Tag: IT Jobs

Connections Recruitment increases IT job reach and apprenticeships

Posted on March 27, 2013 by - News

Hands across the waterConnections, a family owned recruitment company, is increasing its client and candidate reach.

It has also said it will broaden its offerings and recruitment for IT posts as well as make more moves into apprenticeships.

The company, which has survived tough economic times, running since 1985, employs 15 recruitment specialists and operates from offices in Manchester city centre, Sale and Stockport.

It currently rakes in a turn over of £5 million, but has said that it now wants to ramp this up by 20 percent .

It claims that over the the past 28 years it has placed in excess of 15,000 people in permanent jobs throughout the North West, while it’s also doing its bit for apprentices recently promoting its first apprentice and planning to take on a second to train them in all administrative aspects of the job.

The move is sure to please Prime Minister David Cameron who earlier this month claimed that apprenticeships should  become the “new norm” for school kids who choose not to get into debt by going to university.

Connections works with clients from sole traders to global PLCs and recruits for roles in administration, customer services, accounting, finance, HR, recruitment, logistics, buying, textiles, sales and marketing.

Jonathan Dobkin, co-owner of Connections, said the company’s plan had always been to grow the business organically and expand divisional offering.

Geeks more in demand than fashionistas

Posted on March 12, 2013 by - News

BillgatesIT and web design hirings are growing at a much faster rate than those in retail, research has found.

According to specialist technology recruiter Greythorn, 32,000 IT and web design jobs were created over the past year, marking a 12 percent rise, while retail job hirings rose by only three percent.

In the IT sector the biggest increase in jobs has been in web design which has risen 19.4 percent from 31,000 to 37,000 roles. The number of IT business architects and system designers has also risen 18.8 percent from 85,000 to 101,000 in the same period.

Graythorn said the contrast in hirings could be put down to the fact that online spending in the retail space had grown.

According to figures by the British Retail Consortium, online sales grew 10.9 percent in the year to February 2013, two and half times the rate of total retail sales, while the Office of National Statistics found an 8.7 percent increase in online retail sales despite a 0.6 percent year on year fall in overall retail sales.

Graythorn said that this had a knock on effect on the IT industry with large retailers hiring staff to work on their online and IT teams. One example is John Lewis which announced it would be hiring 100 new online staff, while making managerial cuts on the shop floor.

From their own figures, Greythorn said it had also seen growth of 89 percent in IT roles placed in online retail over the past year, compared with the previous twelve months.

Mark Baxter said as online shopping grew, companies were increasingly investing in improving the customer experience and the back office operations supporting online sales. He said this was a key stage in transferring to a high tech economy.

“The number of specialised new roles is growing and that is only good news for IT professionals,” he added.

As well as an increase in jobs, IT salaries are also typically higher than those in retail. The average salary of an IT system designer is £37,092, whereas a Retail Manager, with a similar level of seniority, earns an average salary of £21,237.

However, the recruiter pointed out that due to increased numbers and new roles, IT pay had seen slow growth with rises of 0.35 percent for IT system designers and 1.18 percent for software developers, and there has been a -0.45 percent fall in pay for web designers.

Pay growth in retail was described as a “mixed picture”, with strong rises of 3.13 percent for retail managers, but falls of -2.01 percent and -2.39 percent for sales cashiers and retail assistants respectively.

Cost and pressure of uni work placements could put students off

Posted on February 1, 2013 by - Interviews, News

bbc 330Work placements at degree stage help prepare  IT students for full time work, yet the cost and pressure of finding them can put many off, a work experience professional has said.

The comments follow a survey of 320 graduates from CWJobs, which found that those who had completed a placement year had been better prepared to enter the world of work when they had finished their degree.

A quarter of those asked said they had completed a placement while studying for their degrees. Of these, 81 percent said they felt the experience had helped them when it came to their IT career.

Just under half of students who had not completed a placement year admitted that they did not feel that just having a degree better placed them for the world of work.

According to recruitment firm Experis, and IT jobs site CWJobs.com, which jointly conducted the research, employers often look for students who had completed relevant work experience.

However, they pointed out that of the 2,048 computing courses offered in the UK, only 470 offer a placement year.

According to a work experience expert,  many students who don’t have the option of a sandwich course will fail to find a placement during their time at university.

“At university level things change slightly from school age where it is down to each borough to place a 16 year old in a work experience placement”, she told ChannelEye. “At degree level, it’s no longer down to the government to place students, which in some ways, considering the tuition fee hike is unfair.

“It means that on top of their workload students are put under pressure- with probably minimal help from their tutors, to find placements to accompany their course. There may be companies who are signed up with the course but the competition is rife.”

There are financial costs involved too.

An article in the Guardian last year suggested that some universities can charge up to around £4,500 for sandwich years, while businesses are also reluctant to become a part of this scheme as they don’t have the time to supervise these students.

“Placements are very important, but for some, the time and effort associated with these put students off and, as we’ve seen from this research could prove detrimental in the future,” the work experience expert added.

Meanwhile, the Chartered Institute for IT announced that it is launching a teacher training scholarship aimed at creating the next generation of computer science teachers.

The organisation wants secondary schools to “have outstanding computer science teachers” and it hopes the scholarships will help towards achieving this.

The scheme also aims to help students receive a good grounding in computer science education so they are suitably equipped for progression into further education and a professional career.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We need to bring computational thinking into our schools. Having Computer Science in the EBacc (English Baccalaureate) will have a big impact on schools over the next decade.

“It will mean millions of children learning to write computer code so they are active creators and controllers of technology instead of just being passive users. It will be great for education, great for the economy, and will help restore the spirit of Alan Turing and make Britain a world leader again.”

Fifty scholarships per year, each worth £20,000, will be awarded for those engaged in an initial teacher training course, with the funding supplied by the Department for Education.

The scheme will also be backed by the likes of Microsoft, Google, IBM, BT, Facebook, Meta Switch Networks and Ocado.