View from the Hill tag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-1679378 2015-08-28T09:33:16+01:00 The Sue Hill Recruitment team's take on the information world TypePad typepad/LbTvhttps://feedburner.google.com We've moved! tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e553746d06883301bb0869cf9a970d 2015-08-28T09:33:16+01:00 2015-08-28T09:34:01+01:00 The Sue Hill Recruitment blog has moved over to our new website! Check http://suehill.com/news-and-events-2/blog/ for all our news - you'll also find the full (searchable) blog archive there. Enjoy! -Gemma Gemma Wood

The Sue Hill Recruitment blog has moved over to our new website!

Check http://suehill.com/news-and-events-2/blog/ for all our news - you'll also find the full (searchable) blog archive there.

Enjoy!

-Gemma

http://suehill.typepad.com/shrweblog/2015/08/weve-moved-.html
News and views from the SLA Summer Soirée tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e553746d06883301b8d1398024970c 2015-07-17T16:16:07+01:00 2015-07-17T16:40:19+01:00 The SLA Europe Summer Soirée is always a highlight of the London LIS/KIM season, and it’s always in a great location. Last night’s event was no exception, sponsored and hosted by Dow Jones at the News Building at London Bridge,... Donald Lickley

Sunset from the News Building: Suzanne WheatleyThe SLA Europe Summer Soirée is always a highlight of the London LIS/KIM season, and it’s always in a great location. Last night’s event was no exception, sponsored and hosted by Dow Jones at the News Building at London Bridge, right next to the Shard.

As ever it was an excellent opportunity to catch up with all the latest news and gossip from friends and colleagues across the sector.

In addition to the deeply serious business of networking over a drink or two and the odd canapé, this year’s SLA Europe President Sam Wiggins formally congratulated the winners of the 2015 Europe Early Career Conference Awards. The ECCAs are sponsored jointly with SLA’s SLA Europe Chapter and the Competitive Intelligence and Legal Divisions to provide valuable opportunities for new professionals to develop and establish themselves within their chosen sector.

 Neasa McHale and Sarah Hume were both awarded ECCA bursaries to attend the SLA Conference & INFO-EXPO in Boston this June. Neasa works at Mason Hayes & Curran law firm, and Sarah is completing her MA LIS part-time while working as a Library Assistant at the Geological Society of London and the London Library.  Natasha Chowdry, currently Assistant Librarian at Microsoft was awarded a similar bursary by the SLA by the Leadership & Management Division as part of their Career Advancement Award.

Sam also introduced Dr Susmita Chakraborty as one of the SLA’s Rising Stars 2015. Susmita is an assistant professor in the Department of Library and Information Science at the University of Calcutta in India, and a Commonwealth Professional Fellow at University College London.

At the same time we treated to excellent food, drink and spectacular views from the 14th Floor of the News Building (see m’colleague Suzanne’s view of the sunset above, not to mention much Twitter photo evidence from others including @seemarampersad and @SLAEurope).

 

- Donald Lickley

http://suehill.typepad.com/shrweblog/2015/07/news-and-views-from-the-sla-summer-soir%C3%A9e.html
Selling your skills: ARA Section for New Professionals Summer Seminar 2015 tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e553746d06883301bb084cc975970d 2015-07-03T11:35:48+01:00 2015-07-03T11:35:48+01:00 I was invited to sit on the Recruitment Panel at the ARA Section for New Professionals Summer Seminar up in (not so sunny) Birmingham on 12 June, where the topic of the day was Graduate Recruitment and selling your skills.... Vicky Sculfor

I was invited to sit on the Recruitment Panel at the ARA Section for New Professionals Summer Seminar up in (not so sunny) Birmingham on 12 June, where the topic of the day was Graduate Recruitment and selling your skills.

The day began with two fascinating talks discussing the changes within the profession and the move from a large team to working alone, one from a conservation perspective from Rebecca Donnan and another from a new professional archivist Karyn Williamson from Standard Life.  The key thing we took away from this was that there are many challenges facing archivists, and the key thing for all professionals to remember is that you are the expert and you need to promote your services and use to the business.

After sampling some of the fine foods on offer in the student union, and a little look around the university archive, it was time for the recruitment panel. I was joined by Rebecca Donnan and Sam Collenette at Warwickshire Country Record Office, there were some really good questions from the attendees. We had a range of questions from application through to interview advice and how to stand out from the crowd.  

