It seemed more like it was the Partner Correct Conference, as it had all the large players in operating platforms and infrastructure – including Google, HP, IBM and Microsoft all having their say, but apart from Amazon, Apple, Oracle and any one from the Open Source side of things, of course.  The latter seem to be in the “out group” or their own world (a cloud?) away from this set of players - so where’s the IT conference or exhibition that includes everyone in the industry nowadays?

Nevertheless, the grouping at this event did give me a good insight into how most of “the old” and/or big proprietary players position their local resellers for life with new and big corporates, and it’s the best event I’ve found yet for walking (or sitting) around and getting an overall view on what’s new infrastructure-wise, as well as ways of comparing and proselytising one’s position if one is a reseller in the marketplace for IT (and now digital telecoms).

The Scene From The Seminars

There was still an element of these big players being cats circling one another from what I gleaned from the seminars with key reps (and quiet words with a few afterwards).  Judge for yourself from this short summary of sound bytes from the ones I attended:

• Cloud computing is a business model, not an IT one, as nearly everyone espoused.
• Google originates from the cloud – yet I did challenge  its partners’ positioning on its service offerings, as I had found from independent consulting work earlier this year that these are not clear – and hard to know how to find and compare one partner. Even Googling them does not help with knowing who’s best!  
• IBM sells business services now, not IT – however it is looking beyond the cloud and sees Smart Cities as being what’s on its horizon, and so living in a world where energy, telecoms and IT are sold and supported as one small box that sits in a corner somewhere in the house, as well as everything being auto-responsive in turning power up and down as maybe asking or telling you what to do in various operating scenarios.  Somehow I kept thinking of that movie “Transformers” throughout the presentation by Simon Baker (but “Space Odyssey – 2001“ now, as I write this). Still, it was good not to have anything more said on the cloud by the time I attended that one!
• Microsoft thinks its in the cloud – but all other vendors think that it has no idea, other than Hotmail, about what the cloud is. That said, buying Skype may have changed that…
• the Chrome netbook starts up in six seconds and all its apps are resident in the cloud (sorry, web?). This advice on a device came from the presentation by the President and CEO of CompTIA, who had brought every one of over a dozen different tablet and mobile devices with him and is not linked in with anyone in saying this…. 

In summary, the future’s not bright, its cloudy. Indeed, so the Google Partner rep advised, only they talked about the cloud three years ago – and now everyone wants (to offer) one. Really it was only IBM that seemed to have anything different and farsighted to talk about than the others – but then they are about business services now, right, and not just infrastructure!

The Scene from the Sidelines

Besides the big players, the outsider in this in-group was an organisation called CompTIA which positions itself as supporting no one vendor in particular, but being there for the IT professional in general. 

CompTIA is an international not-for-profit organisation that is a mix of an independent training company and vendor-independent technical certification authority that IT professionals can use for working with principles and concepts of any infrastructure. They also offer networking events for bringing IT professionals together who work in supporting  IT infrastructure.  

From my brief look into their offerings, ComTIA’s certifications do appear to be neutral as far as software is concerned – and are in things like project management, networking, etc – however, perhaps naively since they are new to operating here in the UK and Europe, their certifications are geared more to working in an American corporate world as they ignore best practice defined by organisations like the OGC such as PRINCE2, ITIL, etc. When I attended their drinks later I got a chance to query this in talking direct with their President and CEO, Todd Thibodeaux. Todd advised that their certification aligns more with PMI. So why not just offer PMI certification, I thought?  Oh, yeah, that’s because they are vendor-independent….

The thing is, I did happen to meet a fellow independent contractor there from the IT backup world who had used their services and sat through Todd’s presentation with me. Even Todd’s lead-in to the presentation clearly showed that the UK was new to him from not having brought an adapter for UK power supplies, and so being faced with power from over half of his devices running down until he could find one – as he promptly demonstrated by using this dilemma as an excuse to pull each one of his dozen devices out to show us all how much of a gadget junkie he is.   

