Next Ventures

New Bucharest Office

nextventures_cms — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 08:16:11 +0000

Office Opens in the Romanian Capital

We are delighted to announce the opening of our Bucharest office, with one of our most experienced and talented Sales Leaders, Andrei Cristescu, heading it up and responsible for the growth and development of the team.

If you are an experienced, Technology Professional or Recruitment Consultant, already in Romania, or looking to return home, please reach out to Andrei Cristescu to introduce yourself, as you may or may not need reminding of the compelling blend of benefits that are open to you.

What Does Bucharest Offer?

Bucharest, as you know, is the economic heart of Romania and a burgeoning hub for various industries. The IT and software development sectors have continued to strengthen, with high demand for skilled professionals. Other thriving areas include finance, telecommunications, healthcare, and business process outsourcing (BPO).

Affordable Cost of Living: Compared to many other European capitals, Bucharest boasts a significantly lower cost of living. This means your salary, especially with our benefits and incentive scheme, will go further, allowing for a higher quality of life, whether it’s for housing, groceries, dining out, or public transportation.

Bucharest has some of the best quality for price high end restaurants , bars and health clubs in Europe and a successful recruitment career here would give you access to a very comfortable life.

Relocating to Romania offers a unique blend of natural beauty and vibrant social life. From majestic Carpathian Mountains to the serene Black Sea coastline—ideal for outdoor enthusiasts and weekend explorers. Spend your summer weekends at the pool or beach side and in winter carve your way on the slopes straight to the buzzing après ski parties.

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AWS Cloud Certification

nextventures_cms — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 13:48:54 +0000

The surge in cloud adoption has created an unprecedented demand for skilled professionals capable of harnessing the power of platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS). Consequently, AWS certifications have become highly sought-after credentials, signifying expertise and driving significant salary premiums. Furthermore, AWS is the leading cloud services provider by some margin with more than 31% of the market share, great news for the career prospects of all cloud professionals.

Cloud Talent Shortage

A persistent talent shortage within the IT industry, particularly in cloud computing roles, has intensified the competition for qualified architects, engineers, and developers. Organisations are struggling to build robust cloud teams capable of not only utilising AWS services but also driving innovation and strategic advantage.

AWS certifications are a powerful means to validate skills and enhance the career prospects of cloud professionals. These certifications serve as a testament to an individual’s proficiency in various aspects of cloud computing, from foundational knowledge to advanced architectural design and implementation.

By obtaining AWS certifications, individuals can significantly increase their earning potential, unlock new career opportunities, and position themselves as leaders in the cloud computing domain.

Choosing the right Certification for You:

Foundational certifications like AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner offer a cloud overview.

Associate certifications like AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, validate the ability to design and deploy cloud solutions. There are also associate certifications specific to developer, SysOps administrator, and data engineer roles.

Professional certifications like AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, test your ability to design solutions for complex requirements.

Specialty certifications such as AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty, allow for deeper dives into specific areas and are being added to regularly.

TOP 5 IN-DEMAND AND HIGHEST-PAYING AWS CERTIFICATIONS GLOBALLY

AWS Certified Security – Specialty
AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty
AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional

Visit aws.amazon.com/certification/exams/ for more information about Amazon Web Services certifications and pathways.

Do you want to advance your career in AWS Cloud? Start by searching for exciting AWS Cloud job opportunities with great employers with Next Ventures.

Search jobs AWS Cloud jobs here.

Are you looking for AWS Cloud talent? Speak to our cloud recruitment team about your AWS specialist requirements.

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SAP end of Support for ECC

nextventures_cms — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 09:06:35 +0000

Support Deadline – 2027

There is a looming skills crisis in SAP, specifically around S/4HANA. As the end-of-life for SAP Enterprise Core Components (ECC), will start as early as 2025 for the early enhancement packs, and the end of 2027 for those that are on the more recent packs. Between now and then, more organisations will rush to adopt S/4HANA, creating a surge in demand for S/4HANA experts.

More than half of current SAP customers could be caught without support by 2027 based on the current adoption rates. History suggests that there will be a proportion of customers that choose an alternative maintenance strategy, but even they will need additional support skills.

The first big precipice is at the end of 2025

Users on enhancement pack 5 or lower will see support end as early as 2025. Only users on packs 6 to 8 will have the enhancement pack until the end of 2027.

IT leaders are urged to act promptly. Delaying the migration from ECC to S/4HANA can lead to significant timeline and budget challenges due to the growing skills gap and potential system vulnerabilities. Working with Next Ventures will afford you access to the best SAP talent, whether you choose to either build or strengthen your internal team, require a more flexible workforce focused on milestone objectives (SOW), or a simple T&M solution.

Key Considerations

SAP ECC Deadline: ECC support ends in 2025 for enhancement packs 1-5, and 2027 for 6-8.
73% Not Migrated: The majority of customers have not migrated to S/4HANA despite its 8-year existence.
50% Without Support: On current S/4 adoption rates, more than half of customers could lose support by the end 2027.
Adoption Surge: S/4HANA adoption will surge as the support vanishing point approaches.
S/4 Skills Gap: A Y2K-style skills shortage for S/4HANA experts is predicted.
Act Now: IT leaders should begin their strategy to execution path, to mitigate risks and challenges.
SAP Talent: Avoid the rush, and control your budget and timelines by prioritising the hiring of the best SAP team.
Why Us?: We’ll help you stay ahead of the competition by providing you access to the best SAP Skills, anywhere in the world.
Win The War: Have the best partner going into the global war for talent, as experienced during prior significant SAP transitions.

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FAST 50 Top Performing Recruitment Businesses

nextventures_cms — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 10:26:04 +0000

In the final year of taking the pandemic into account, the FAST 50 shows higher growth rates.

Next Ventures is listed once more in the Recruiter FAST 50. Compiled by Daniel Shrimpton of Clearwater International the FAST 50 lists the fastest-growing, privately-owned recruitment companies in the UK according to a revenue compound annual growth rate over the three most recent annual reporting periods.

Performance to be Proud Of

Our 2023 revenue figures revealed a 46.5% Compound Annual Growth Rate which placed us comfortably within the UK’s top performing recruitment businesses. The report notes that, with 2024 being the final year that incorporates the COVID-19 lump, there were always going to be questions about whether this would provide a deceptively positive growth story by starting from a lower point and capturing the subsequent rebound. This is certainly supported by the data, which shows the average compound annual growth rate (CAGR) up by 7% on last year to 66%, and a minimum CAGR of 37% to feature on the list.

Positive Future

It is testimony to the exceptional work and dedication of the NV team shown over the challenging past three years. Their contributions have been invaluable, and we are incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished together.

Next Ventures will continue to build on this success with an agile and hardworking approach to delivering the highest quality service to its clients and candidates. The rapid increase in digital transformation continues to drive demand for talent and shows no signs of abating.

Read the report in full here

The post FAST 50 Top Performing Recruitment Businesses appeared first on Next Ventures.

Recruiter HOT100 2023

nextventures_cms — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 15:51:39 +0000

Recruiter HOT100 Illustrates Strong Revenue Growth and Tech Focus in the Thriving Recruitment Sector

Next Ventures records its highest ranking in this market analysis by Recruiter Magazine in conjunction with Gambit Corporate Finance. Placing 6th overall and 2nd place for purely tech recruitment companies.

Tech Reigns Supreme

Technology remained the most dominant sub-sector specialisation, with a whopping 38 tech recruiters making the list. This dominance underscores the tech sector’s growth and the increasing importance of digital skills in today’s job market.

Revenue Surge

The HOT 100 recruiters achieved a combined £6.2 billion, reflecting a significant 20.7% increase from the previous year. This impressive growth highlights the recruitment sector’s adaptability and resilience even in the face of economic challenges.

Read the Full Report Here:

The post Recruiter HOT100 2023 appeared first on Next Ventures.

How to Succeed in Recruitment

nextventures_cms — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 11:55:58 +0000

If you’re embarking on a career in recruitment and want to get off on the best possible foot, we have some advice to help you hit the ground running, and ultimately succeed. Recruitment can be a tough gig, but with the right attitude and the necessary tools, it can also be an incredibly rewarding one. Below we have outlined some tips to keep you motivated on your hard days, consistent with your good days, and making a great impression right from your first day…

Find a Company That Invests in You

The first and most important step in a successful recruitment career is to get your foot in the door of a great company (like ours!) that invests in its people. You cannot thrive in the wrong environment, and this is especially true for those of you who are coming in fresh with no prior sales experience. There’s a lot to learn, and starting out in a supportive environment with a solid training scheme is the best and most effective way to set you up for the rest of your career. Our industry expert trainers want to see you succeed, and will push, challenge and support you until you can do so on your own two feet.

Embrace Mistakes

Being afraid to make mistakes is understandable when starting out in a new career, however it’s important to keep in mind that they are a vital part of learning, we all make them, and avoiding them will ultimately keep you stuck. It’s better to fluff a call to a candidate and learn from it, then be too scared to pick up the phone in the first place!

Time and time again we see the world’s greatest leaders credit their ultimate success to the errors they made along the way, so start seeing mistakes as invaluable opportunities to learn, and remember… the best time to make them is at the beginning on your career (the sooner you get them out of the way, the quicker you grow!).

Keep Your End Goal in Mind

As with any job, recruitment will bring good days, bad days, and everything in between. The nature of the business means we are at the mercy of the market, and naturally some periods will be tougher than others. It’s precisely for this reason that resilience is such a fundamental trait we look for when recruiting internally, and why we probe people on their motivators and aspirations.
When the going gets tough, it’s important to remember your why (in any sales role this usually translates to your financial goals). Perhaps you’d like to get on the property ladder in the next couple of years, maybe you’re saving up for the trip of a lifetime, or perhaps you have dreams of giving back to your family. Whatever they may be – goals are what get us out of bed in the morning, and what keep us powering through obstacles in order to secure those deals!

