The Asia Pacific Headhunter

Senior Data Analyst, Auckland

Have you outgrown your current job?
What excuses have you been making to yourself about staying there?

How would you like:

1. a stable company that is growing steadily internationally.
2. lots of opportunities to grow personally.
3. close interaction with customers.
4. products that have social value and benefit everyday people, not just businesses.
5. international travel.
6. the opportunity to part of an amazing team changing the world from New Zealand

Our client is only growing bigger and better - join them on the way up and get your chance to dig deep in a broad range of technology with an incredible amount of space for career development and growth. If you have at least 6 years commercial data analysis experience with the following

• Excel
• VBA
• possibly MySQL, R, SAS. 

as well as the following characteristics

• attention to detail
• ability and comfort in communicating and working with others towards common goals
• the ability to do some international travel 

then email me NOW!

Don't miss out on this opportunity. It won't last. Give us a call on 09 306 8950 or send in your CV to steven@searchniche.com, or get in touch on twitter @stevenkempton

Also, if you think I'm some faceless Recruiter who will ignore your application check out some of the quotes from candidates about me:

“I used Steven as my agent to help me find new employment. From the very beginning to the very end I really appreciated Steven's integrity as a recruiter. He really wanted the very best for me. When I am next looking for work I will definitely be speaking with Steven again.”

“Highly recommend Steven as a recruitment agent. Has a much more hands on approached compared to the standard recruitment agent. Can count on him to be there with you each step of the way as a friend and advisor. Very personable, approachable, very honest and forth coming.”

"Steven is a pleasure to deal with and is always ready to listen. If he is unable to help, he will tell you straight up and will endeavour to provide some direction.”

Senior - Intermediate Microsoft Developers - Auckland

 

 

.Net Developers - Intermediate to Senior

Outgrown your current job? What excuses have you been making to yourself about staying there?

How would you like:

• a stable company is that growing steadily here and globally.
• lots of opportunities to grow personally as a developer or into other areas.
• competitive pay and perks to make you feel like you’re cared for.
• interesting software products that have social value to benefit everyday people, not just businesses.
• international travel and relocation opportunities.
• smart team mates who'll challenge you and help you be the best you can be
• the opportunity to part of an amazing team changing the world

Our client is only growing bigger and better - join them on the way up and get your chance to dig deep in a broad range of technology with an incredible amount of space for career development and growth.

If you have at least 5 years commercial .Net experience, in particular :

• C# (.NET 3.5), Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server,
• Team Foundation Server, ERWin, WCF, MSMQ, WF 3.0,
• a passion for technology
• an inquisitive nature and proactive attitude towards work and personal development
• ability and comfort in communicating and working with others towards common goals
• the ability to do some international travel 

Don't miss out on this opportunity. It won't last.

Give us a call on 09 306 8950 or send in your CV to steven@searchniche.com, or get in touch on twitter @stevenkempton, to find out more NOW!

 

 

NZ Business School Sex Education

 

Okay this made me laugh this morning. The Times of India obviously love a great headline to grab attention. But at the same time check out the Google Ads just beneath the title. It's a ad for the University of Auckland. I guess for some people it might be attractive to get sex education while they study business.

It's important to note that this is NOT really Business School in the way it's used globally to mean post graduate MBA study. It's for undergraduate classes so really this doesn't amount to much more than an article about sex education on campus. Something that is fairly normal throughout the world. 

 

Making Shift Happen

I find most people characterize events in their life in basically two ways, things that happen to them, and things they make happen.

 Normally you'll find the bad things are the ones that happen, while the good are the ones they made happen.

 A major illness happens to them, being made redundant, that happened to them, the recession happened to them. 

On the other hand they got the raise, they got their MBA, or they made a million dollars. 

The language is subtle, but specific. 

One points to themselves and the other points away from them towards somewhere else, although where exactly we usually can't tell.

When it comes to being happy at work I'm going to suggest you stop using any term that describes things happening to you. 

Even up to the point of ridiculous. 

Why? Because I think that sometimes when we describe things happening to us, we forget about our ability to react to what happened.

That's where I see a problem. Your reaction is your chance to make things happen. 

Don't throw that chance away, open your mind to the fact that there is a real opportunity there for you. 

When you tell yourself you want to be great at something what does life give you? Does it make you great, or does it give you chances to practice being great? 

When you tell yourself you want to be someone people respect, does life give you that respect, or chances to do things people will respect you for doing?

When you tell yourself you want to be rich, does life give you money, or chances to work hard and earn it?

Are you starting to get the picture?

Some time soon at work life is going to give you a chance to be the person you want to be, wise, wealthy, intelligent and successful. 

At the time you're almost guaranteed to NOT think that life is giving you a chance to be those things, you're more likely to think it's kicking you in the ass.

But when you have that moment try open your mind, relax, be with it. And then react, right at that point it's going to be what you make happen that makes the difference.  

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Are you a software developer in Auckland, want to be happier at work? Click here!

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A Quote for All Entrepreneurs and the All Blacks

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never tasted victory or defeat.”  - Theodore Roosevelt

Well done boys, you didn't get the result you wanted but you gave your all and never gave up. That in itself should be an inspiration to all of us.

New Blog!