The CompTIA courses are not totally new though, as my insider told me that he had found CompTIA’s training and certifications to be very expensive for what you can leverage from them – which is rather strange for an organisation that touts itself as being not-for-profit. So maybe a local reality check is in order for CompTIA before claiming to be open to one and all IT professionals?

Still, I appreciated being able to attend CompTIA networking drinks at the end of the conference and how their President and CEO said he would be happy to get someone to host an event for us to attend and form our own opinions of them in supporting the IT professional.  Maybe we in the OPTN can educate them at a networking event, as much them us, about what UK and European IT professionals really need to help support us in doing IT work here, as well as advise them on where they can buy a power supply for adapting U.S. IT networking and sales people’s devices for working here in the UK and Europe….

1. What’s the most effective way to control staff use of social media at work?
2. How can we best manage corporate use of mobile devices?
3. I’ve heard about the recent implementation of £500,000 fines for leaking personal data. How can our organisation most effectively cover the risk?
4. What’s the best way to prevent corporate data loss?
5. Our organisation has a huge number of security policies. How can we rationalise and reduce this volume to something more manageable?
6. How can we be sure our security policies are working?
7. What’s the best way get the security message across to our staff?
8. How can we put a value on our business information?
9. How can our business keep up with constantly changing internet security threats?
10. How can we ensure the quality of our information security risk decisions?

Please contact Mike for answers to these questions, and more about information security, by email to mbarwise@intinfosec.com or by phone to 0845 463 1624

A talk on information and IT security is also being planned through OPTN London for February 2011. This is where you can meet Mike and find out more about information security as well as meet other members of OPTN London in person. Please register your interest for this event now by email to register@7c-alliance.com or by phone to 7C Alliance Events team on 0844 844 2470.

For finding details about other OPTN events in London, or for networking online and in person with OPTN members in London, please join the OPTN London UK on LinkedIn.

About the Open Practice Technology Network (OPTN)

The Open Practice Technology Network is the first business network created by the 7C Alliance and is for anyone who is generally interested or involved with managing information online for business purposes as well as for those interested or involved with managing, supporting and using information and telecommunications technology (ICT). The group is open to anyone joining who is not restrained in discussions about ICT for trade reasons (i.e. it is for those who are able to openly discuss effectiveness and efficiency of a particular vendor’s technology for doing business)

Why are we doing this?
The next level is to look at ways to ensure consistency within IT practices so that it is easier for 7C Alliance members to market themselves for work in them. This can otherwise take considerable time for an individual contractor to keep up-to-date with or work out when operating independently in an industry which is constantly evolving – and especially when there is not much opportunity to interact with colleagues and clients outside of the immediate contract that a contractor is working on.

The 7C Alliance are looking to overcome this challenge in the IT contractor marketplace by better understanding the practice(s) that an IT contractor’s services relate to, as well as the supply chain for them at large, by having various 7C Alliance members take responsibility as leaders in different practice areas. These leaders will act as a single point of contact (SPOC) for a practice and help to clarify any misunderstanding about what a practice involves as well as analyse how a particular practice can be developed and improved. The latter can include facilitating engagement of relevant 7C Alliance members where it is determined necessary to mitigate a risk or resolve an issue arising from a lack of clarity or support for a particular practice for a particular business.

What will be the focus?
The lead will be in areas where there are already numbers of 7C Alliance members operating and in practice areas where there is known interest and support for such practices from businesses interested in procuring such contractors’ services for helping them manage and support IT effectively end-to-end.

How will it work?
The practice leaders will review and analyse interest in response to queries about their designated practice area. They will help with determining what works best for the practice to improve for not only the benefit of 7C Alliance members operating in that area but also for businesses who need to understand what people operating in these practices can do for meeting their needs.

How can you engage with the 7C Alliance Practice Leads?