Be Honest and Self-Aware

One of the mistakes we often see people making when starting out in this industry is trying to conceal their shortcomings, and not asking for help when they need it. Your mentors and trainers are there to support you, and are not expecting you to be polished in every aspect of the job… particularly when you’re just starting out! Even the most experienced recruiters have aspects of the job they are better at than others, and if we don’t know your blind spots – we can’t help you work through them!

We would always rather employees be upfront about their strengths and weaknesses straight from the get-go, than to inevitably find out about them for ourselves further down the line. So get comfortable at asking for help when you need it, and remember that being self-aware is a skill in itself! It shows maturity, accountability and a desire to grow; all fundamental aspects in building a successful career!

Utilise Your Environment

Being in an office environment is a great opportunity to learn from others, so don’t waste it! You have a tribe of recruiters at your fingertips, each with their own unique ways of working, sales pitches and tricks of the trade. Some of NV’s longest standing consultants have been at the company for over 17 years, and there’s a lot to be learned from them. Ask questions, be observant, and absorb as much as you can!

So, remember…

… the best thing you can do to excel in recruitment is to throw yourself in at the deep end, show up each day with a positive attitude, and use every opportunity at your disposal to develop further. Progress isn’t always a linear process but as long as you’re learning, you’re growing. You’ll be amazed how far you can go, and the doors this industry can open for you!

If you’d like some more tips and guidance why not read What Does a Tech Recruitment Consultant Do? and How to Answer Tough Interview Questions . Good luck!

We are always looking for new talent who embodies the traits outlined above, so if you think you have what it takes… we want to hear from you! Reach out to us today for a confidential chat on:

07500 803 014 // holly.king@next-ventures.com

Or visit our Work for Us page.

The post How to Succeed in Recruitment appeared first on Next Ventures.

Don’t do THIS in an interview…

nextventures_cms — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 11:50:12 +0000

As recruiters, a big part of our job is prepping people for interviews, and getting feedback from hiring managers on how that interview went. This process has shone light on a few unfortunate but common mistakes which, time after time, sabotage interviews. Seemingly small slip-ups from candidates that unravel the client’s confidence, leaving us back to the drawing board to fill the role.

As with all professional endeavours, job interviews come with a certain etiquette; a set of unspoken rules to abide by in order to make a good impression and secure a place in the next round. Most of us are familiar with appropriate interview protocol when it comes to what we should do (a firm handshake, prompt arrival, plenty of eye-contact etc.), but when it comes to practices to avoid, you might be surprised how commonly mistakes are made. As recruiters, it can be very frustrating to see our candidates who would otherwise be a perfect fit for the role loose out over such small, avoidable mistakes… like the ones listed below.

Dressing inappropriately

The way you present yourself physically says a lot about you, and speaks volumes about your level of professionalism. Of course, what you wear to an interview should depend partly on the job (you probably wouldn’t wear a suit and tie to a job with animals, for example, but you would for a corporate job at the bank). Regardless of the position, there are certain fashion statements that should always be avoided… trainers, activewear, and anything with creases, stains or rips are a big no! As we always remind our candidates – dressing smartly shows you’re prepared to be professional, you’re taking the interview seriously, and you are eager to make a good impression.

Using bad language

While it’s important to express yourself, your passion and your personality freely, there are certain things that should be left at the interview door. We wince when we hear our candidates swearing, using slang and abbreviating words during an interview. To maintain a level of professionalism; give yourself time to think about what you want to say before answering, make a conscious effort to speak slowly and clearly, and choose appropriate language to make your point. Above all, remember where you are – avoid speaking to the interviewer the same way you’d speak to your friends at the pub.

Arriving too late… OR too early

We all know the golden rule of interviews is not to be late (when our client calls to tell us the candidate hasn’t shown up yet, we know they have probably already blown it), but it’s not a great idea to arrive too early, either. Arriving, say, 30 minutes – an hour early can appear a little keen, and has the potential to mess the diaries of the interviewer (or at the very least, will mean you will be left twiddling your thumbs for a long while). A safe sweet spot to aim for would be arriving around 10 – 15 minutes prior to your interview.

Talking negatively about your previous role

Talking about your previous role is an inevitable (and, of course, pretty big) part of a job interview, and the way in which you do this can bear a big weight on the impression you give of yourself, more so than it does of your previous company.

Wherever possible, frame every reference to your previous role in a gracious and positive light that demonstrates self-awareness, a good attitude, and a hunger to strive for more. In response to a question about what you didn’t like about your previous role, for example, you could say something along the lines of: “My company was great at X and Y, however I disliked that there were no progression plans in place, which is something that really drew me to this role”.

This is a great way to show the interviewer that you’ve researched the company, you have acknowledged what it can offer you, and you are ambitious about growing and succeeding beyond the realms of your previous role. Even if you have had a bad experience in your last role, always strive to be honest but respectful when reflecting back.

Self-deprecating OR bragging

When it comes to interviews, there is an important balance to be had between confidence and arrogance. Of course, it’s important to ‘back ourselves’ appropriately by expressing faith in our abilities and pride in our achievements (after all, you can’t expect the interviewer to have confidence in you if you don’t have any in yourself).

However, there’s a lot to be said about a candidate with self-awareness and the ability to critically-analyse, learn and grow from their mistakes. For example, when asked about your weaknesses/areas you could improve on – be honest (within reason – no one is going to hire someone who is chronically lazy and consistently late) about skills that don’t come naturally to you, and illustrate practices you’re putting into place to improve them. You might say “I’m not a natural presenter, however doing X, Y and Z is really helping me develop my skills, and I’m confident I can continue to grow in this area”. This demonstrates self-awareness, confidence, maturity and a desire to improve – which is music to an employer’s ears!

Not interviewing back

When asked if you have any questions at the end of the interview, the answer should never be “no”. To reference our previous blog post “Asking the right kind of questions is a great opportunity for the candidate to illustrate their curiosity and enthusiasm for the role and the company, and to further demonstrate their attitude, character and competence”.

In some cases, we’ve even seen our clients change their minds about a candidate at the last minute based on the questions that were asked at the end – so don’t underestimate the importance of this point!

Asking questions is also important, of course, for allowing you to get as much information as possible from the interviewer in order to make an informed decision about whether or not the job is right for you (interviews are a two-way street, after all). For examples of the kinds of questions to ask in order to make a lasting impression, have a read of our latest blog here.

Having negative body language

Last but certainly not least… remember that your body talks. The way we carry ourselves, express ourselves and communicate with our body language is arguably just as important as the words we speak. Slouching and mumbling says “I don’t want to be here”, crossing your arms and legs appears defensive, while clenched fists, fidgeting and inconsistent eye-contact indicate that you’re nervous.

Remember to use your body as a tool to exude confidence and openness, not the other way around. Smile, sit up straight and use hand gestures where necessary to express passion and engage the interviewer in what you’re saying.

Bread and butter

This is our bread and butter, so take it from us – these small details get noticed, and make a big difference! Read our blog posts How to Prepare for a Job Interview and How to Answer Tough Interview Questions for further guidance when preparing for an interview. Good luck!

If you’re interested in a career in recruitment, you might be a great fit for our future academy, dates to be confirmed. Get in touch today to find out more: 020 7549 4030 // holly.king@next-ventures.com

Or visit our Work for Us page.

The post Don’t do THIS in an interview… appeared first on Next Ventures.

Questions to Ask at the End of an Interview to Leave a Lasting Impression

nextventures_cms — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 10:14:19 +0000

Perhaps you’re looking for your first post-grad position, are entering the corporate world straight out of school or college, or maybe you’re feeling unsatisfied in your current job and are looking for a career change. Whatever your situation, an interview is an unavoidable, and sometimes daunting, step in the process in getting hired.

Job Interview Key Purposes

An interview has two key purposes: for the employer to find out of the interviewee is a good fit for the position, and for the interviewee to find out if the role, company and package is right for them. The latter is often overlooked, but it is imperative to get as much information as possible during the early stages of the interview process in order to make an informed decision about whether or not this opportunity is one you actually want. Getting this insight early on is particularly important if the recruitment process calls for multiple rounds of interviews (some requiring tasks and presentations), to avoid wasting valuable time and resources on both sides.

Illustrate Your Curiosity and Enthusiasm

Asking the right kind of questions is also a great opportunity for the candidate to illustrate their curiosity and enthusiasm for the role and the company, and to further demonstrate their attitude, character and competence! If you are currently preparing for an interview, you might consider asking the hiring manager some of the questions we have outlined below at the end of the interview. These questions are designed to impress and surprise the hiring manager, leaving a lasting impression that will set you aside from the competition and showcasing that you have done your research, are confident you have what it takes to excel in the role, and are hungry to succeed and progress within the company.

We would suggest asking no more than three relevant questions (don’t over-kill it!), but it’s great to have many more prepared to choose from based on how the conversation is going.

“Is there anything you are unsure of that I can reassure you on before I leave?”
“What makes your best current employee stand out?”
“How do you see the company evolving over the next five years?”
“What are the biggest challenges the company is facing right now?”
“What do you think encourages employees to stay at this company?”
“What progression opportunities are there in this role?”
“How do I compare with other candidates you’ve interviewed for this role?”
“Is there anything else I can provide to help you with your decision?”
“What’s one of the most interesting projects you’ve worked on here?”
“What’s your favourite thing about working here?”

Finally, ask a question that shows you have researched the company (i.e. something you have seen on their website, socials or in the news that has peaked your interest).

Keep Smiling

Remember to phrase everything in an enthusiastic manner with a smile on your face! Regardless of the role, everybody wants to employ somebody who is personable, positive and exhibits a can-do attitude. Read our blog posts How to Prepare for a Job Interview and How to Answer Tough Interview Questions for further guidance when preparing for an interview. Good luck!

