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!

 

 

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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Forget Career Success What About Some Career Happiness!

I've spoken to a lot of people about success in their career, but more often I speak to people who are straight up unhappy. They haven't lost interest in being successful in their career but they know they aren't happy where they are right now, or happy doing what they are doing. These are smart people so if you quiz them on career success they'll answer intelligently about what they want to do and where they'll be when they succeed. Unfortunately, they rarely get that success because the real problem is that they aren't having any joy in their journey.

What's more important career success or career happiness? I've decided it's the latter and so I've started advising my candidates and clients that they need to spend some of their time really investigating where they find the joy and happiness in their career. For some of them focusing on this area has helped them engage with jobs they thought they were sick of!

So, how do you focus on finding more joy at work? Sometimes a problem defined is half way to solving that problem, so you need to investigate yourself in order to find job happiness. Asking the following questions might be a nice way to start exploring your thoughts:

1. What are the jobs/projects you've done in the past that you've felt the most engaged in?
2. When do you feel most happy at work?
3. Why do you think you felt engaged when doing those job/projects you identified?
4. Why do you think you felt most happy in the times you did?
5. What are the obstacles to me doing more work like that?
6. What are the opportunities to doing more work like that?

Good luck with finding that happiness at work, it'll make a huge difference to your life.

Career Success Resources

I'd like to put together some pages and/or blog posts to review and list career success resources. I get a lot of questions on career management and career success and while I have some strong opinions and ideas myself I'd be really interested in any readers thoughts on books, blogs, podcasts, speeches, guide books or anything else you've read or seen that you felt made a difference for you in your career. So please leave a comment with the resource, and if possible a couple of reasons why you like it and I'll let you know once I've put together the final list. I think in particular if you have resources that you feel are more relevant to motivated employees in the Asia Pacific I'd really be keen to hear about them.

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.

New Zealand Salary Survey & Tax Freedom Day

So the good news is, New Zealanders are getting paid more. According to the just released 2006 Hays Salary Survey, which covers 13 sectors in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington: 58 per cent of employers increased salaries by 3-6 per cent and 25 per cent increased by less than 3 per cent.  Some 13 per cent of employers raised salaries by 6-10 per cent and 4 per cent lifted salaries by more than 10 per cent.

The bad news is, since January 1st, those hard earned pay rises went straight to taxes. That's right - today (June 1st) is this year's Tax Freedom Day - the average New Zealander has had to work 151 days to pay off taxes - 6 days longer than last year, and about 3 weeks longer than Australia's.  From here on out Kiwis can actually keep what they earn!

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.

Podcast Jobs in New Zealand

Dan Salter at New Zealand's funniest IT Recruitment firm's usually quiet blog, has started to deliver their latest jobs by podcast. The podcasts are nice and short and give updates on jobs that they don't have full job descriptions on yet. I think it is a really nice idea; especially for those candidates who prefer to listen rather than read. Although a lot of people will think podcasting is a fad, I think there is something much warmer about listening to details about something than just reading it. Dan has a great voice and I hope he keeps them up, it differentiates him from his competitors in a very busy market.

Careers for Java Developers

Last night I was really lucky to be invited to the inaugural meeting of the Auckland Java User Group - Javacom to talk to them about career development. It was a nice, cosy meeting with some people who are very passionate about their profession. I had a chance to talk about: working on being the best, growing your network, and also ways to work with Headhunters and Recruiters. There were some great questions and also some good stories that came out in the Networking session afterwards. If you are a Java Developer in Auckland I really recommend the group to you. The Chairman of the group, James Beamish-White, who is also CEO of web services company TEIQ, is keen to really grow the community. Key to growing your career is growing your network. It doesn't get easier than getting together with people who are interested in the same things you are!

A few points that came out of the meeting!

- Join LinkedIn now. This is only getting better as a resource.
- Hiring Managers are Googling your name, are you?
- Don't fall behind in IT, or your might never catch up again....
- Are you open-minded about new opportunities? You should be.
- Make sure you are great, but also make sure you can PROVE it!

I also defer here to a GREAT post by the Marketing Headhunter, Harry Joiner on careers. Five minutes of beautiful advice, and 10 questions to get you on your way to knowing what you love to do.