting temporary staff ensures your customers receive consistent service and the productivity of your business remains unaffected.

And it is not only London businesses that will be affected, areas across the UK such as Cardiff, Coventry, Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle will also be hosting the Games. If you are based locally to an Olympic venue, you can expect travel times to increase dramatically. Preparation is key when travelling and it will prove invaluable to have staff plan up to 3 different routes to work so to avoid potential “hot spots”. It may be useful to investigate when the venues are likely to be visited and alert staff accordingly to potential disruptions to their journey.

Should staff not be able to attend work due to travel it would be advantageous to call in short notice temporary agency cover – again, it is important to ensure that your Managed Service Provider or agency are aware of the potential requirements (such as business critical roles) so they have a pool of candidates who may be available to cover on short notice.

With contingencies in place which suit your business requirements, you will be able to proactively and reactively adjust to any issues that may arise as a result of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is important to remember that this is a once in a life experience, and should be enjoyed by you and your staff. With the correct planning in place, you will be able to do just that.

Written by Holly Fenton, a Managed Services Recruitment Consultant at PPS.

What is your password?

A pet’s name?  Your favourite football club or your favourite colour? Or is it your child’s name or even your mom’s birthdate?

Either way, to someone looking to exploit your online accounts, it can be very easy to guess.

Combine words with numbers for maximum password security competition to win an IPhone.

Let’s take a common scenario. You have just entered a draw to win an iPhone using your email address on a well-known gaming website. Everything about the competition looks legit. Plus, your friend’s already entered, so it’s got to be safe and just a bit of harmless fun – right?

Wrong.

Given that free email provider websites can be accessed by anyone (take your Hotmail or Yahoo mail account), by entering your email in to that seemingly harmless competition, you will have already handed a hacker half the key to accessing your personal data.

After all, with access to the Internet and an email address, all that is left for a hacker is to guess your password correctly.

Funnily enough, you can bet that they have some tools to help them do it too.

The unscrupulous will have a text file – which is compiled of lists and lists of known passwords, names, football teams, towns and cities, dates and general random but well known password combinations. They have a bank of information that could easily help unlock a generic password protected account.

Furthermore, a bit like a Facebook ‘fraper’, many of those who hack into accounts do so to people they know personally. It’s no wonder either, given the alarmingly amount of crucial information people can give away in a conversation, even if they have only just met the person. This holds true for online conversations too. Even social media can give the game away, for example listing siblings, pets and birthdays.

So I urge you to use a better method at protecting your information. Don’t forget, your bank may be the most secure in the world, with online security checks, encryption and captcha techniques, but if someone has access to your email account they have access to your life.

How to beef up your password selection

There are several techniques you can employ, however they all come down to the same.

Use as much randomness as possible (mix letters with words) and avoid common words or phrases.

Instead of your birthdate or house number, use your very first telephone number that is no longer in use, or the digits of your driver’s license.

Combine this with a random word you have selected and then add in that bit of pizzazz, a symbol or two.

Allow me to demonstrate, for example:

Frederick will always remember his national insurance, 820034

His favourite book character was Dibbler, from a Terry Pratchett book.

By combining the two together – voilà – a password is formed!

Dibbler820034

Now, we can add in a couple of special characters.

Dibbler-820034.

Simple but a lot safer than BCFC1968

You can even take it a step further if you like. Remove the zeros. Swap E for 3, I for 1, 4 for A, S for 5, g for 9 or B for a 6.

D1bbl3r-8234.

Now for the tricky bit – remembering your password. Well, that is where you come in. Everyone is different here, some people need to use repetition to learn, and others just need a reminder.

No matter what, remember your password and stick to it.

Change is good

It is good to change your password every so often as well, so a strategy of incrementing a counter can help here if you struggle to come up with incredible passwords on a regular basis.

D1bbl3r-8234 can become:

Using Numbers              Letters                             Roman Numerals

D1bbl3r-8234.1                  D1bbl3r-8234.a                 D1bbl3r-8234.i

D1bbl3r-8234.2                  D1bbl3r-8234.b                 D1bbl3r-8234.ii

You get the idea. Your already strong password can be used over and over like this.

So, if you suspect anything at all, change it and change it now.

Written by Darren Edwards, IT Manager at PPS.