If you’re interested in a career in recruitment, you might be a great fit for our upcoming academy, starting September 11^th. Get in touch today to find out more: 020 7549 4030 // holly.king@next-ventures.com

Or visit our Work for Us page.

The post Questions to Ask at the End of an Interview to Leave a Lasting Impression appeared first on Next Ventures.

New York City Office Opens

nextventures_cms — Wed, 31 May 2023 15:02:18 +0000

We are delighted to announce the opening of our new office in Manhattan, New York City! This development into the USA forms part of our ongoing global growth and comes as a natural progression for NV during a prosperous period. The move marks our second expansion in the past year, following the opening of our Manchester office in 2022. America is home to many of our existing clients and is already our 4th most successful territory after The Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom with revenues exceeding 12% of group turnover.

The Manhattan office will serve as a strategic base to support our continued mission to connect top-tier technology talent with cutting-edge organizations across our five core practice areas. With a deep commitment to driving digital transformation and fostering innovation, we will be further expanding our specialist talents and hard-working culture State-side to provide tailored recruitment solutions to clients and candidates in the vibrant New York market, and beyond. Doors will be opening tomorrow, 1st June, in Union Square, and will create new opportunities for New York’s famously ambitious residents.

Why New York?

Fondly referred to as the “The city that never sleeps” New York is famous for its busy culture and the go-getting, resilient and straight-talking nature of its resident New Yorkers. These characteristics lend themselves well to the fast-paced nature of the Tech Recruitment industry, and we look forward to building out an American workforce to help drive this expansion forward with the can-do spirit that is synonymous with the Big Apple.

Introducing Kyle Vyas

Leading this exciting expansion is Kyle Vyas, a seasoned IT staffing executive with a remarkable 20+ year track record of matching exceptional employees with organizations in need of top-tier technical talent. Kyle possesses a deep understanding of the IT staffing landscape, having successfully built and led high-performing recruiting offices and teams across multiple cities in the United States.

Kyle’s commitment to providing exceptional service and building long-term partnerships has made him a trusted advisor to both clients and candidates. His comprehensive knowledge of technology trends and market demands allows him to stay ahead of the curve and deliver tailored staffing solutions to meet diverse client needs. He offers a consultative approach, taking the time to thoroughly understand client requirements and providing strategic insights to help them build robust and efficient IT teams. With a keen eye for talent, Kyle has developed an extensive network of industry professionals, enabling him to tap into a vast pool of qualified candidates. He has earned the reputation of delivering results, while still perpetuating his core values of integrity, genuineness, empathy and professionalism.

Kyle is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in the workplace, recognizing the immense value that a diverse workforce brings to organizations. He actively develops and promotes initiatives that foster a diverse workforce and he strives to create opportunities for underrepresented groups within the IT industry and the companies he works with.

Based on his wealth of experience, expertise and leadership capabilities, Kyle Vyas is the ideal choice to launch Next Ventures’ first US office. His proven abilities in strategic planning and people/project management, joined with his commitment to delivering an exceptional client and candidate experience, ensure a strong foundation for success in this exciting endeavour.

Our CEO comments:

“The USA has always been on our strategic growth plan, however 2020 saw us delay things until the world recovered from the Pandemic. We are all now thankfully moving forwards and it is absolutely the right time for us to start building our direct capabilities with a strong local team, based in Manhattan. We have a solid client base in the USA already, so our capabilities are already proven in the Territory. Kyle Vyas was the perfect hire for us because he sees recruitment the way we do and that’s about a Quality focus, a niche Technology focus and this will differentiate us quickly and effectively! It’s an exciting time and we very much look forward to making the USA our second home!”

Richard Lacey

Are You Up for the Challenge?

If you’re an experienced recruiter who is looking for their next challenge in a multi-million pound tech recruitment company and want to enjoy our market-leading commission and incentives we have to offer (check them out here), then we want to hear from you today!

Contact: Kyle Vyas email: Kyle.Vyas@next-ventures.com tel: +1 617 504 8720
Visit our Work for Us page to find out more.
Our New York address is:

Next Ventures Inc.
33 Irving Place
New York
NY. Zip: 10003, USA

View on Google Map

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What Does a Tech Recruitment Consultant Do?

tony — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 12:22:59 +0000

Seeking a new and challenging job with unlimited career progression?

After a year or two of working in sales or account management, many recent graduates are keen to take on a new challenge.

Ready to move on and upward?

No longer gaining enough stimulation from their existing job, and with little career progression to be seen, it is time to move on. IT recruitment offers the ideal step up in prospects, opportunities and earning potential for young, tech sector sales executives.

What does an IT Recruiter do?

Recruitment consultants are basically responsible for matching people to available job vacancies. A Tech Recruiter specialises in the technology sector, seeking out people with specialist skills and identifying business opportunities in the tech community.

There is a lot of networking to be done as a Tech recruiter, making contacts among potential clients and identifying tech talent, potential candidates as well as managing the recruitment process, setting up interviews, organising work and benefit offers.

A Rewarding challenge for executives with ambition

The world of Tech Recruitment can provide the perfect challenge for recent graduates possessing some previous sales work experience. Offering infinite career development possibilities for ambitious second jobbers, new challenges on a daily basis and a great income, Tech Recruitment is a career marked for growth.

It is also very fulfilling. You are helping others find the perfect job, matching candidates to companies and ultimately creating your own international market area. Next Ventures offer the Next Step training academy from their London head office, with opportunities existing in the New York office also.

Work with the foremost tech recruiter

Next Ventures is one of the foremost tech recruitment companies in the country, working with top brands and blue chip businesses. Established over 20 years, Next Ventures is experiencing amazing growth. Demand for Tech staff is booming, and companies needing tech talent are hunting for the best people.

Finding those candidates requires special people able to go the extra mile to match job vacancies with candidates. This is where Next Ventures steps in with its expert consultants ready to assist. An independent business, the directors work alongside consultants, with fun social events marking the end of each busy week.

Great rewards and benefits

Recruitment consultants at Next Ventures work hard and play hard. The sky is the limit for technology recruiters, when rewards and benefits are added to monthly salaries.

Next Ventures Commission Calculator

If you are already in recruitment or another sales role take a look at earnings potential at Next Ventures with our commission calculator by clicking on the image below or follow this LINK, you can also add the app to your phone or visit our Work for Us page.

Next Ventures is always looking for confident, sales orientated trainee recruitment consultants to help take the business to the next level. Technological knowledge is not essential, although knowledge of business, marketing, finance, economics, communications and computer science is useful.

High quality on job training

Joining the company’s Next Step Academy offers fast-track career progression. These on-the-job training programmes are held at regular intervals throughout the year, with the next one starting in late April. You will learn how to recruit top tech talent in this in this industry leading training programme.

How to be a Good IT Recruiter

A mix of classroom, on desk and shadowing super star consultants, ensures that new entrants are soon working with clients, rapidly learning how to be a good IT recruiters. Exploring the various business sectors at Next Ventures allows new consultants to find their most appropriate niche area in which to develop future careers.

A continuous training schedule ensures that every consultant constantly improves their business and consultancy skills, enabling them to become experts in their preferred market segment. This is a company that truly rewards hard work and effort so new consultants will quickly experience the benefits of beiing successful technology recruiter.

What does a Tech Recruitment consultant earn?

You can expect a good income once your training is complete. Tech Recruitment consultants enjoy very high earning potential, with a basic rate of up to £24,000 plus uncapped commission levels on top of that.

Within year one you could be earning between £35,000 – £45,000 OTE with commission payments, while by the third year you could be receiving an income of more than £100,000. These are achievable figures since commission rates are very generous.

Benefits and incentives

Good commission is paid on top of salaries while hitting targets can result in great incentives such as all expenses paid overseas trips or monthly lunch clubs at top London restaurants. Every new client signed up results in an immediate £400 voucher.

Then there are the other benefits like the progressive sabbatical scheme granting one, two or three months leave. Every month, the salesperson of the month gains a £150 voucher.

A highlight of the company year is the annual awards event, where the most successful consultants can find themselves receiving luxury watches, jewelry and vouchers.

Your success is supported and celebrated

Success is not measured only on KPI’s but also on personal and team achievements. Consultants at Next Ventures are definitely the best in the business. Joining the team means you will never be held back, instead you will grow your career as quickly and as far as your skills and hard work allow.

The future is definitely bright for consultants working within one of the most progressive, expanding and challenging business sectors.

Contact Next Ventures

For more information on the benefits of a career with Next Ventures visit our Work for Us page.

If you want further information please contact our Manager of Talent Acquisition, Holly King on 0207 549 4030 Holly.King@next-ventures.com or apply now for the next academy programme here.

The post What Does a Tech Recruitment Consultant Do? appeared first on Next Ventures.

Women in Tech Event Celebrating IWD2023

nextventures_cms — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 12:11:28 +0000

On the 9th March we continued our International Women’s Day celebrations by hosting an evening at The Ned with our friends at Verve, to celebrate, learn from, and network with brilliant, inspirational thought-leaders in this space.

Verve are an organisation set up with the aim of closing the gender pay gap by supporting, coaching and teaching women how to get into and become successful in the tech industry. This is a movement that is close to our hearts, and one we are passionate about representing and making noise about.

There is Work to be Done

The technology sector has come a long way in terms of diversity and representation in the industry, but there is still work to be done, and so this night was dedicated to supporting and empowering one another to continue taking the necessary steps to make waves with this movement. Our incredible panel of powerhouse women proudly represented and championed inclusion within technology, discussed how gender diversity can close the skills gap in the industry, and took questions from the audience, reflecting on their own unique experiences and inspiring stories to empathise and advise.

