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ash-associates.com 
 
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BH22 0ZX 
 
tel: 0845 123 2701 
 
fax: 0845 123 2702 
   
 
 
 
news article first printed
November 2004 'The Business Magazine'
 

Dorset based IT Recruitment Consultants ash-associates.com see a growing problem with skills shortages due to lack of investment and training.

If you are currently struggling to fill those high technology vacancies particularly those in IT then get ready for it to get much harder and costlier. Since 2001 and with the subsequent downturn in the IT market 1000's of highly skilled developers and IT specialists have left or are planning to the leave the industry.

More worryingly Graduates who were encouraged to take IT related Degrees and who in the last two years who have struggled to find a good first position have also made the decision to seek a career elsewhere.

What this all means is a rapidly diminishing labour pool of skilled and experienced IT specialists. We could soon see a return to the escalating salaries and rapid turnover of employees that occurred in the late 90's where demand for skilled employees exceeded supply.

Short Term solutions already involve employing from the expanded European Union or moving work to the Indian continent but this is not without it's own difficulties for example language issues, relocation or just fitting in with an existing team or project. The only long term solution will most probably require a combined government and industry initiative to encourage IT and Training investment but this will not come
in time to solve the upcoming skills gap.

But for now speaking to a local IT specialist agency such as ash-associates.com who has access to candidates across the UK and Europe and who understand your requirements may help solve your immediate recruitment problems. For instance many of our local clients have been pleasantly surprised by the high quality of candidate that we can introduce to them.

ash-associates.com can be reached on tel:
0845 123 2701

Article first appeared in the ‘The Business Magazine’ November 2004 written by James Hunt Senior Recruitment Consultant at ash-associates.com

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Important information for producing a
successful Software Engineers CV
 

Producing a Software Engineering CV that works is not that hard but it is amazing how many poorly written CV's we see. A winning formula for producing a good Software Engineers CV will use many if not all of the points below.

There is an example CV on the ash-associates.com website which is available for download.

1. A CV which fails to answer questions is a CV that fails. So be exact when describing your skills and abilities, confirm the content of a Technical Summary by including the technology in your work experience, be repetitive in regard to technology e.g.. C++ mentioned at the end of each project confirms that you have a lot of C++ experience, mention it just once and we assume you have just some C++ experience, this should be the same for all technology.

2. It's amazing how many times we talk to candidates that have the skills and technology that we seek but have not mentioned them on their CV's.

3. Be sure to achieve a balance in regard to a length of a CV if you have been working for a number of years then your CV length is expected to be longer than a recent graduates. A good CV length is 2 pages, but for an experienced developer we would expect to see 4 to 5 page CV's.

4. To assist the CV reader remember to summarise your technology and education on the front page, include a skills/personal profile. When summarising technology list in order of most experience e.g. C, C++ if you have 5 years of C you would put this first if you had say 2 years of C++

5. The design of a CV should be as simple as possible, for example most employers these days expect CV's by email which means that plain text is the only guaranteed format, using unique text formats/fonts/layouts/TABs etc. may be incompatible with the recipients software and they end up with an indecipherable mess (Never use Macro's these are associated with viruses and most will delete a document with Macro's without reading them [We do] )

6. Finally it is not a good idea to have spelling errors in a CV or covering letter use the spell checker that comes with the word processor, pay particular attention to technology because if you cannot spell it do you really have enough experience of it to add it to your CV.

ash-associates.com are a specialist in Software Engineering Recruitment they can be reached on 0845 123 2701 or see their website

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