Social media is becoming more and more a part of modern life. People are logging in to sites such Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis. In fact, within the 18-25 age range, it would seem unusual now for people not to have a social media presence. It is no surprise therefore that recruiters are using these market changes to their advantage, or at least dipping their toes in the water to see what potential these platforms may offer. This new movement has even got its own label – ‘social recruiting’.

Facebook

New graduates are one of the key targets for this type of recruitment. Recruiters go to where the potential talent is, and currently there is no bigger potential talent pool of graduates than on Facebook. With around 850 million users, it would seem silly to ignore it. A recent survey by milkround.com showed that 84% of students make Facebook their first port of call every morning.

So the question for recruiters is; how can Facebook be used in the most effective way? Some large companies have set up special pages just for people interested in, or entering their graduate application process. A former colleague of mine and recent graduate from the University of Durham, Emma Hawkins, recently ‘liked’ Barclays Graduates’ Facebook page: ‘I had reached the assessment centre stage and read in a forum that I may pick up some useful information by speaking to current graduates on the FB page’ says Emma, ‘I have found the majority of marketing I have encountered as regard graduate schemes has not been through social media though, but via events such as recruitment fairs’. She also noted how some companies, such as PWC, seem to have invested a lot of money in these types of events: ‘I went to a meal fully paid for by the company, having not even applied at that point!’

Emma also believes social media was not the most useful method of finding out about graduate jobs initially. She says, ‘I found it more useful as a resource once the application process had begun. It was a good way of researching into the companies and the schemes further. I still see Facebook as a social tool, not yet something that is used for professional matters or job hunting’. There is a good chance Emma’s experience has been echoed by thousands of graduates across the UK.

Facebook has its limitations. It does not allow users to tailor what job alerts they receive in the same way as, say, email alerts from a recruiter. Users can specify that they want to receive information about ‘Sales jobs in Hull’, and only those relevant will appear in their inbox. Facebook cannot be manipulated in the same way at this point, leading to potential problems. It seems that recruiters may have realised this and are using Facebook in alternative ways. Some are using it to post tips on the likes of writing a CV or how to prepare for an interview. This is the sort of information a job seeker would be interested in and it helps build a relationship between the recruiter and the potential applicant. One well known job website used the idea ’12 days of how to get a graduate job’ on their Facebook page on the lead up to Christmas.

Twitter

Twitter offers up a whole new set of challenges. Posts from recruiters can be lost in a busy twitterfeed, yet users would generally be more accepting towards multiple posts of the same job and posts of less specific interest. Twitter also offers up new opportunities to be creative. By aiming tweets ‘@’ specific people/organisations, job hunters can get themselves directly in front of their desired audience. A friend of mine recently secured himself an internship at BAFTA by creating a video of himself showcasing his video editing skills and tweeting it directly to the HR team at BAFTA. The video CV seems to be a growing trend, as discussed in a PPS Blog post from August 2011.

LinkedIn is perhaps better known for being used by both recruiters and job hunters. However it is currently better populated by slightly older demographics and is still to truly take off in the graduate community.

The Future

The ‘return on investment’ question is still unclear on using social media at this early stage, but evidence certainly seems to suggest that Social Media is offering new and interesting channels that will continue to be more and more a part of recruiters’ plans as we move into the future – both for graduates and the wider job seeking community.

What do you think? Should social media be a recruiting priority, does it depend on the platform, or is it down to how it is being used? Let us know your thoughts.

Social Media – why should you use it to market your business?

With the phrases: ‘I’ll tweet you…I’ll facebook you’ becoming ever more popular than ‘I’ll call you’, the way we connect and – more poignantly – the way we think has been drastically changed due to the invention of social media.

From the 8 year old technological whizz to the 80 year old Facebook addict, social networking and social media is a worldwide ageless phenomenon. It brings together a world of 196 countries and it does this in the blink of a winky-faced emoticon.

But how can social media help market your business? And why should it be so important?

This can be broadly sectioned into three conveniently alliterated words: image, impact and investment.

Image: Your company’s image is of huge importance to both existing and prospective customers. A company that embraces new media will give it a technological presence; it will be seen as state-of-the-art, intuitive and modern. A good website and a clean, updated Facebook/Twitter account will streamline your brand’s message, creating a consistently professional image online.