We were so pleased to see such a broad, engaged and receptive audience consisting of so many female entrepreneurs and future leaders, all coming together to support one another and honour this movement.

We covered topics such as how to tap into a wider pool of talent, the role education and community outreach initiatives play in encouraging more young people from diverse backgrounds to pursue careers in tech, rapidly changing technological advancements, navigating potential challenges and biases to succeed in tech, neurodiversity in the workplace, and lots more. We hope this will be the start of many events

There are several reasons why the underrepresentation of women in technology is a cause for concern:

Diverse perspectives lead to better problem-solving and innovation: A diverse workforce that includes women can bring different perspectives and approaches to problem-solving, leading to more creative and effective solutions.
Economic benefits: Women make up half of the global population and their participation in the tech sector can drive economic growth and productivity.
Closing the gender pay gap: Women in technology are often paid less than their male counterparts, and increasing the number of women in the field can help to close this gap.
Encouraging girls to pursue careers in STEM: Having more female role models in technology can encourage girls to pursue careers in STEM fields and address the gender imbalance in the tech industry.
In short, increasing the number of women in technology is crucial for promoting diversity, driving economic growth, closing the gender pay gap, and encouraging girls to pursue careers in STEM fields.

The Importance of Women in Technology

The technology industry has traditionally been male-dominated, but in recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the need for diversity in the field. Women in technology bring unique perspectives and experiences that can lead to more creative and effective solutions. It is therefore important to understand why increasing the number of women in the industry is crucial for a number of reasons.
First, diverse perspectives lead to better problem-solving and innovation. A workplace that includes women can offer a range of perspectives and approaches to problem-solving, leading to more innovative and effective solutions. Research has shown that companies with diverse teams are more likely to outperform their competitors, and a gender-diverse team can lead to better decision making, increased creativity, and improved overall performance.
Second, increasing the number of women in technology can drive economic growth and productivity. Women make up half of the global population and their participation in the tech sector can have a significant impact on the economy. By providing equal opportunities for women to enter and succeed in the tech industry, we can unlock their full economic potential and drive economic growth.
Third, the gender pay gap is a significant issue in the technology industry, and increasing the number of women in the field can help to close this gap. Women in technology are often paid less than their male counterparts, and this disparity can have a long-term impact on their earning potential. Addressing this issue requires more women to enter the field and advocate for equal pay.
Finally, having more female role models in technology can encourage girls to pursue careers in STEM fields. By breaking down gender barriers in the tech industry, we can help to address the gender imbalance in the industry and encourage girls to pursue their passions and careers in STEM fields.
In conclusion, increasing the number of women in technology is crucial for promoting diversity, driving economic growth, closing the gender pay gap, and encouraging girls to pursue careers in STEM fields. By valuing the contributions of women in technology, we can create a more inclusive and innovative industry that benefits everyone.

The post Women in Tech Event Celebrating IWD2023 appeared first on Next Ventures.

Next Ventures are on the GO…

tony — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 14:09:12 +0000

For over 20 years, Next Ventures has provided high quality talent in the technology recruitment sector. Our consultants maintain their niche focus across our five core practices of SAP, Business Applications, Development & Integration, Cloud & Infrastructure, and Data.

We have now added a dedicated Golang recruitment function to our Development & Integration practice, and will be aiding companies using Go in their core tech stack to resource the perfect candidates.

What is Golang?

Go was originally invented by Google in 2007. Go language was designed to address shortcomings Google found in C++ and Java when working with cloud and distributed network systems. The first release of V 1.0 was in 2012 but it is only in recent years that we have noticed an increased appetite for strong developers in the Go market.

Demand for Go Skills is Accelerating

Aided by adoption from the likes of Uber, Twitch, Delivery Hero, Dropbox and of course Google, the search for experienced and reliable engineers is on. Similar to the progression of companies’ adoption of cloud technology from on-premises servers, backends built in PHP and Java are frequently migrated to a full Go programming language backend in the modern-day stack.

Not only are backend environments being built in Go, but the most popular tools on the market for software engineers are built using Golang. The likes of Docker, Kubernetes and OpenShift to name but a few, are written in Go and are a staple for the majority of businesses that want to keep up with current trends.

Modern Technology Attracts Talent

Increasingly, candidates want to work on modern technology stacks, and Golang is fast becoming a language of choice and an attractive option when recruiting talented developers who want Golang jobs.

What does this mean for us? In stark comparison to the number of developers with extensive experience in C++, Java or other common backend languages, a top Golang developer is a rarity. The fight for talent goes on and the competitive market will continue to drive candidates towards the most attractive opportunity presented to them. When you are looking to be the best, you need the support of the best in the market. This is where Next Ventures come in.

Established Global Network

As an established name in the technology talent market with a global network of candidates and a recruitment process focused on quality, Next Ventures can enable you to find these sought-after developers before anyone else.

For Golang jobs or talent reach, out to our Golang experts in the Dev Team, for a conversation today.

Dev Team

Development & Integration

DevTeam-Contract@next-ventures.com

The post Next Ventures are on the GO… appeared first on Next Ventures.

Revolutionising Data Security: The Rise of Confidential Computing

tony — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 10:11:48 +0000

Confidential computing is a subset of the broader field of secure computing, which aims to protect data while it is being processed. The goal of confidential computing is to allow sensitive data to be processed in a secure environment, without the risk of the data being accessed by unauthorised parties. This is achieved through the use of hardware-based security features and specialised software that is designed to protect data while it is being processed.

One of the key benefits of confidential computing is that it allows organisations to process sensitive data in the cloud without having to worry about the security of that data. Traditionally, organisations have been hesitant to move sensitive data to the cloud due to concerns about data privacy and security. With confidential computing, organisations can now take advantage of the scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of the cloud while still maintaining control over their sensitive data.

What is sensitive data?

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) adds specific data privacy regulations to protect sensitive data such as payment card holder information, confidential personnel information and general personal data like racial, political, genetic, health and more. Data privacy may require additional security measures for sensitive and regulated data.

Various Approaches to Confidential Computing

There are several different approaches to confidential computing, including hardware-based solutions and software-based solutions. Hardware-based solutions are typically more secure than software-based solutions, as they are less vulnerable to software attacks. Software-based solutions, on the other hand, use specialized software to create a secure environment for data processing. However, they are often easier to implement and can be more cost-effective than hardware-based solutions.

Examples of Confidential Computing

Let’s take a look at some of the approaches being used today

Intel Corporation SGX

Intel Corporation SGX (Software Guard Extensions), use specialised hardware to create a secure environment for data processing. In addition to SGX, Intel has also introduced the Intel DL Boost technology, which is designed to accelerate the performance of deep learning workloads in a secure manner. Intel has also been working on integrating confidential computing into its products and services and has introduced SGX support for its Xeon Scalable processors, allowing organisations to use these processors to process sensitive data in a secure manner. Intel has also been working on integrating SGX into its cloud services, such as Intel SGX for Cloud.

Google Asylo

Google has also been active in their pursuit through its open-source projects and its cloud services. In 2018, the company launched Asylo, an open-source framework. Asylo allows developers to build applications that can be run in a trusted execution environment (TEE), such as Intel SGX. In addition to Asylo, Google has also introduced Confidential VMs and Confidential Computing Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). Confidential VMs are virtual machines that are designed to protect sensitive data and Confidential Computing TEE is a hardware-based solution that uses specialised hardware to create a secure environment for data processing.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft introduced their Azure Confidential Computing service in 2018, which is a cloud-based service. They use hardware-based security features, such as Intel SGX. In addition to the Azure Confidential Computing service, Microsoft has also developed other confidential computing technologies and solutions like the Azure Private Link service, which allows organisations to securely access resources in the Azure cloud over a private network connection.

Who are the disruptors?

Opaque Systems

Opaque Systems is a Series A startup that specialises in developing secure computing technologies and solutions. The company was founded in 2016 in San Francisco. The company’s main product is the Opaque Security Platform, which is a hardware-based solution that uses specialised hardware to create a secure environment. The Opaque Security Platform is designed to allow organisations to process sensitive data in a secure manner, without the risk of the data being accessed by unauthorised parties. In addition to the Opaque Security Platform, the company has also developed the Opaque Secure Data Gateway, which is a software-based solution that allows organisations to securely access and process sensitive data in the cloud.

Fortanix

Fortanix is a Series C startup that specialises in developing secure computing technologies and solutions. One of Fortanix’s main products is the Self-Defending Key Management Service (SDKMS), which is a cloud-based key management solution that is designed to protect sensitive data. The SDKMS uses hardware-based security features, such as Intel SGX. In addition to the SDKMS, Fortanix has also developed the Runtime Encryption Platform (REP), which is a hardware-based solution.

Enveil

Enveil is a Series B startup whose main products is the ZeroReveal Solution, which is a hardware-based solution that uses specialised hardware. The ZeroReveal Solution is designed to allow organisations to securely process sensitive data without exposing the data to external parties. Enveil has also developed the Enveil Data Security Platform, which is a software-based solution.

Check out the top 20 products on the market today:

Intel SGX (Software Guard Extensions)
Microsoft Azure Confidential Computing
Googles Asylo framework (open-source framework for confidential computing)
Google Cloud Confidential VMs
Opaque Security Platform
Fortanix Self-Defending Key Management Service (SDKMS)
Enveil ZeroReveal Solution
Amazon Braket
IBM’s Secure Enclaves for Linux on Z
Guardtime Federal KSI Blockchain
IBM LinuxONE Emperor II (hardware platform for confidential computing)
AWS Nitro Enclaves
Hyperledger Aries
Cloudflare Workers KV
SecureKey Concierge
NuCypher KMS
CableLabs Confidential Computing Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)
RxBenefits Protect (formally known as Confidio)
Lookout CASB (formally known as CipherCloud)
Terrazone TruePass (formally known as Safe-T Data)

(The above list is not exhaustive and is likely to change as new products and technologies are developed)

What Are The Key Challenges?