1. A generic email address will be provided for a practice.
2. Members and businesses wanting to participate in discussions or events about a practice will engage with the 7C Alliance through that email address.
3. The practice lead will determine engagement and support required by analysing emails received.
4. The practice lead will determine what discussions, events and other forms of communication are best for making sure that the supply chain for services in an area are understood and managed effectively for members of the 7C Alliance operating in that area – but also for helping businesses who need support in that practice too.
5. FAQ for IT contractors, as well as industry support for their services, will be managed through social media that is being built by the 7C Alliance and will be available in the near future.

What are the next steps?
As a first start we are looking to have three practice areas where members who have proven themselves will act as coordinators in the following areas:

We are also going to be providing a mix of business, life, recruitment coaching services to assist those who are not sure which direction they are going in.

Please join the UK and European Open Practice Technology Network in the first instance for discussing this initiative.

The 7C Alliance is also looking for sponsors of practices – however as the intention is for focus on the practice and not products for managing the practice, sponsors cannot be suppliers of practice management tools.

Well, the 7C Alliance Contractor Support Analyst team asked these very questions while doing the first trial of the new contractor health check call initiative.

The intention of these calls is to determine:

a)    What 7C Alliance can do to help the group, as a whole, to increase its opportunity

b)    What can be done to help an individual member specifically with increasing their opportunity, according to the needs and goals that they advise on becoming a member (which is based on the 7 C’s)

c)    What the individual member can do to help themselves

For the first and only time, we have decided to publicise the responses we have received in the 7C Alliance discussion group and are interested in feedback from other members on this initiative as well as the Open Practice Technology Network at large.

If you are interested in reading the results of the first round of Contractor Health Check Calls, please join the 7C Alliance LinkedIn discussion group by clicking on the link to the left or by cutting and pasting the following into your Web browser: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1542397

Once you have joined the group, you will be able to read and participate in the discussion by following this link: http://bit.ly/70U9oh. We look forward to your contribution to the ongoing discussion!

Written by Stuart Brown, an Associate Member of the 7C Alliance.

We will be meeting up at The Old Fox Theatre Bar, 54 – 56 Hurst Street from 6.30 pm onwards. Read on for a few more details about some of those confirmed as attending as well as for more details about The Old Fox and registration of interest to attend.

Special Interest Guests
Jane Fisher, who runs Organise Limited – a Mobile Phone Application consulting business – will be attending along with co-founder and Technical Director, Mark Slight.

Jane knows a lot about both IT and Telecom contracting in The Midlands area from having been both a business analyst and project manager there for many years. She recently wrote a poignant and heart-felt blog about the impending closure of Ericsson, a once very profitable Telecommunications business based in Coventry, and is interested to meet others to talk about how we might be able to revitalise businesses that were once iconic like GEC, or otherwise bring more business to The Midlands area.

Mark has worked for a number of telecoms companies since leaving university. He was involved in the company that put the first Smartphone OS on a mobile phone back in 1997. He has written software for all of the Smartphone platforms and has developed for other handheld devices as well. He has led software teams designing VOIP, IM and MMS and worked as a consultant. He is a hands-on mobile software expert that likes to embrace new technologies.

Organise Limited is a new venture that Jane and Mark have started up this year in response to interest in what can be done using the new generation of smart phones – and is a sign of the initiative being taken by a new generation of entrepreneurs emerging in response to the downturn in the traditional market for contract work.

7C Alliance Members Attending
The following people will be attending from the 7C Alliance and 7C Alliance Limited:

Stuart Brown, the author of the very well-received 7C Alliance blog on “How to stay positive while looking for a job” and an Associate Member of the 7C Alliance. Stuart provides services to the 7C Alliance on a voluntary basis for facilitating sharing of knowledge about Social Media, including raising awareness of its value, as well as currently being on a part-time contract to 7C Alliance Limited where he is working as a CRM Business Analyst reviewing and refining the Contractor Support Analysis and Contractor Resource Administration functions.