Here’s a link to some of the topics we discussed: https://storify.com/ConnectEdGroup/ara-new-professionals-day

 

- Victoria Sculfor

http://suehill.typepad.com/shrweblog/2015/07/selling-your-skills-ara-section-for-new-professionals-summer-seminar-2015.html
Resignation and retention: BIALL Conference 2015 Senior Managers Stream tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e553746d06883301b8d131b4d3970c 2015-07-02T15:39:58+01:00 2015-07-02T15:43:07+01:00 Brighton Pavillion Did they leave or were they pushed? That was the title of my presentation at this year’s BIALL conference at the Brighton Hilton Metropole last month. I was invited to speak on the subject of why people leave... Donald Lickley
"Brighton Royal Pavilion" by Xgkkp - Transferred from en.wikipedia.org [1]: 2004-06-24 13:37 . . Xgkkp . . 124676 bytes. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brighton_Royal_Pavilion.jpg#/media/File:Brighton_Royal_Pavilion.jpg
Brighton Pavillion

Did they leave or were they pushed? That was the title of my presentation at this year’s BIALL conference at the Brighton Hilton Metropole last month. I was invited to speak on the subject of why people leave jobs, or rather, employee turnover and retention.

As part of the Senior Managers Stream, I shared the platform with Jane Bradbury from Slaughter & May talking about KM in the legal profession, and Ruth Bird from the Bodleian Law Library who spoke on lessons learned from moving, relocating and renovating libraries.

As a recruiter I meet a lot of people who are thinking of or have already decided on leaving their current employer. It would have been tempting to spill the beans on some of the more lurid reasons I’ve heard over the years for resigning, but I decided to be discreet and look at some of the more solid research around voluntary departures, to use the official HR term. According to a PwC survey from a few years ago, money is not at the very top of the list: limited prospects and lack of support for management come ahead of money worries.

What is more worrying for employers is the potential cost of staff turnover. Research from Oxford Economics suggests that the average cost of replacing a member of staff is over £30,000, and that’s before you factor in the costs of induction and training. To head off the risk of unwarranted turnover, the CIPD has a checklist for developing an effective retention strategy:

  • Give employees a realistic job preview at interview stage
  • Make line managers accountable for staff turnover
  • Maximise opportunities to develop skills and career progression
  • Ensure wherever possible that employees have a voice through consultation and effective appraisals etc
  • Be flexible wherever possible to accommodate individual preferences in working hours and time, and avoid a culture of presenteeism
  • Provide as much job security as possible
  • Treat people fairly
  • Defend your organisation against penetration by headhunters (that's an interesting one for us here at SHR...)

We had a lively discussion afterwards particularly around the subject of flexible working, and it was great to continue the conversation with old and new friends and colleagues at the conference dinner. 

Many thanks to the BIALL committee for inviting Sue Hill Recruitment to speak again at the annual conference. My full paper will be appearing in Legal Information Management later this year.

 

- Donald Lickley

http://suehill.typepad.com/shrweblog/2015/07/resignation-and-retention-biall-conference-2015-senior-managers-stream.html
Anarchy and apocalypse in the records store tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e553746d06883301b8d13150a9970c 2015-07-01T21:12:29+01:00 2015-07-02T11:52:56+01:00 Tonight's meeting of the IRMS London Group saw a thoroughly entertaining performance from KPMG's Stephen Bonner which felt more like a pitch to a bunch of Hollywood producers than it did a networking event. In addition to some interesting and... Jeremy Clarke

Tonight's meeting of the IRMS London Group saw a thoroughly entertaining performance from KPMG's Stephen Bonner which felt more like a pitch to a bunch of Hollywood producers than it did a networking event.

In addition to some interesting and provoking theories about the threats of cyber security (or lack of it), Stephen treated his audience to snippets of the future which are straight out of a sci-fi film course. He brought us the value of forgotten archives from Indiana Jones, things best left well alone from The Thing, and cyborgs from the Terminator franchise. What's more he brought sweets in a genius move that forever answers my question of how you encourage a group of people to engage with and contribute to a presentation, despite the 36 degree heat outside.

Joking aside, Stephen is a convincing and creative speaker who shared his expertise on informations security and risk and wrote a script which places the humble (or perhaps not) Records Manager in a leading role as hero of the apocalyptic future of cyber security. When the internet dies, the skills of the information and records management community will, like grains of sand, build sandbanks which will save the world from rising tides. It's an image which is as inspiring as it is dark, but it certainly makes you think.

Concept of the evening, what skills to teach your children in preparation for a dystopian future? ISO27001 - NO, how to handle a cross-bow - YES.

- Jeremy Clarke

 

 

http://suehill.typepad.com/shrweblog/2015/07/anarchy-and-apocalypse-in-the-records-store.html
All the news from Sue Hill Recruitment tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e553746d06883301b7c79d499f970b 2015-06-12T14:27:53+01:00 2015-06-12T14:27:53+01:00 We’re rather excited here at Sue Hill Recruitment at the moment, in part because we’re enjoying the sunshine in Borough Market but mainly because we’re flat out with a load of projects on the go. We have a brand spanking... Gemma Wood

We’re rather excited here at Sue Hill Recruitment at the moment, in part because we’re enjoying the sunshine in Borough Market but mainly because we’re flat out with a load of projects on the go.