One of the challenges with confidential computing is ensuring that the hardware and software used to process sensitive data is secure and free from vulnerabilities. This requires organisations to carefully evaluate the security of their hardware and software, and to implement rigorous security measures to protect against potential attacks. Another challenge with confidential computing is the need to balance security and performance. While the goal of confidential computing is to protect sensitive data, this protection can often come at the expense of performance. This can be a significant challenge for organisations that rely on high-performance computing for their business operations.

Despite these challenges, the adoption of confidential computing is growing, as more and more organisations recognise the importance of protecting sensitive data. As the demand for confidential computing increases, it is likely that we will see the development of new technologies and approaches that are designed to address the challenges of secure data processing.

The biggest challenge is finding talent in this area that is a relatively new field and there may be a limited pool of qualified candidates. Additionally, because confidential computing involves working with sensitive and potentially highly valuable data, companies may have strict requirements for the qualifications and experience of candidates, which can further narrow the pool of potential hires.

Finally, because the field is emerging, there may be a lack of established educational programs or certification paths, which can make it difficult for professionals to gain the necessary skills and expertise to work in this area.

Next Ventures have a team of experts who can help you attract the right talent in this emerging space. Contact Andrew Mcloughlin today for a chat.

Andrew Mcloughlin

Director – Emerging Technology

Andrew@next-ventures.com

The post Revolutionising Data Security: The Rise of Confidential Computing appeared first on Next Ventures.

Why now is the best time to move jobs

tony — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 10:06:26 +0000

The prospect of changing jobs is a daunting one at the best of times, let alone with the cost of living at an all-time high. But we explain why, even with a looming recession and the year coming to an end, there is no time like the present to go after your next venture.

Get a head start hitting your 2023 goals

The average time it takes a jobseeker to find a new role in the UK is four months. That means if you wait until next year to start your search, you could be well into Q2 or even Q3 before you land something suitable. By starting your search now, you can go into the new year already having taken the necessary steps to start attacking your 2023 career goals.

Beat the January Rush

January and February are the most popular months for job seekers to apply for new roles. Many people grow complacent towards the end of the year, and end up putting off their job search until January. This delay can significantly increase the competition you will face when applying for a new role. By starting your job search now, you give yourself the advantage of being one step ahead of the game, and improve your chances or landing the role you really want by being amongst the first to apply.

Take advantage of the current job market

Despite the current state of the global economy, we have seen record highs this year for vacancies within the technology sector. This unprecedented demand for skills has created a candidate-led market that has pushed employers to make faster hiring decisions. Put simply, now is the time for candidates to make their move!

You could earn more by switching now

Due to the increased demand for skills and the subsequent competition amongst employers to hire their desired talent, many organisations have increased the compensation on offer to make their opportunity more compelling. This means jobseekers can benefit both financially and from a career perspective by making the move now.

Increase your chances of securing a job you love

As the saying goes, there’s no time like the present, and this is especially true when it comes to pursuing your career ambitions. The sooner you start looking for a job, the more opportunities will be presented to you, and the more likely you will be to find something you truly love. Making a change in your career can be a daunting prospect, but the longer you wait to take action, the more likely you will be to talk yourself out of it!

Speak to Next Ventures

If we have inspired you to make a move, why not submit your CV and ask to speak to one of our consultants?

Or if you’re a recruitment consultant or a legal or finance professional looking for your next challenge – we are currently hiring across all departments! Find out more about life as a tech recruiter by visiting our work for us page.

Get in touch with our Talent Acquisition manager today to find out more 07500803014 / Holly.King@next-ventures.com

The post Why now is the best time to move jobs appeared first on Next Ventures.

What is AI and ML?

tony — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 14:29:08 +0000

What is Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and what have the past 6 months taught us about their presence and influence within the tech sector, and their potential future impact in today’s ever-changing, digital-forward climate?

Reference: Pitchbook

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to the natural intelligence inhabited by animals and humans. AI utilises deep learning and natural language processing to make it possible for machines to learn from experience and adjust to new inputs in order to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind and perform human-like tasks (such as driving a car, or playing a virtual game of solitaire).

There are three types of AI:

Artificial narrow intelligence (ANI), also called “weak” or “narrow” AI, has a limited yet powerful function.
Artificial general intelligence (AGI), also called “strong” or “deep” AI, mimics human intelligence and behaviour.
Artificial superintelligence (ASI), whose intelligence greatly surpasses a human’s.

Subsets of Artificial Intelligence:

Machine learning (ML): A subset of AI that often uses statistical techniques to give machines the ability to “learn” from data without being given explicit instructions for how to do so. This process is known as “training” a “model” using a learning “algorithm” that progressively improves model performance on a specific task.
Deep Learning (DL): An area of ML that attempts to mimic the activity in layers of neurons in the brain to learn how to recognise complex patterns in data. The “deep” in deep learning refers to the large number of layers of neurons in contemporary ML models that help to learn rich representations of data to achieve better performance gains.
Computer Vision (CV): Computer vision is a field of artificial intelligence that trains computers to interpret and understand the visual world. Using digital images from cameras and videos and deep learning models, machines can accurately identify and classify objects — and then react to what they “see.”
Natural Language Processing (NLP): Enabling machines to analyse, understand and manipulate human language. NLP helps computers communicate with humans in their own language, making it possible for computers to read text, hear speech, interpret it, measure sentiment and determine which parts are important
Artificial Neural Networks (ANN’s): An artificial neural network is an attempt to simulate the network of neurons that make up a human brain so that the computer will be able to learn things and make decisions in a humanlike manner. ANNs are created by programming regular computers to behave as though they are interconnected brain cells.

Where is Artificial Intelligence today?

While AI models have grown exponentially over the past several years, their operations remain limited in scope and scale within organisations, meaning growth has not translated directly to improved commercial gain. What’s more, the current unpredictable economic climate has made way for the evaluation of cloud computing costs, resulting in consideration from companies seeking cost-effective AI solutions. Analytics spending data strongly indicates that efficiency and data acquisition are taking president over the company budget or model accuracy and complexity.

AI’s economic downfall (the first we have seen since 2011) is a result of shifts in the mix of spending between cloud computing, on-premise and edge, as opposed to an overall AI plummet. IT spending remains on track to continue double-digit growth globally this year, and as a result AI market size estimate is largely unchanged from Q1 (with fewer companies devoting large budgets over $500,000 and $5 million to AI initiatives), suggesting that budget growth is coming under control.

Areas of AI and ML that received funding in 2022

Although funding has slowed down in recent times, we continue to see startups receiving investments within the AI and ML space. Some notable key players in this area include Doppel, Elloe AI, Inflection and Tenyx, which were all founded this year. The largest deal amongst this group was for Inflection, coming in at £208.86M.

Venture Capital Activity

In Q2 alone, 1,340 total Venture Capital deals were made within the AI sector, with $20.2B collectively being raised across the board; a -27.8% deal value growth QoQ, compared to 21.6% for IT more generally. High-growth AI spaces include accounting automation, wealth management, metaverse and quantum AI.

Let’s take a look back at some highlights and key contributors across Q2 of 2022:

In April we saw Hugging Face (an open-source NPL model startup) raise a $100.0 million Series C at a $1.9 billion pre-money valuation. Their GitHub star count exceeds that of Meta’s Pytoch AI training framework, indicating its establishment in the AI community, and its GitHub contributor count has accelerated growth throughout 2022.

We also saw SoundHound (a voice recognition unicorn) complete a SPAC merger at a $1.9billion valuation, achieving a 5.9x MOIC.

In May, we saw Snowflake complete its $800.0 million acquisition of Streamlit, facilitating support for Python-based machine learning analytics on top of its cloud data warehouse.

In June, we saw Nvidia partner with MLOps startups Run:AI and Weights & Biases for Machine Learning operations. Both startups respectively focus on hardware acceleration and model development.

We also saw IBM acquire AIOps startup Databand for $150.0 million, granting the startup an 8.1x MOIC.

Finally, we saw Databricks (a leading company in Database management), disclose new ML management and monitoring capabilities entitled MLflow 2.0 at the company’s AI + Data Summit. The company also bolsters support for stream data processing with its Project Lightspeed initiative.

Emerging opportunities

We dived into the emerging areas of AI & ML, and below are areas where there has been a significant investment.

Code completion
AI has struggled to learn coding syntax and outperform human coders yet has reached commercialisation for predictive code completion
Top Startups: Builder.AI | TabNine
Streaming data pipelines
Database management innovators are focusing on stream processing as part of their AI strategies via M&A and product development
Top Startups: Databricks | DataStax
Synthetic data
Computer-generated data can produce a market opportunity at the scale of the hand-labeled data market
Top Startups: Synthesis AI | MOSTLY AI

We can help!

An important thing to check before partnering with a recruitment firm is whether they have proven experience and a cultural fit that matches yours.

Next Ventures is your best choice to achieve your hiring goals in AI/ML. We can help you reach the next level in staff augmentation and scale your business sustainably. Contact us to learn more about how we can help your business thrive.

The post What is AI and ML? appeared first on Next Ventures.

5 Tough Interview Questions and How to Answer Them

tony — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 13:26:29 +0000

In our line of work, we spend a lot of time prepping candidates for interviews and getting feedback on questions & answers from both sides of the coin. Naturally, some questions are trickier to navigate than others, and often these more “difficult” questions are designed to test how we operate under pressure.

Preparation is key

The way in which we answer such questions can make or break our chance of success, and so it’s imperative that we anticipate and prepare for them adequately if we want to get ahead of the competition and walk into the interview feeling calm and ready for anything.

If you have an interview coming up and you want to impress, consider how you might answer the 5 notoriously tough interview questions below that we see coming up time and time again. You can thank us later.