Using social media will also increase a company’s trustworthiness. A company that can interact and ‘chat’ with its customers on a friendly basis is a company that people can rely upon.

Impact: A company’s impact can be dramatically improved with the use of social media. Even the smallest of businesses can become a worldwide name through effective online marketing.

An example of this is the frustratingly addictive iPhone game, Angry Birds.

In May 2011, Angry Birds (and T-Mobile) created a life-size version of the iPhone game in Barcelona.  Pedestrians were able to play the game on a smart phone and watch the action in real life.

But more impressively, this stunt proved bigger than Barcelona when a video of the event became a viral hit. Social media made a stunt that happened in Spain become a world-wide talking point – just through an upload of a video. No costly television advertisement necessary.

Another aspect of ‘impact’ is the value of customer responses. If your business brings out a new product or has a new idea, social media can provide a free marketing research platform in which customers can interact and discuss your plans, thus measure the impact of your plans from the feedback of real customers.

Social media marketing allows you to discover your customers’ preferences so that any actions can be based on what your customers want. By asking their opinions, you build up your public image through interaction and by knowing their preferences, it is far easier for you to enhance your products and plan your marketing campaigns effectively.

Investment: Social media can take up your company’s valuable resources. But the perks of social media show that it is a worthwhile investment for your company.

What do you have to invest?

Social media is not a one-trick pony; you cannot leave a page once it has been set up to fall into the depths of the neglected internet. Social media needs resources in the form of people power.

Ideally, your social media accounts should be updated at least once a week. Customers should not feel inundated with updates as this may force them to remove you from their feeds. However, a continuous presence is important to keep customer focus.

Financially, social media is free, however you may want to invest in improving the look of your site through liaising with IT Services. Facebook can be used as a blank canvas for companies. You can now create anything from buttons to interactive games which all help to further increase your brand’s technological image as well as create a consistent brand ethos between social media and your business’s website.

Although one may consider the artsy stuff not necessary, it is always worth investing in the aesthetics of your social media.

So, what is the verdict?

Social media is a growingly important marketing tool for companies. If used effectively, businesses can gain copious amounts from its usage.  Social media marketing can be used to increase customer feedback, revenue and the image of even the most discreet of businesses.

The question is: why would you not use social media to market your business?

What are your thoughts? Do you think that social media has a place in marketing? Comment and share!

Their applications, better known as ‘apps’, have been working their magic on many industries – you can now check your balance using your smartphone, or do your weekly shop or spend hours on end helping out a bunch of birds that seem to be quite angry about something.

Could smartphones be a staple of the future of recruitment?

For many services and products, having a custom-made app makes sense. It makes the customer experience easier, faster and efficient. Companies also benefit. Apps can be marketing tools to broaden customer base and build consumer loyalty, as well as doubling up as an office away from the office.

So could the smartphone and its applications do the same within the recruitment industry?

Online job boards have seen a 1500% increase in traffic from mobile devices since 2010. With peaks of job searching activity in line with the morning commute and late evening slumber, it seems that going mobile allows job seekers to search for longer throughout the day. Furthermore, Jobsite accounts that 9% of all mobile traffic ends in people actually applying for a role, with 5% of all of the applications it receives coming from mobiles.

With numerous people using their smartphone to follow job boards, search for the latest vacancies and apply, can recruiters get in on the action?

Firstly, recruiters can use apps to attract candidates. Video clips are a great way of advertising a vacancy, and a creative approach to standing out from the crowd. Downloading the official apps from Social Media’s ‘Big 3’ allow you to source and check out potential and passive candidates on the go.

Using mobile technology can assist in simplifying the screening process too. Apps such as the Hire Syndicate and Auto Search enable recruiters to collaborate with fellow recruiters and scour multiple websites using simple Boolean search strings. Candidates are able to submit their CVs to recruiters, which are then stored on a database for easy viewing and screening. Companies such as PepsiCo have created their own career app that gives prospective applicants the opportunity to get a feel for the company before they apply.

Whilst research does suggest that shunning mobile technology within recruitment may affect the amount of talent attracted, there still seems to be a long way to go before the handy Smartphone and its apps become a staple recruitment tool.

What are your thoughts? Do  smartphones and their applications have a place in recruitment? Comment and share!

Written by Bavinder Chahal, a recruiter at PPS