We have a brand spanking new website that should be launched within the next few weeks. The website will be clean, slick, full of great content and easily searchable roles – we’ll let you know when it’s up and running. With TFPL we are jointly producing a salary survey which should be available just after the launch of the new website. Also with TFPL our jointly run senior networking group - Connect-Ed – is hosting a meeting with Arup on the future designs of Libraries.

Within the Knowledge and Information team, we’re doing some hugely interesting work with the British Council – searching for a new Director of Library Services for them in Pakistan - it’s a role that we hear that even has the Prime Minister interested in (the work the British Council are doing in Pakistan serves as a template for future engagement in the region). Suzanne has been out touring Universities delivering sage advice to students and professional women’s networking groups about the power and importance of networking and their personal brand development.

Our Market Research team have secured a large number of exclusive roles recently and have just been selected to search for four Associate Directors for a leading agency. They’re also currently looking for another Consultant to join them to help deal with the growing demand.

The Finance team have just launched e-timesheets for all our candidates and clients, it has been a move warmly welcomed by everyone and will make the process of approving timesheets quicker and easier than ever before. It’s been a very smooth process with minimum disruption, well done to all involved. They also have a new starter in June to help manage the additional workload on finance, Nathalie Mallebay. Nathalie is a Part Qualified ACCA Accounts Assistant and we are really looking forward to her joining the team.

So, all in all we’re flat out and looking forward to the summer sun continuing and enjoying a well-deserved break (OK, so a well-deserved lunchbreak…we’ve got lots more to do!).

- Chris Jones

http://suehill.typepad.com/shrweblog/2015/06/all-the-news-from-sue-hill-recruitment.html
Dancing with the demons in our minds tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e553746d06883301bb083476d7970d 2015-05-26T13:27:02+01:00 2015-05-26T13:27:02+01:00 Although you wouldn't know it the other 364 days of the year, there are some closet (and some not so closet) Eurovision fans working across the Sue Hill / TFPL / Progility Recruitment teams. So on Saturday night, like many... Jeremy Clarke

Although you wouldn't know it the other 364 days of the year, there are some closet (and some not so closet) Eurovision fans working across the Sue Hill / TFPL / Progility Recruitment teams. So on Saturday night, like many others (6.6 million UK viewers and many more across Europe and the rest of the world - big shout out to our Australian cousins!) there were pockets of library recruiters sat at home or at Eurovision parties getting overly excited as the results flowed in. Having now won twice in the last four years and three times since 2000, Sweden are indeed the ‘heroes of our time’ as far as Eurovision is concerned.

I accept that we at Borough High Street have now probably succumbed to voting fever (first the general election, now Eurovision), but we thought in honour of Sweden we should ask the voting public (or at least the Eurovision-supporting section with an investment in libraries) to nominate their favourite Swedish library, because we have learnt they have some belters. Why not tell us your favourite.

So here goes, your choices are:


1. Lund University Library

1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Malmö City Library

2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Stockholm Public Library (Wall of Knowledge)

3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Halmstad City Library

4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Uppsala University Library

5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Over to you Nigella for the UK vote …

 


- Victoria Sculfor & Jeremy Clarke

http://suehill.typepad.com/shrweblog/2015/05/dancing-with-the-demons-in-our-minds.html
From Brighton to Bulls – Catching up with the IRMS conference tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e553746d06883301b8d11685f7970c 2015-05-19T17:05:51+01:00 2015-05-19T17:05:51+01:00 (O Brighton i Bulls - Dal i fyny gyda'r gynhadledd IRMS) The valleys were lush and green, the Welsh flag whipped in the wind as the sun set over the land of our fathers. All was as you may expect... Jeremy Clarke

(O Brighton i Bulls - Dal i fyny gyda'r gynhadledd IRMS)

 

The valleys were lush and green, the Welsh flag whipped in the wind as the sun set over the land of our fathers. All was as you may expect … until you spot the bucking bronco sat on the neatly manicured lawn, but more of that later.

This was the scene that greeted delegates on Sunday night at this year’s IRMS Conference at the Celtic Manor Resort near Newport. After a successful stint at Brighton’s Hilton hotel the conference went back on the road again this year, and what a fabulous venue it was, kudos to the organisers at the IRMS!

The Sunday night social event/dinner went off without a hitch, albeit with a few healthy gusts of wind which played havoc with the Frisbee players on the rooftop garden. The following morning started with rain (well it was Wales after all) but this was short-lived and there was more than enough to keep a full crowd of delegates interested and engaged inside the conference centre.