Question 1 “What are your weaknesses?”

This is a common question employers ask to determine a candidate’s sense of self-awareness and drive for self-improvement, so it’s important to be honest but tactful here. Avoid predictable, overused answers such as “I’m a perfectionist” and clear red flags like “lazy” and “always late”. Instead, expand a truthful answer in a positive way by illustrating practices you’re putting into place to improve, e.g. “I’m not a natural presenter, however doing X, Y and Z is really helping me develop my skills, and I’m confident I can continue to grow in this area”.

Question 2 “How do you respond to pressure at work?”

Employers want reassurance that you will be able to handle the inevitable stresses and setbacks that come with the job. Using real examples of times you have successfully met tight deadlines or dealt with difficulties in an effective way is a great way to illustrate your ability to navigate problems at work with a calm and “can do” attitude.

Question 3 “Why you?”

This question (or some version of it) is almost guaranteed to come up in your next interview, and it’s your opportunity to stand out from the competition by demonstrating, with examples, how you are uniquely suited to the job. Try to touch on specific experiences and skills that link directly to points listed in the job spec, as well as your personal traits (attitudes, interests etc.) that will help you to succeed in the role. Not only will this give credibility to your answers, but it will illustrate to the interviewer that you have done your research and have really considered your compatibility with the role.

Question 4 “What did you dislike about your previous role?”

Avoid speaking negatively or moaning about your previous company here, and instead focus on the aspects this new opportunity is offering you that your previous company lacked i.e. “My company was great at X and Y, however I disliked that there were no progression plans in place, which is something that really drew me to this role”. This is a great way to show the interviewer that you’ve researched the company, acknowledged what it can offer you, and have ambitions to grow and succeed beyond the realms of your previous role.

Question 5 “How would you deal with conflict with a co-worker?”

A fundamental aspect of the success of an employee is the ability to build and maintain healthy working relationships. Answering this question in the right way is a great opportunity to demonstrate your listening, communication, reasoning and problem-solving skills. Try to use examples of times you have dealt with issues with respect, discretion, openness to different points of view and strong teamworking skills to reach effective solutions

Positivity wins!

The key theme to take away here is the power of optimism, and the ability put a positive spin on what is posed to elicit a potentially negative response. Everyone loves an optimist, so by framing your answer to demonstrate your can-do attitude, enthusiasm to excel and willingness to learn, you’re bound to make a great impression.

Give yourself time to think

It’s important to note, however, that no matter how much we prepare for an interview, sometimes questions will catch us off guard. If you need to some time to think, that’s OK. Often we are in such a rush to say anything at all, that we don’t give ourselves adequate time to consider what we really want to say. Ask for a moment’s respite to reflect on the question, take a deep breath before responding, and when you’re ready – give it your best shot.

Good luck!

Why not start your job search with Next Ventures or submit your CV and ask to speak to one of our consultants?

The post 5 Tough Interview Questions and How to Answer Them appeared first on Next Ventures.

Preparing for an Interview

tony — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 09:39:12 +0000

Preparing for an interview is one of the most important phases in securing a new role, and the steps you take ahead of the day will likely be the difference between progressing to the next stage or returning to the job-hunt drawing board. If you have an upcoming interview for a role you’re excited about and want to give yourself the best chance of acing it, we have created a complete guide below to help you.

Types of Interview:

Face-to-Face
Telephone
Video
Assessment Centres

Key Considerations

Five Key Things to Consider Whilst Preparing:

Be ready to tell the interviewer about yourself, what makes you right for the job, and why you’re interested in the role, the company and the industry
- Be as specific as possible here, linking aspects of the job spec and company to your own skills, traits, interests and experience. This will give credibility to your answers, and demonstrate that you have done your research
- Don’t be afraid to express your passion! It’s always refreshing for employers to interview candidates with a genuine enthusiasm for the job they’re applying for.
Make a great impression, of course
- Be punctual, be positive & enthusiastic, practice good body language, and crucially…
- Be yourself! Remember, your interviewer will want to get to know the real you. They’re looking for someone who will fit in culturally, so likability is arguably just as important as skill and experience. By letting your personality and individuality shine through, you are much more likely to stand out from the competition and make a lasting impression.
Research market salary
- … and consider what you’re willing to accept, on the off chance that this does come up.
Prepare questions to ask the interviewer
- Asking questions is vital not only to find out if the company is right for you (you are interviewing them too, after all), but also to demonstrate your curiosity and enthusiasm for the role and the company. Consider the key things you want to find out from them, as well as less-common questions that are going to make an impression
- For example, you could ask what makes their best current employee stand out, or if there’s anything about you they’re unsure of that you can reassure them on.

Be prepared for the worst by planning how you might navigate difficult interview questions
- These questions are often used to catch you off-guard and see how you operate under pressure, so anticipating and planning for them could put you a step ahead of the game
- Check out our guide on how to answer 5 notoriously tough interview questions: here
- If you don’t have the answer to a question, or if the interviewer asks if you have experience in something you don’t – honest is always the best policy. Instead of waffling and trying to answer anyway (an interviewer can smell a lie from a mile away), try gracefully admitting you don’t know/have the experience yet, while demonstrating your desire and ability to learn. You’re much more likely to score points for your honesty and sincerity, then coasting through on a lie only to be found out later on.

STAR Methodology

Familiarise yourself with the STAR Methodology, this interview technique gives you a straightforward format you can use to tell a story by laying out the Situation, Task, Action, and Result.

SITUATION: Providing context to the situation/scenario
TASK: What was the task at hand and what were you responsible for?
ACTION: What action was taken to complete the task?
RESULT: What was the result? How did the action impact the project (negatively/positively?)

Interview Research

One of the most important parts of preparing for an interview is in researching the company, the role and the people who will be interviewing you. This will demonstrate your passion and dedication to the opportunity, as well as your ability to prepare for important meetings.

COMPANY: What sector? What challenges do they face? Who are their competitors? What are their core values? What major projects have they completed/clients have they worked with?
ROLE: What is the position you are interviewing for? Who does it report in to? What are the key responsibilities? How does it match your skill set?
INTERVIEW PANEL: Who is interviewing you? How long have they been in the company? What is their background? Have you viewed their LinkedIn profile/connected with them?

Revise your CV

While it may seem obvious, many candidates slip up in interviews simply by not knowing their own CV well enough. You will be asked questions on the experience and skills written on your resume, so ensuring you know it like the back of your hand will help you answer with ease, confidence and clarity.

Logistics

Now, for the boring bit. To ensure you are calm and relaxed on the day, it’s highly important to be meticulously prepared, and ready for any obstacles that may come your way. Here are some ways you can risk-manage your day:

Pick out an appropriate outfit well in advance to avoid wasting time/stressing on the day.
You can’t go far wrong with a shirt, blazer and smart shoes.
For video interviews: minimise the risk of technical disruptions where possible.
Make sure the chosen platform is downloaded/running on your computer, the meeting link works, and your internet is running smoothly (by doing a speed test) before the day.
For in-person interviews: plan your journey in advance.
Ensure you know where you are going, which route you are taking, and how long it’s going to take (allowing extra time for journey delays!)
Come prepared with printed documents.
Print anything you’d like to bring with you (including a copy of your CV) the day before.

…and that’s a wrap!

Above all else, the most important thing to remember is to try to stay as calm as possible. The more relaxed you are, the more confident and conversational you will come across, and the more of your personality the interviewer will see. Often we put so much pressure on ourselves that our nerves get the better of us, particularly if it’s a job we really want.

Remember, you don’t have to perform perfectly in an interview in order to ace it / for them to love you. Take a deep breath and remind yourself… it’s just a job. The worst that can happen is you don’t get it, in which case there will be plenty of others. Often the jobs we don’t get weren’t right for us in the first place, and what feels like a huge setback at the time leads to us landing a fantastic opportunity that’s an even better fit.

Good luck!

Why not start your job search with Next Ventures or submit your CV and ask to speak to one of our consultants?

The post Preparing for an Interview appeared first on Next Ventures.

Northern Office Opens

tony — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 13:50:30 +0000

Next Ventures in Manchester

Due to continued year-on-year growth, we are delighted to announce the opening of our new office in the thriving digital tech capital of the North: Manchester! Our new office will be based in Spinningfields, Manchester’s financial centre, and will create new opportunities for ambitious recruiters in the local area and beyond. This development will be a catalyst for further growth, and it’s a step Next Ventures are very excited to take!

Why Manchester?

Manchester is a Northern powerhouse brimming with hungry sales talent. Mancunians have a natural flair for business – their signature charm and friendly nature is synonymous with the North, and lends itself well to people-focused roles.

The local community can also be characterised by their strong work ethic – the signature working bee (an iconic mascot that can be found in illustrations and statues throughout the city) symbolises the admirable working values that define the city’s culture. We can’t wait to tap into both experienced and trainee recruiter talent in the north, learn how their way of working differs from the south, and deliver incredible candidates for our clients while continuing to drive impressive financial growth for Next Ventures.

Lots to offer

Manchester itself also has a wealth to offer in terms lifestyle; from the iconic local culture, to the buzzing nightlife and the lucrative pool of career opportunities (to name a few!). Dubbed a “small London”, this thriving city has all the amenities you would expect from a major metropolis, but with a slightly more boutique feel and a significantly more affordable cost of living. It’s no wonder, then, that it has been voted one of the best cities in the UK to live (topped only by London)!

Northern Digital Hub

Manchester is also an iconic hub of digital innovation. Not only is it the leading city for technology in the UK, it has broader ambitions to become a top 5 digital city and global influencer across Europe!

It has a £5 billion digital ecosystem, a thriving community of more than 10,000 digital and tech businesses (from start-ups and SMEs to global brands including Google, Microsoft, IBM and Cisco – as well as number of homegrown unicorns that IPO above $1 billion!), AND is home to the fastest growing tech hub in Europe! Needless to say; when it comes to innovation and opportunity in the technology sector, you needn’t look much further than this groundbreaking city.