Matt Miller , Founder of the 7C Alliance – and Managing Director of 7C Alliance Limited, the business responsible for coaching and marketing top quality IT contractors, as well as facilitating or assuring other support services available to them. Matt himself is a contract Business Systems Consultant and Project Manager with a focus on effective delivery and support of Enterprise Applications to support Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) business processes. He also has product-specific knowledge of Oracle Server technologies and Oracle E-business Applications – and so will be attending the Oracle User Group Conference in Birmingham from 30 November through to 2 December.

Registration of Interest to Attend
Please email contact@7c-alliance.com if interested and able to make it along, along with name, contact details and interest in Oracle, IT and Telecoms contract work.

More About The Old Fox
Click on the following link for more details about the pub: The Old Fox.

Further Discussion on IT and Telecoms Contracting in The Midlands
For further discussion on the status of IT and Telecoms Contracting in The Midlands, as well as meet and chat with Jane and other 7C Alliance members online, please join the 7C Alliance’s newly rebranded Open Practice Technology Network , which is operated and managed online using a LinkedIn discussion group

Presentation background

These challenges are from a number of market observations gathered by Matt Miller in recent years of working with IT contractors who have been brought together through the 7C Alliance, a professional association of contractors who are supported through Matt’s contractor coaching and supply chain support business, 7C Alliance. I verified these challenges through first-hand experience in my own job-hunting as well as from relevant information sourced from discussions taking place on LinkedIn and other online forums and blogs that I have participated in over the past three months since becoming a member of the 7C Alliance.

I thought it would be useful to summarise the feedback received from attendees at the workshop and to present this using the same key topic areas that were shown during the presentation and in the discussion that followed.

We identified the top 5 challenges as:

1. Agencies’ keyword-driven tools
2. Multiple agencies handling one job
3. Bulk recruitment – first come, first served
4. Lack of quality assurance of candidates
5. Lack of quality assurance of contract requirements

Agencies’ keyword-driven tools

The audience seemed to strongly agree with the first challenge – that there is an over reliance on keyword searches and the process is geared towards simply matching these keywords against given requirements, often without further checks being performed to ensure these matches are indeed correct.

A couple of stories shared included:

- A friend of a participant was in the Special Air Service (S.A.S) and received a call for a SAS Programmer role.

- Another participant was aware of a chef getting a call for an SAP role. The end-client was bemused with receiving such a CV and contacted the agency to find out how. After much head scratching, it was worked out that the chef’s CV had noted ‘interested in jobs starting ASAP’ – and so the SAP of ASAP had been picked up by an automated keyword matching tool as making the chef “relevant”.

- Finally, my own experience with getting a Monster job match alert based on the fact that my CV contains the term NGO. I received an alert that I was a match for a job with Transport for London (TfL), and this seemed to be purely driven by a single keyword match. I did not meet any of the seven key criteria necessary for the role and was left wondering why I had received it in the first place – the power of the keyword!

Multiple agencies handling one job

There was very little feedback with regard to this area, although there was an overwhelming agreement that it was a problem. With multiple agencies handling one job, it was often hard to know which agency to deal with.

One experience mentioned was from a Business Analyst, Heather, who in the past had been told she was put forward for a job. She hadn’t heard back and in the meantime received a call from another recruiter who asked if she had been put forward for the role. She stated that she had but hadn’t yet heard back. The second recruiter offered to follow up for her and subsequently she found out that she hadn’t been put forward for the role as she had originally been told. The net outcome was that the second recruiter put her forward and she successfully got the role.

Bulk recruitment – first come, first served

With the sheer numbers of applications, recruiters have to manage responses in bulk which leads to a number of qualified candidates missing out on opportunities. Indeed, anecdotal evidence from some LinkedIn discussion groups indicates that some recruiters operate a ‘cut-off point’ and simply take the first 10 or 20 through the gate.

Further discussion arose from the fact that the recruitment process seems to be based on “how to reject a candidate” rather than how to accept ones based on meeting requirements. Often these rejections can be driven by arbitrary requirements and the process of rejection is performed by administrative staff based on a check-list of criteria, as they otherwise lack the technical experience to determine a genuinely suitable candidate.

