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| Backblog—IT Staffing Solutions |
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Interview Questions for Prospective Website Managers
August 22, 2008 By Glen Farrelly
Categories: IT Staffing Solutions
Before I left my previous job, I was asked to come up with some questions on what would be good job interview questions to ask of a prospective website manager. This is for a jack-of-all-trades and hands-on kind of manager that needs to know a lot of things to run a website. Here's what I came up with plus some new ones I just though of (in no particular order):
Can you describe a situation where you helped make a website more user-friendly? More client focused?
What would you say is a good measure of website performance that might not commonly be thought of?
Describe your experience with web analytics?
What are you thoughts on interactive media? Any success stories? Any caveats?
Which web authoring software do you use?
How proficient are you with HTML? With CSS? JavaScript? XML? ASP or PHP?
What methods of troubleshooting a problem with a webpage do you use? How do you uncover buggy code?
What's your favourite browser and why?
- When testing which browser do you use?
- How do you gauge if an online effort is effective?
- Tell me about your experience soliciting feedback from your users? Which methods did you use and tell me which you found most effective? Any inexpensive or invaluable methods you recommend?
- What is your graphic design experience or training?
- What image editing software can you use?
- What is the secret to effective web design?
- Tell me you favourite website and why?
- What's your least favourite website and why?
- Which websites do you go to every day and what can we learn from them?
- Do you have any experience with content management software?
- Do you have experience with Adobe Acrobat? Making PDFs? Making interactive forms?
- What's your level of familiarity with search engines? How important do you think they are?
- What's your experience with email list software?
- Any tips or caveats for email marketing?
- Tell me about a successful use of social media that you worked on?
- How familiar are you with databases and SQL?
- What are some security issues should a website be concerned about?
- Are the websites you previously worked on accessible? If not, why?
- Tell me about how you used information architecture to help make a website more effective?
- Have you written any article for print or online? Can we see samples of your work?
- How proficient of a copy editor are you?
- Give me an example of good or bad web writing?
- How did you acquire your Internet skills? Self taught, on the job, school?
- How do you keep in touch with trends in the industry? With new technical standards & software?
That seems like a daunting array of skills to have, but I know many website managers who are proficient at most, if not all, the above.
Every website will have unique needs, based not only on software used but also resources available, but I think I have got some standard items. This list is certainly not definitive, so I'd love to hear some suggestions.
Glen Farrelly
Webslinger
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Canadian Job Posting Sites for Internet Professionals
June 16, 2008 By Glen Farrelly
Categories: IT Staffing Solutions
In six weeks I'll be leaving my employer of six years. I've gave six months notice (666 - yikes!) and over the last few weeks, I've helped them revise my job description. Recently, they asked me the best places to post a job.
So I compiled a list of the best Canadian web site posting jobs for Internet professionals and have subsequently added a few.
They all appear to free for job-seekers to read. Rates for employers to post jobs vary greatly, from free (CaseCamp, Craigslist) to expensive (Workopolis, Monster).
The Big Ones
These sites have a large number of Canadian jobs overall, and Internet jobs in particular. One can post one's resume here and create alerts to have postings emailed to you regularly.
- Workopolis
- Monster.ca
- Yahoo's HotJobs.ca
- JobShark
- Craigslist (just postings though no extra features
- LinkedIn (social networking for careers and job posting site extraordinaire - not many Canadian jobs, however)
Internet and IT specific
- Casecamp.org
- Sitepoint
- Backbone
- ProBlogger (jobs for bloggers)
- Dice (Canadian & US jobs)
Communications sector (including New Media)
- JeffGaulin
- Applied Arts
- IABC (I hear they have jobs, but you have to be a member to see them)
Non-profits
- Charity Village - usually has Internet and IT jobs posted
- Ontario Public Sector Careers
Misc.
- Guru (for freelancers of various professions, including Internet)
That's all I'm aware of, but let me know if I missed a big one or a particularly good one.
Glen Farrelly
Webslinger
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Interview for a job, get paid
February 15, 2008 By Neil McIntyre
Categories: IT Staffing Solutions Web 2.0
The site is called NotchUp and allows employers to pay to interview job candidates who otherwise wouldn’t be looking for a new job.
Associated Press has the lowdown:
How it works: You plug in your industry, job, pay and experience into a calculator on the site to help you set your pay for an interview. (NotchUp recommends a range between $200 and $500.) Then you submit your profile to the site.
If a hiring company is interested in you, it deposits the money with NotchUp and talks to you. If you seem like a real, engaged candidate, NotchUp will transfer the money to your PayPal account once the interview is over.
Interesting twist on the usual way things are done, and potentially a great way for employers to snatch up quality candidates. No mention of course on whether accounting firms are using the service yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time.
Neil McIntyre
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Tech hiring at 26-year high
January 15, 2008 By Peter Wolchak
Categories: IT Staffing Solutions
Backbone launched just as the tech bubble was deflating, and few observers had much faith in our long-term prospects. The technology sector had grown too big and its new smaller size was only right. Right?
Wrong. The sector bounced back and its climb is continuing. It turns out the demand for IT pros has reached a 26-year high in Canada, according to staffing company CNC Global's quarterly report IT Staffing Requirements in the Canadian Market – Q2, 2007. Demand is apparently up 17 per cent over the same period last year.
From the study:
- Halifax showed growth on the infrastructure side, as the demand for Network Administrators and specialists in Moves/Adds/Changes pushed Maritime [job postings] up five per cent over the first quarter and up 230 per cent over the same period last year.
- In Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg, the demand for infrastructure roles jumped 15 per cent in the last quarter.
- The strongest growth area in the West was Edmonton, where overall requirements jumped seven per cent in the second quarter, and 69 per cent over the past 12 months.