Consistent Source of Fresh Digital Talent

Innovation in the technology area is complemented by the five leading universities that Manchester houses, making way for a steady supply of qualified young STEM candidates who are rich in specialist talent and skills, and hungry for their first opportunities.

These universities have a proven track record for collaborating with industry on groundbreaking research and development, as well as one of the highest graduate retention rates in the country (with 51.5% of students loving Manchester so much they opt to remain in the city after finishing their studies)!

Why Now?

This expansion comes at a time of great success and growth for Next Ventures. After a universally challenging year with the economic impact of the pandemic, we have come back stronger than ever, and are now thriving like never before.

We have grown from a £52M turnover in 2020, to £86M in 2021, and are thrilled to announce we are on target to exceed £112M this year. Our ambitious plans to build on this rate of growth gives us the impetus to expand our horizons and venture into new territories.

What’s Next?

Of course, we will need a new set of ambitious, success-driven experienced recruiters to join us in this exciting next chapter. Our market leading rewards, commission and incentives packages will help build a senior recruitment team able to drive the expansion of the business by developing the best trainee recruiters Manchester has to offer, to train up to consultant level internally.

Are You Up for the Challenge?

Contact our Talent Acquisition Manager, Holly King, confidentially to find out what we can offer you: 0750 0803014 / Holly.King@next-ventures.com

Visit our Work for Us page to find out more.

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Women in Technology, Verve Interview

tony — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 22:07:30 +0000

Getting Women in Tech

Something we have identified as a leading tech recruitment agency is the lack of, and subsequent desire for, female talent within senior teams of technology companies. Working alongside Accenture, PWC and other global brands – we have been able to advise and support innovative solutions and initiatives to drive women in tech including our own.

Change is Needed

What Next Ventures have acknowledged through our work as enterprise technology recruiters is that, while the opportunities available to women in the tech sector (and the desire to attract them) are abundant, the number of women going up for these roles is sparse. See also our Women in the Technology Industry report from last year.

It is therefore clear that in order for the gender ratio in male-dominated industries to shift, companies need to step up and consciously implement change to obtain and retain more female talent.

Helping to Close the Gender Gap in Technology – Verve

It was a real pleasure to sit down and discuss this very issue with Kelly Rained and Yasemin Karakurt; two inspirational women who, alongside their full-time jobs, have founded Verve – an organisation set up to support, coach and teach women how to leverage their skills to get into and become successful in the tech industry.

While neither Kelly nor Yas began their career in technology, their journey into the industry has been a great success, with both women already achieving so much in their respective roles – from working with amazing clients and projects to leading teams and earning numerous awards and certificates. Kelly and Yas now use their own experience to help aspiring professional women in the tech industry to “channel their verve” to achieve their goals by providing career advice through their blog, and offering coaching and consulting services to their community.

Their goal is simple and admirable: “to close the gender gap in the tech industry by helping women to land the career of their dreams, overcome hurdles in their way and achieve success in their lives”.

Our Conversation with Verve

In the conversation below we discuss some of the potential reasons, there is such a significant lack of females in the tech industry, and what companies and leaders can be doing to combat this issue. Kelly and Yas also kindly share their advice to young women considering a career in the technology industry – based on their own experience as professionals in their respective roles, and as women working in a male-dominated industry.

If you’d like to learn more about the services Verve offer or book a consultation with them, you can visit their website here: Verve

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Great Job for Graduates with Sales Talent

tony — Sun, 03 Apr 2022 15:59:28 +0000

Are You Looking for a Job with Real Prospects

Here’s an opportunity for graduates to start a career with amazing prospects regardless of the degree course they have studied. If you have great interpersonal and communication skills and are tenacious, confident with a goal orientated approach, this is for you.

The Rewards are Many

Work hard, play hard is the mantra of Next Ventures – and for graduates seeking an interesting, challenging career, the possibilities are endless. Finding the right people for the right job requires a very special type of person, especially when it comes to technology sectors like enterprise IT, but it is definitely rewarding in every way.

Knowledge of the technology and recruitment industries are not essential for trainee recruitment consultants although awareness of business, marketing, finance, economics, communications and computer science are useful. The most important attributes are a confident personality and an aptitude for sales.

On Job Paid Training Programme

Experience and skills can be easily obtained by joining the Next Step Academy. These on job training programmes are held periodically throughout the year, the next course starts in April. A mix of classroom, on desk and shadowing super star consultants ensures new entrants are ready to work with clients within four weeks.

It doesn’t stop there – training is on going, ensuring that you are constantly improving and developing your business and consultancy skills in order to ultimately to become a true expert in your niche market segment.

Work Benefits and Incentives

The rewards are considerable since a salary is paid from day one of joining the Next Step Academy. There are lots of benefits too. Most consultants will be working in the London office, although there may be opportunities to work in Amsterdam.

Hitting sales targets can result in significant incentive rewards such as all expenses paid trips overseas quarterly and an annual trips, monthly lunch clubs at top London restaurants and a £400 voucher for every new client gained.

Generous awards such as luxury watches, jewellery and vouchers are given at annual event in recognition of achievements, while the salesperson of the month gets a £150 voucher.

Long serving employees also benefit from a progressive sabbatical scheme granting one, two or up to three months leave to qualifiers. Find out more about working at Next Ventures.

IT Recruitment Industry Experts

With over 20 years experience in the industry, Next Ventures are experts in Tech recruitment. An independent business, the directors work alongside the consultants on the sales floor and there are plenty of fun social events to help relax at the end of a busy week.

Success is not measured purely on KPI’s but instead on personal and team achievements. Consultants at Next Ventures are the best in the business, working with top companies and top personnel to match up vacancies with the most expert people in the sector.

A Graduate Career with Prospects

Working in IT recruitment is a great option for graduates who want to develop a career with long term potential for business and personal development together with financial rewards. For a confident, outgoing, determined, motivated graduate with a can-do attitude to life, the recruitment industry is a perfect career choice.

Next Ventures appreciates hard work and believes strongly in rewarding success. Hit targets and the sky is truly the limit. You will never be held back, you will grow your career as fast and as far as your skills and determination lead you.

Do YouWant to Know More?

Visit the Join Us page for more about working at Next Ventures or discover more about the role of trainee recruitment consultant here with testimonials from previous Next Step graduates. Or you can apply now for the the next available Academy place >> APPLY NOW

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Demand for Agility is Accelerating Cloud Transformation

tony — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 14:56:42 +0000

The surge in Digital Transformation

The pandemic has changed the way we work. COVID-19 forced almost all enterprises to radically change how they engage with clients, suppliers and their employees in order to maintain their business activity and productivity. This has added further impetus to the migration of data from on premise to the cloud. Reportedly more than 70% of organisations have active migration plans.

Adoption Accelerated by Four Years

The McKinsey Global Survey last year reports that companies have accelerated digitisation of interaction with clients, supply chain and internally by four years. Furthermore, the adoption of digitally enabled products in their portfolios by a staggering seven years.

McKinsey & Company How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point—and transformed business forever

Remote & Hybrid Working

The pandemic has most certainly led to the rapid increase in remote working and the migration towards hybrid working models which businesses have been forced to implement. Going to the office has for periods not been possible but this is no longer the only way to get things done. Both employers and employees have met the challenges of lockdown and COVID by transforming the way they work.

New Technology Stack

Efficient hybrid working requires a new tech stack, more than three quarters of organisations have accelerated cloud migration due to the pandemic and hybrid working. Remote workers and co-located teams are utilising collaboration and productivity tools widely. Cyber security needs to rise to meet the greater challenges of securing off premises users while still maintaining security compliance.

Operations and Cloud Security

Despite fears to the contrary, the success of this shift surprised many. Bitglass, who specialise in ‘Total Cloud Security’ released a 2021 Remote Workforce Security Report following a survey of IT and security professionals. They asked how remote working transformation impacted their operations and security challenges.

Their findings indicate that 57% of organisations still operate with three quarters of their teams remote and the huge majority of respondents, 90% are planning to continue with remote or hybrid working for the foreseeable future.

Source: PwC US Remote Work Survey

Q: How do you plan to change investment levels, if at all, in the following areas?

Fully Remote Working May Not be for Everyone

Remote working may be the answer for some but by no means everyone wants to give up the office. Salesforce research suggests 64% of employees would prefer to spend part of their time in the office environment. This is reinforced by PwC research that asked executives their position, only 13% were ready to go remote permanently.

Cloud & Infrastructure will Facilitate the Transformation

However, a hybrid working future will bring many challenges, both human and of technologies. This remote working model needs more than a desktop in the office, a laptop at home, and an internet connection in between to function efficiently.

Next Ventures Cloud Contractors Data

Next Ventures’ own data clearly indicates that 2021 is breaking records in demand for implementation consultancy and technology staffing across all areas of cloud, infrastructure and cybersecurity. Our teams are supporting an ever increasing number of cloud transformation projects for our extensive list of global clients. We are increasingly finding that Work from Anywhere or hybrid working is a feature for the vast majority of Cloud roles we are currently resourcing.

“The percentage of NV contract workforce currently working remotely on Cloud Transformation projects is now in the region of 90% (as of Oct 2021). This compares to circa 20% pre-Covid. The demand from our clients for Cloud resources has also grown dramatically as enterprise businesses look to move completely off-premise and remove barriers and accessibility that would otherwise exist due to geographical location. This in addition to the other obvious benefits around cost, scalability, continuity, automation, integration and security has meant demand globally has increased exponentially.”

Stephen Martin, Director

It remains to be seen whether the levels of remote working that have been forced by necessity remain for the long haul or there is another resetting of practise.