An example was cited by a workshop participant who helped recruit for his replacement. 200 CVs were received and these were worked through by a secretary who discarded any CVs with a single typing mistake, incorrect grammar and the like. This resulted in a total of 12 CVs which were used to determine a shortlist. When the participant looked back on some of the discarded CVs, there were a number which would have been even more suitable than the 12 selected CVs. It was also noted that two of the 12 CVs were widely inappropriate and should never have got through this process of ‘selection by rejection’.

A further example was given by a workshop participant of applying for many roles where the skills required were a 100% match with her skills. Despite applying for many roles where this was the case, she never heard back from recruiters and there was no follow up. This has led to her simply playing the numbers game and sending off applications for many positions without necessarily following up with these applications.

Lack of quality assurance of candidates

With recruitment agents being rather busy, it was noted that there seems to be very little time for recruiters to assure that a candidate can perform as they say they can. As an additional thought, there was unanimous agreement that the lack of feedback from agents is also a big problem. It is very hard to make improvements ‘for next time’ without feedback!

Lack of quality assurance of contract requirement

This area focused on what is done, by either recruiters or end-clients themselves, to make sure that their vacancy or job description lists the complete set of skill-sets, experience, training and soft skills needed for doing the job.

Research has noted that a lot of time can be wasted in searching for the right people due to poor vacancy listings or poor job descriptions. Indeed, in some cases, no job description is available and a few lines on the advertised vacancy are all that the contractor has to go off!!

Often the contract requirements, which are the key things to be done by the contractor and stated on the vacancy advertisement or job description, are discovered during the recruitment process to be either:

- Insufficient for covering the scope of what needs to be done by the contractor; or

- Too broad for a single contractor to necessarily have the experience or capability to do.

Indeed, often these types of requirements are posted at a ridiculously low rate for capability expected – and so expectations of the end-client are unreasonable.

Where the contract requirements are insufficient, this has led to a lack of quality candidates. By contrast, where the requirements or over-stated – that is, demonstrate too many expectations for the role – and, worse, state a rate for the contract that does not reflect value of the capability in the market, there are often too few candidates. A few comments arose along the lines of:

- “The people who make the choice about which CVs are to go forward do not know enough about the role. Agents do not know the technology used in the role.”

- “There are often unreasonable requirements in job adverts”

- Mike, an Information Security Specialist, felt very strongly about the need to educate the end client in setting up contract requirements

- Often it can mean a long wait for the candidate who has gone for an interview – and only to find that the end-client has realised, in the course of the process, that they needed a different type of person or that “someone internally is capable of fulfilling this role” (and hence the ubiquitous response received “role has been filled internally”)

General Discussion

- Everybody was very keen on the idea of increasing human interaction and the feeling is strong that this interaction is widely lacking in the current recruitment process.

- There should be a version of CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) for recruitment which is open source .

- Mike had received the suggestion to include your personality in business terms on your CV with focus on the following aspects:

1. Who you are as a person so employers know what to expect
2. Describe your personality
3. Ensure your key skills are included, but these should be throughout your CV
4. Make sure that your personality suggests a fit with the business culture

I hope the above information is useful and provides an insight into both the top challenges facing contractors when applying for roles and the type of workshops held at a 7C Alliance Job SAW. If you would like to know more about Job SAW, take a look at this earlier blog post.

If you are interested in attending a future 7C Alliance event (either a networking opportunity or a  specific event) please visit the contact us page and submit a London IT Contractor Alliance Meetup request. There is also a 7C Alliance discussion group on LinkedIn, feel free to join if you are a contractor or are interested in contracting and want to participate in some great conversations around all manner of topics.

Finally, I’d like to thank Matt Miller, Adele Coetzee and Allan Keyzer for all their help in preparing for the presentation as well as their invaluable support and advice – thanks guys, I couldn’t have done it without you!

Written by Stuart Brown, a member of the 7C Alliance.

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.