For those of you unfamiliar with the process, for one reason or another, let me give you a basic run-down of how it works. A contractor like myself, or anyone who works permanently and is looking for their next role, will usually put their CV up online, on sites such as Guardian Jobs, Monster, or the much used portal Jobsite, and then use those sites to search for jobs which are pertinent to them. If, like me, you work in a field which is tech-savvy, and such things are expected of you, you might even use social media sites such as LinkedIn, put a gallery of work up on Behance, or even set up your own portfolio site, which will increase your profile visibility, and get you more easily found by those who you’re looking to employ you. After all, nothing quite impresses more than coming top of the rankings on Google when people search for relevant search terms. Once you’ve done all that, the candidate will apply to roles, send out CVs, and hope the phone rings soon.

Now chances are here that, unless you’re lucky enough to be contacted directly by the company you’ve applied to, it’s more than likely that the company will have employed a recruitment company to sift through all the CVs and search out the ideal candidates for the role. I can appreciate this, as searching for the right candidates for a role you’re offering is a full time job on its own, and many people have enough to do in their everyday jobs without having to do this as well. It makes sense, in regards to finances and time, to employ someone to do the job for you.

This is however where things, more often than not in my own experience, don’t go so well. It seems that many of the recruiters seem to approach the whole thing with an appalling sense of laissez faire that seems to verge on the downright apathetic. To illustrate, let me run-down some of the worst crimes I’ve witnessed:

• Little or no knowledge of subject matter: I know that some of the things I deal with can be somewhat technical, but I’ve been on the phone to recruiters numerous times when their lack of knowledge on a given subject matter isn’t just obvious, it’s practically comedic. I clearly state to people on my CV that I’m a digital designer and front end developer, and have been asked by recruiters if I know Oracle, Java, or in one case, Fortran., all of which are back-end technologies. I’ve even witnessed recruiters who don’t know the difference between Java and JavaScript.
• A clear lack of interest in what they’re doing:  There have been times when, on the phone to a recruiter, I’ve been answering a questions they’ve asked me, and received a litany of “yup”, “mmhmm” and “uh-huh”, that I’ve even been tempted to veer off into complete nonsense, just to see if they’re paying attention. I understand this is you job, and you probably hate it, but hey, if that’s the case, why not find a new one – after all, isn’t that what you do for people every day? If you’re not interested in what you’re doing, and it’s impairing your ability to work professionally, then change it. Otherwise, it just makes us candidates feel rather useless, and is deeply discouraging when you’re trying to promote yourself to someone. It also shows when you have no idea of what you’re talking about, as detailed in the point above.
• A lack of attention to detail and professionalism: As with the points above, this really give the impression that recruiters don’t care about the people they’re dealing with. At one point, I even travelled to an interview with a company on the Isle of Wight, only to find that I was entirely unsuitable for the role, because the recruiter had neglected to mention the fact that they were looking for commerce programmers, and not commerce designers, and, only an hour before writing this, I had a recruiter leave a message on my answer phone, leaving a number to call her back at, but no name whatsoever, so when I called back, they couldn’t pass me on to right person, because they had no idea who wanted to deal with me. Yesterday, I was on the phone to a recruiter, and all of a sudden a loud noise came through the speaker. He had to apologise, as apparently a loud klaxon goes off in the office every time someone makes a placement. What is this, Boiler Room? The list could go on and on, I’m sure you get the idea.

The frustration here is that, while in some cases, there are jobs on offer where you can apply directly to the employer, a much larger proportion of job opportunities mean you have to deal with a recruiter in order to just get through to the employer in the first place, and they’re standing in your way like Cerberus, with the three heads of incompetence, disaffection and ignorance, between you and your chance to prove you abilities to get the job you want.

I entirely understand that there will be those who read this who are in the recruitment field, and are perfectly competent at what they do, to whom I apologise if I’ve offended, but this post is written entirely from the majority of my own experience, and, because of that, I think it’s entirely valid for me to say that there are more bad examples in the recruitment field than good ones. To those of you who have read this far, and believe they fall in the category of good recruiters, I suggest you prove me wrong – drop me an email, tell me about those opportunities you have that will suit my skill sets, and show me just how you can make finding a new placement easier. Go on, prove me wrong, I’d love to hear from you.

UA Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the World Trade Centre - image by UpstateNYer

Today, as with many people around the world, I will be remembering what I was doing ten years ago on this very date – the very date when the largest terrorist attacks ever to be unleashed upon the United States took place, and the effect that day had upon me, and indeed the world. My parents, who lived through the 1960s, have always talked about “Where were you when they shot JFK?” – 9/11 was my generation’s JFK moment – everyone remembers where they were, what they were doing, and what effect it had upon them.

I was, actually, off sick from work on that day. I had been working for several weeks at a small design studio based in Henley on Thames, and woke up that morning feeling rather poorly. I had just called the studio to say that I wasn’t coming in, and then turned on the television, thinking that I would see what was going on in the world before crawling back into bed, when the screen showed a skyscraper on fire, somewhere in the US. Interested, I sat down to listen to what the newsreader was saying, about how a plane had struck one of the famous twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, and, being live, rolling news, had already started babbling about how this was a terrible accident, and no-one knows how this could have happened. A few minutes later, and a silver shape bolted through the picture, from the right, and struck the other tower – it was the second plane. The world began to realise that this was no mere accident, and we were witnessing an event that would throw shockwaves across the world for years to come.