- In Vancouver, infrastructure requirements have increased 54 per cent this quarter over last. The most requested roles are Web developers, Network Analysts and Network Administrators.
- In the GTA, requirements jumped 19 per cent over the past 12 months. This growth was led by the demand for Network Administrators, up 116 per cent, and Project Managers, up 40 per cent in the same period. The GTA still accounts for 50 per cent of all demand in the country, while the West and East split the other half equally.
- Web developers are the most sought after IT professionals in the country; demand jumped 14 per cent.
Back when this magazine launched, our tag line “The Strength of E-Business.” We changed that a couple of years ago to “Business Technology Lifestyle” because e-business as a distinct entity disappeared. E-business simply became business. It's nice to see some numbers detailing our belief that the tech industry is only getting stronger.
Peter Wolchak
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CEOs and CIOs both see rosy futures
July 26, 2007 By Peter Wolchak
Categories: General IT Staffing Solutions
The majority of the world’s CEOs are very confident of future revenue growth, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 10th annual Global CEO Survey. CEOs expect expansion will come from improved market penetration, geographic expansion, and mergers and acquisitions.
The survey covers 50 countries. Fifty-nine per cent of canadian respondents and 52 per cent of global respondents are very confident for revenue growth prospects in the next 12 months. But canadian CEOs believe threats to growth include the lack of skilled labour (88 per cent), downturns in major economies (68 per cent) and overregulation (61 per cent).
Over in the CIO offices, 19 per cent interviewed for the Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Index and Skills Report plan to add full-time information technology (IT) staff in the second quarter, while two per cent anticipate personnel reductions. The poll includes responses from more than 270 canadian CIOs.
Other findings:
> CIOs cited business growth as the top factor driving IT hiring
> network administration and Windows administration skills are in greatest demand
> technology executives at the largest firms (1,000 plus employees) will be most active, with a net 45 per cent increase in hiring activity forecast
> the finance industry led all business sectors with 42 per cent of CIOs expecting to add personnel and none projecting staff reductions
More information is at www.pwc.com/ceosurvey and www.rht.com.
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Still confused after all these years
June 25, 2007 By Peter Wolchak
Categories: Canadian Technology Associations ICT Hardware and Infrastructure IT Staffing Solutions Professional Services
So it turns out that the business folks still go cross-eyed every time the techies try to explain a new corporate technology. Office technology has been around for years, people fall over themselves to buy new iPods and – according to the ads we see – we're carrying notebooks to summer beaches and docks.
But despite the fact we use gadgets and gizmos every day, the two solitudes of business and tech still can't just get along in the office.
“Business and information technology managers around the world share a common challenge: IT managers' tech talk baffles business managers and fails to communicate IT imperatives,” ran a release on the Global Solution study by Info-Tech Research Group and KnowledgeStorm.
Michael O'Neil, research fellow at Info-Tech Research Group, is quoted in the release.
“Lack of alignment between the IT and business management sides of the enterprise means there's a Tower of Babel scenario happening in most businesses when IT program requirements are discussed.”
His advice? “Either the IT managers need to develop strong communications skills to
put forward the needs and benefits of IT investment, or they need to find suppliers who excel at articulating value to executives. Businesses that don't recognize this disconnect – and take steps to address it – risk falling behind their competitors.”
Well sure, but it's been decades since computers first entered the workplace and a decade since they became part of the daily experience of most business people. So if the two sides of the corporate fence still can't pull together on business initiatives, why think they ever will?
Personally, I think these two solitudes will remain just that, at least to a large extent. Technology is only going to get more complex – and so harder to explain – and the pace of business change and growth is only getting faster, so business people have less time to spend learning about tech.
But – and here's the fun point – as all of that happens, it is also becoming even more critical that businesses deploy and exploit technology effectively, because that drives differentiation and efficiency.
So where does all that leave us? Well, despite the challenges, business people need to understand technology as well as they can. Read Backbone, because as self serving as that comment is our entire raison d'être is to explain tech to business folks. Second, IT people need to walk a mile in those shiny shoes the business folks wear. Maybe that means all new IT hires should spend two weeks job shadowing a few of the suits, maybe that means sending them to a business course. But smart companies will be proactive about getting the two camps to play nicely with each other, at the same time acknowledging that tech people are tech people because they don't want to wear ties and stare at Excel, and vice versa for the suits.
And yes, that's easier said than done. If all this was easy, it would have been done already.
The full report is available at www.infotech.com or www.knowledgestorm.ca
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Way to go, B.C.
June 19, 2007 By Peter Wolchak
Categories: IT Staffing Solutions Online Education and MBAs
The cover story in the upcoming July issue of Backbone is about Canada's competitiveness in relation to the rest of the world. Not to steal the issue's thunder, but our competitive numbers could be better and many people say a lack of tech investment is part of the problem.
So it's very good news that the B.C. government is tripling the size of the funding for its internship program to $10 million. The money is targeted specifically at boosting competitiveness.
“These new funds will allow MITACS (a national research network) to provide more than 650 internships over the next four years, more than tripling the size of the program,” said Advanced Education Minister Murray Coell in a press release. “The internship program will build the province's base of highly-skilled graduates while encouraging innovation and commercialization in B.C.'s knowledge-based economy. It is also leveraging another $5 million from industry partners for the program."
If we want Canada to be competitive on a world stage – and as globalization takes firmer hold and as wealth generation is increasingly tied to tech prowess, we do want that – then we need a workforce that is not only able to create innovation but also interested in doing so. When our best and brightest minds scan the career landscape, we need technology options to stand out from the landscape.
Internship programs are an excellent way to do that.
Peter Wolchak
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