After opening remarks from Meic Pierce Owen (IRMS Chair) the floor was thrown open to Peter Kurilecz (International IRM Authority and author of RAIN online newsfeed) who gave a well-researched and thought-provoking Keynote on the value of information. This gave a nice introduction to the theme of this year’s conference, ‘Information: the new currency’. This was followed by an interesting and heart-warming case study outlining a project (conducted jointly by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and Iron Mountain) to make the wills of 258,000 WWI soldiers available online.

After this the breakout sessions began, offering something for all-comers; cloud storage solutions, system migration and implementation, information asset registers and information security. My personal session of choice was run by Ruth Robertson of Cardiff University and was entitled ‘Managing Information Security Risk: Practical Advice on how to Design a Corporate Information Security Programme’. Ruth spoke well and gave an engaging account of how Information Security has been introduced across the university, including pitfalls and solutions.

The second keynote of the day came from Heather Jack, whose talk was as provocative as its title promised, ‘Information Governance - Nirvana or 1984?’ A good discussion ensued covering; the suitability of professional qualifications for new entrants, information literacy and awareness teaching in schools, and maintaining enthusiasm for good records management within your organisation.

The last set of breakout sessions featured some good case studies across various sectors, specifically the NHS, TfL and KPMG. Rachael Thompson, Corporate Records Manager at KPMG gave a good account of the problems and solutions encountered when moving from a traditional direcory structure to WorkSite, rounding off a great first day at the Conference.

And now back to the bucking bronco. Never have I seen so many records managers tumble from the saddle of a raging bull (well there’s a phrase I never thought I would have need to use). The secret prize, sponsored by Box-it, went to Adam Bailey from Baker and McKenzie, who managed a stonking one minute and fourteen seconds, shunting my own effort (1:12) into joint second place. Congratulations Adam, well deserved!

http://suehill.typepad.com/shrweblog/2015/05/from-brighton-to-bulls-catching-up-with-the-irms-conference-.html
Agile Projects, Gamification and High Performers: Connect-Ed Networking Breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e553746d06883301b7c77edd96970b 2015-04-24T12:13:28+01:00 2015-04-24T12:13:28+01:00 How do you manage projects in an culture of rapid change? What are the best strategies for managing high performing colleagues? Can you convince senior managers of the benefits of gamification? These were the starting points of some of our... Donald Lickley

How do you manage projects in an culture of rapid change? What are the best strategies for managing high performing colleagues? Can you convince senior managers of the benefits of gamification?

These were the starting points of some of our discussions round the table at our second Connect-Ed breakfast of 2015 at Le Pain Quotidien.

There were no quick answers to any of these questions, but there was certainly plenty of lively debate from our breakfast guests. We covered the benefits  of Agile project methodology and considered the difficulties of introducing gamification strategies in the face of more embedded cultural attitudes to workplace technology – are the perceived concepts of games and play barriers to improving the perceived ease of use of information systems?

What do you do to get the best out of your star players without running the risk of losing them prematurely to another employer? Clearly active engagement in interesting projects and initiatives will keep their interest, as might temporary secondment to parallel departments in your own organisation.  While we explored these possibilities, one question arose as to whether there is scope within our sector for an active inter-organisational secondment scheme – one that would actively encourage practical exchange of professional knowledge and experience at all stages of an individual’s career?

One of the most gratifying things about these joint Sue Hill Recruitment / TFPL events is bringing colleagues together from different sectors and seeing these ideas begin to blossom. The first two Connect-Ed Networking Breakfast have been very exciting – and my co-host Anne Ashdown and I are thoroughly looking forward to the next one.

 

- Donald Lickley

http://suehill.typepad.com/shrweblog/2015/04/agile-projects-gamification-and-high-performers-connect-ed-networking-breakfast-at-le-pain-quotidien.html
BIALL Quiz 2015 tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e553746d06883301b7c77e4cde970b 2015-04-23T16:08:28+01:00 2015-04-23T16:10:58+01:00 Sue Hill Recruitment and TFPL put our brains together last night to form the Tiger Billes and attend the BIALL Quiz, which was kindly sponsored by Prenax. It was a great chance to catch up with people in the legal... Vicky Sculfor

Sue Hill Recruitment and TFPL put our brains together last night to form the Tiger Billes and attend the BIALL Quiz, which was kindly sponsored by Prenax. It was a great chance to catch up with people in the legal sector and see so many friendly faces.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and we were delighted that our combined knowledge was good enough not to come last. Cristine was especially delighted that her specialist topic of Abba was put to good use on two occasions.

We look forward to catching up with BIALL members soon at the upcoming conference where our Donald Lickley will be presenting on Staff Retention and Anne Ashdown will be attending, so make sure you catch them for a drink and a chat!

- Vicky 

 

http://suehill.typepad.com/shrweblog/2015/04/biall-quiz-2015.html
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