The shadow of that day has been cast across the events of the past ten years – wars in the Middle East, terrorist alerts across the world, including our own 7/7 here in London, racial and religious tensions, it’s even permeated our culture and everyday lives. 9/11 only took place in a couple of hours, but it has had a lasting legacy. It’s opened my eyes to a lot of situations – the way the US is viewed by people in the Middle East, the actions and subsequent accountability of those in charge, both in America and on this side of the pond, the perspective on, and also from, the Islamic world, and much more. I can honestly say that 9/11 for me was not just a tragedy, but also an awakening into looking deeper into politics and events both here and overseas.

I could go into detail here as to the way I feel events folded after that day, the whys and the wherefores, but I think, as a mark of respect to those who were affected by the events that took place in the US ten years ago, I’ll leave it at just a remembrance of those events, and a hope that the world never sees its like again.

As Mr Pariser’s talk above states, many popular sites, such as Google, Facebook, and even the BBC News over here in the UK, now try to provide methods of customising what you see on their pages, so you feel the content you see is relevant to you. In many ways, this is understandable; they want you to feel you’re getting the information you want, to keep you on their site for as long as possible, and they don’t want you to feel deluged with information and go elsewhere. However, as the talk also says, we’re having a choice taken away from us, as websites try to generate that tailor-made content, which is something that website designers and coders must be careful of, and, ultimately, we as consumers, must ensure is part of our daily diet of content.

Those of us who use the popular social networking site Facebook may well have been sent invites by others in our friends list notifying us about changes made by Facebook in the News Feed section, which provides us with a rundown of what our friends have been recently up to. As the video above states, it seems that Facebook has, without notifying its users, decided to restrict what we see in our News Feed to those we only interact with the most, and have similar views to. Apparently, this process isn’t restricted to Facebook – Google is also guilty of tailoring search results without any input from the user, as well as a host of other sites.

It’s worth noting here that there are some sites that do allow you to consciously control what information comes to you. News sites such as Google News and BBC News provide you with ways of selecting what sections of news are most pertinent to you, thereby tailoring the main news page to suit what you wish to read first. The customisation of content goes further – if you agree for those sites to track your location, they will also provide you with news which is local to the area you are in. This conscious control of information is better than Facebook’s decision to control it for you, without your initial consent, but can still provide the “bubble” referred to in the talk above.

Drinking from the firehose

It’s a common complaint from those using the internet today that people complain of information overload, realising that one person cannot consume all of the information presented to them, and must often find ways of dealing with it. Personally, I agree – I frequently can’t keep up with all my RSS feeds, often find myself distracted when searching, looking at other things, and with a reported 35 hours of content uploaded to YouTube per minute, there’s no way anyone could get through all that (even if they, like me, aren’t fond of watching videos of people’s cats doing odd things). Therefore, we must adopt methods to deal with this flurry of information, and not let it take over our lives.

It’s this firehose analogy which has caused websites such as Facebook to begin paring down our flows of information, and it’s this thinking which makes their actions more understandable. At last count, I have over 500 friends, and I’m not sure I could keep up with all of their goings on. However, this shouldn’t provide a reason for people other than ourselves to pick and choose what we view – it’s a change in our thinking and approach to this information which is required, not a change in the way we view it.

When faced with this deluge of information, the most important thing to understand here is that it is impossible to view it all, and trying to do so will only drive us to distraction. Once this concept has been grasped, it’s far easier to access the flow, read parts which interest you, and not feel bad if you miss something. If you are really concerned about missing vital information, then, by all means give that information preference, but not at the cost of losing access to other information. The serendipity of finding interesting content, which you may not have necessarily known at the beginning was interesting, is one of the things which makes the internet interesting. And, if you’re the first to pick it up, then pass it on – the growing social media web allows us to help promote things which we feel are pertinent, and it’s this way that information can easily disseminate across the web and reach more people. We have a responsbility to ourselves to search out and share information, even that which might be outside our usual comfort zone.

Therefore, in conclusion, while I’m all for providing methods of making sure more pertinent information is presented to us, I don’t think it’s healthy to do so at the risk of losing touch with the serendipitous nature of the internet. By keeping this serendipity when it comes to browsing information, there’s a higher chance of discovery, and, ultimately, using these discoveries to grow as people. Ensuring this happens is not only the responsibility of those providing us with the information and methods of accessing it, but also by ourselves to ensure that we don’t always stay within our comfort zones. If we can manage it, we’ll be much better off for it.

For me, the arguments have been made; the financial costs and benefits of having a Royal Family in Great Britain, the social politics of having a group of unelected leaders who, whilst rarely actually involved in politics, are still capable of making changes to the political process, and the way in which the British Royal Family are the most well known and respected in the world, and how that sets us apart, for the better and the worse, from other countries. I’m sure that the talented, intelligent and clever people around me will debate the pros and cons of the situation until the cows come home. Today, however, I’m just going to enjoy the pomp and ceremony, and be proud to be British, and part of an amazing nation.