I have just started a new blog that will focus on Recruiting, Careers and Jobs for the Technology community in New Zealand called NZ Recruiter. There are various reasons I thought it was important to separate the topic into a new blog and I hope that all the readers who are interested in those topics as they relate to New Zealand and technology companies in particular will enjoy reading it.

www.nzrecruiter.com

Trademe Jobs Up and Running

Trademe Jobs has hit the market in NZ with a real roar on their first day offering job postings for $25 until Thursday night. On the TV One News tonight the GM for New Zealand's current number one marketshare job board, Seek, put on a brave face and said that price wasn't their only focus. But I know they will be worried. Seek isn't as user friendly as they like to think they are. And their continual price increases coupled with lower effectiveness of their listings has many advertisers looking elsewhere. Trademe also have such huge reach with their traffic that they represent a challenge that Seek have never had to face in the New Zealand market.

IT jobs is a big part of Seek and they currently have 2,800 jobs online for all of New Zealand. In one day Trademe has already added 357 IT jobs. In comparison JobUniverse which is a dedicated IT job board only has 632 after being in the market for as long as I can remember (hardly a "universe" is it). Search4jobs which is apparently the "2nd place" job board in the market has 680 IT jobs advertised at the moment. While I think Seek might catch a cold from Trademe's aggressive entry to the marketplace there is a real chance that Search4jobs and JobUniverse will get terminal pneumonia.

Why Trademe is New Zealand's Google

Last week at Webstock 2006, Rowan Simpson of Trademe made an excellent presentation on some inner secrets of Trademe's success in the NZ marketplace. Not long after I was listening to Rowan, I listened to a podcast from Marissa Mayer (mp3), VP of Search Products and User Experience at Google on nine ideas that Google feel have helped foster innovation and creativity within their business. Ideas which have ultimately contributed to their success. It was interesting to hear some of the ideas that they both spoke about, and it's obvious that intentionally or not, they have done some of the same things.

One factor that is obvious in both companies is their passion for making constant changes and improvements and letting their customers decide. They actually share the same technique in testing new changes (Google calls it "split AB testing", Rowan didn't say what Trademe calls it). Basically it means they serve up one choice to 50% of the users and the other choice to the other 50% and see which is more successful. The idea of failing fast or trying an idea and then seeing what the data says is really critical to both. They continually try new things just to see what will happen, and they do it in all areas.

Both are also religious about using numbers to make decisions. Marissa spoke in particular about having to reeducate people who joined Google about how they do presentations to senior management. In other firms, management often only want to know the conclusions, whereas at Google they really want to know the data - how many people they tested, what the results were when parameters were changed etc, etc. Marissa also felt that relying on data to make decisions meant that Google had less internal politics going on than other companies. Basically because people don't have to worry about their project getting chosen over someone else's on whether or not they have kissed up to the right person.

I think another area we can add is that both companies feel they can try their hand at many things, because since they are willing to make mistakes and then iterate, then they will ultimately succeed. For example, I asked Rowan why he thought Trademe could compete in the job board market in NZ (something they announced recently). His answer was pretty simple: "We started with Car Classifieds a couple of years ago and now we are number one, after that we set up Real Estate Classifieds and now we are number one. We are just working our way through the newspaper". Those sound like fighting words to me. Hope someone from Seek was in the audience.

Webstock 2006

I am at Webstock 2006 for the last 3 days and this is the coolest conference I have ever been to. The passion for what people are doing, the internet, design and how it can help life is fantastic. The speakers have been fascinating and for me as someone who works on the edge of the internet industry as a user and consultant for companies hiring in this area it has been great to get a better grasp on the people I am trying to help on a day to day basis.

People keep asking me why I am attending, or "who are you here to poach?". But I think it is a real reflection of how the internet has changed in that people like myself who have huge daily interaction with the internet need to get a little lower and a little wider in our understanding to help us become more productive in our own businesses and with our clients.

Yesterdays presentations included Steve Champeon on spam, Kelly Goto on Design Ethnography and Doug Bowman on Microformats for information. Every presentation had areas that I struggled to understand, but all the speakers had points that really gave some fascinating insight into the future on the internet and how we can all help in moulding that into a better result for everyone. One of the presentations that really blew me away was from Darren Fittler, a visially impaired lawyer from Australia. Darren's presentation on how sloppy coding can effect use of the internet for the visually impaired was mind-boggling.

Today is day two and promises to be just as interesting.

Seek Vs. Trademe

So the online job board war in NZ is looking to take off soon as Trademe has announced that recruitment advertising is their next target. I'm a big supporter of Seek and admire them for their focus on getting their brand out in front of candidates, which is really what the job boards main focus should be.

The reality is the average job seeker is not looking for brand new tools to help them find a job, and the average employer and recruiter aren't really looking for tools to screen candidates. Both sides want a good group of strong options to choose from, especially in a candidate-short market where job seekers get multiple options anyway, while employers have to fight to get multiple candidate choice. As long as Seek continues to be foremost in the candidates' vision with their widespread advertising campaign, I think they will be able to offer value to both parties.

With that in mind though, it means Trademe should really be able to compete. They have huge coverage in NZ and with the opportunity to offer target marketing to their customers (wouldn't you love to serve up "Sales Executive" job ads to people looking to buy books about Sales?), I'm really keen to see what they come up with as an offering.

On another note, I'm kind of surprised at Sam Morgan's quote at the bottom of the article: "The internet space is changing really rapidly and we are continuing to hire people in their 20s who can try to inform us about what is happening on the Web". So if you aren't in your 20s you can't know what is going on on the Internet? Knowing the NZ media, he was probably misquoted. Not a good look though.