For more information on how Next Ventures can support your Cloud Transformation projects, or to find your next cloud technology role, either remote or hybrid, please visit our Cloud & Infrastructure Practice page.

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Surprise Thames Boat Party

tony — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 14:41:06 +0000

On the very sunny afternoon of Thursday, the 22 July Next Venture gave the whole team an unexpected reward, a surprise Hawaiian themed boat party on the Thames.

This event was organised to recognise the extraordinary achievements made in this challenging year by the entire office.

The theme couldn’t have been more appropriate as it turned out to be very hot and sunny, ideal for colourful Hawaiian attire. And on the subject attire, a special mention shoud be made for Jak who picked up the boy’s Best Effort Award for his tropical banana design matching shorts and shirt combo!

Holli collected the girl’s Best Effort Award and very deservedly so as she’d managed to make all the arrangements for the day in complete secrecy.

Thanks, everyone for all the hard work in the first half of this year and in Richard’s words;

” Incredible team! Thanks for the unbelievable achievement in H1, 2021″

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New Office in Bangalore, India

tony — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 14:59:24 +0000

Next Ventures opens our India office in the global technology hub, Bangalore (Bengaluru).

Compliant Global Support to Our Partners

This expansion further extends Next Venture’s ability to offer the highest standards of delivery to our international technology partners, enabling compliant and local talent resources.

Bangalore is known as India’s ‘Silicon Valley’ and is home to leading information technology organisations such as Infosys, Wipro, Mindtree and many others.

This rapidly growing, vibrant IT capital of India was an obvious choice for our expansion.

For more information about our Indian office or our services please contact us here

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Gift of Hope Golf Day

tony — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 15:30:07 +0000

Next Ventures supported this fundraising day of golf on the beautiful Moor Park course in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire on Tuesday 22nd June 2021. It was organised to help raise money for Gift of Hope Trust and their educational building projects in India. Please check the Gift of Hope link below to find out more.

Fund Raising Golf Day at Moor Park Rickmansworth

Nick Savage pulled together our Next Ventures team recruiting Richard Lacey, Stephen Martin and our secret weapon, ex professional golfer Ben Jones.

Concerns about the weather were unfounded with the golfing gods smiling on us and providing perfect golfing weather. It was evident from the first tee shots that we were in for a sporting treat and scoring would be low. By the half-way house, we could see those who were enjoying their game and those less so by the number of beverages ordered.

The nearest the pin competition was tricky, with only 4 out of 24 shots hitting the green, beers at half time may not have helped. The longest drive was a different matter with an array of gargantuan shots including by our very own Richard Lacey, however team NV were more focused on the main prize.

Ben 2nd Place Overall Prize

The contest for overall winner was tight till the last with 2 players scoring 24 and 26 on the back nine alone, scorching golf. Ultimately we narrowly missed the 1st place prize which went to Kush Thakrar but our own Ben Jones put in a scorching performance to collect the 2nd place prize.

The 3rd place prize was won by Sunil Patel, who also collected the Longest Drive title. Ian Oakes won the Nearest to the Pin prize. Congratulations to all the winners.

£5,417 Raised for Gift of Hope Projects

The day was a great success raising £5,417 that will go towards Gift of Hope Trust’s education projects in India.

We’d like to thank Gift of Hope and all involved in the organisation of this event for inviting Next Ventures and for the amazing work they are doing.

Gift of Hope Trust is a registered UK Charity: 1081796 you can find out more by visiting www.gohtrust.com

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Paul Isaacs Joins NV

tony — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 15:31:21 +0000

Paul Isaacs Joins Next Ventures

Next ventures are pleased to announce the appointment of Paul Isaacs who joins as a Sales Director for Next Venture’s permanent recruitment team.

Paul is an experienced recruitment leader, who brings a strong track record of sourcing niche IT talent into positions across a diverse range of clients internationally (UK, Europe and the Middle East). Paul is incredibly well qualified with twenty years of hands-on leadership experience, working for recruitment giants such as Modis (the Adecco Group) as well a specialist niche IT agencies, including building his own business up to 30 fee earning consultants.

When asked why he joined NV, Isaacs had the following to say.

“I started to work for NV on a freelance basis in April 2019 to support them with desk coaching and general training. Over the past 2 years I got to know the business well, and have first-hand seen the growth of the business, and the ambitions they have to continue their growth into a £100m business. When the business approached me to take on the role of Permanent Sales Director, it was an easy decision for me to accept as I knew the team, and I felt instant excitement at being a part of the journey and becoming part of the NV Senior Management Team.”

Next Ventures Co-Founder, Darren Rosenfeld commented:

“Both my business partner and I have personally known Paul for over 25 years as we all worked together in a previous company. Paul has always had great energy, an engaging personality, and a real drive, which both colleagues and clients instantly connect with. When the opportunity came up to work with Paul again, we knew he’d be a great fit, and we are delighted he is now a permanent member of the NV team.”

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Are Your Technology Skills Too Niche? Think Again!

tony — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 13:09:01 +0000

It’s now widely accepted among recruitment professionals that skills are the new currency, and as the digital sector grows, niche technology skills are the most valuable and stable currency of all.

So if you think your technology skills are too niche, think again!

“It’s easier to stand out from the job seeking crowd when you have a unique combination of skills, experience or attributes”

Guardian

Five years ago, many of the technology jobs we are now recruiting for didn’t exist. New types of work and new technological functions mean that new positions, in new fields, and new niche large enterprise technologies are arising all of the time. The call for specialist skills to fill them is louder than ever!

So Which ‘Niche’ Skills Are in Demand in 2021?

The UK, Europe and around the world there is a shortfall in digital skills, and large organisations are competing to secure the rare talent with the niche skills that they need.

Global Knowledge produced a 2020 IT Skills and Salary Report with data from 9,000 IT professionals about which niche IT areas were in most demand. The data shows the following to be the top ten most sought after skills;

Cybersecurity
Cloud computing
Data analytics and data science
Networking and wireless
Software development
AI and machine learning
Project management
Programming
IT service management
Virtualization

Cyber Security

At the top of the list, Cyber Security is clearly a priority for all organisations. Worldwide more than 50% of technology leaders will be increasing investment in cybersecurity, this has already been the case for the last five years running.

“As the amount, frequency, and creativity of cybersecurity breaches grow, so does the shortage of cybersecurity professionals with the appropriate skills to defend the enterprise, government and military networks,”

Brad Puckett, Global Knowledge

Cloud Computing

Cloud is inescapable illustrated by the advance of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud services. It is truly changing the game with cloud adoption and migration now the second highest area of IT investment. Cloud skills will certainly remain in high demand and notably, they cross over with every other skill on our list.

According to IDC, Cloud Adoption and Opportunities Will Continue to Expand Leading to a $1 Trillion Market in 2024.

Data analytics and data science

Managing data will not go away and the importance of its analysis means data scientists and analysts are much in demand. Their understanding is vital to making the informed decisions and gaining value from the data being mined and captured. It is predicted that by 2025 we will be processing 10 x the volume of data from 2016, this equates to 163 zettabytes (ZB).

Networking and wireless

Cisco, a leader in wireless and networking technology predicts that the number of network connected devices will be three times more than the global population by 2023. No doubt network engineers and network administrators will be required in increasing numbers to manage this expansion.

Software development

Development, whether front-end development or back-end, is currently growing faster than most other IT skills required, this is not expected to change in the short term. It is anticipated that software development growth will be 21% by 2028 with applications developer demand increasing by 28%.

The area of mobile app development is still cited as an area of skill lacking in many organisations so so being certified in this area will be valuable.

AI and machine learning

Big data and the ever increasing volume of data processing required for data-driven decision making will in turn drive the adoption and development of artificial intelligence (AI). Patterns, trends and valuable information can be quickly identified by AI and machine learning which could never be achieved by traditional methods.

Predictions by IDC again suggest that whilst the AI market may have been impacted by the pandemic, double digit growth will be maintained and AI will recover with enterprise demand for productivity and resilience.

Project management

There are many obstacles and challenges to overcome before IT projects can be successfully implemented. Project managers have to create a project strategy as well as communicate it and push it through to completion. In fact, communication and change management can be considered among the most valuable niche skills.

It is proposed by IDC that by 2022 the global impact of the skills gap in IT will rise to £600 billion from a figure of £230 billion in 2019 due to delays in releases and escalating costs. Focused and agile change and project management is required to mitigate these expenses.

Programming

There may be an expected decline in computer programming per se but coding will see a significant increase over the coming years. Python, JavaScript and C# as well as coding for mobile apps will see demand for programmers increase.

With organistions becoming ever more reliant on data and online services requirements for programmers will certainly continue to rise.

IT service management

The management of IT services plays an important role in all organisations’ ability to meet their business objectives. Recent challenges of disjointed and remote workforces and rapid transitions to online services have relied heavily upon managing the associated technology solutions.

Best practice in managing the vast range of digital toolsets is crucial, such as DevOps, SIAM, Site Reliability Engineering, Cloud, Serverless Computing, Software-Defined Networking, AI, the list goes on.

Virtualisation

By helping to reduce IT costs and improve IT agility, virtualisation will attract wide interest from companies of all sizes. It has been ranked eighth highest tech interest worldwide and strong demand is being seen for VMware Certified Professionals, Data Centre Professionals and Citrix Certified Professional.

Find your next niche role

Think your technology skills are too niche? Well, think again. We specialise in niche technology recruitment for the large enterprise sectors. Is this you? Talk to us about what ‘niche’ skills you can offer your next opportunity today or start your technology job search here.

Your niche technology skills are your currency, submit your CV here. Now is the time to cash them in!

Are you looking for niche technology talent? Talk to us about the candidates we currently have in our network.

The post Are Your Technology Skills Too Niche? Think Again! appeared first on Next Ventures.

Next Step Academy 2021

tony — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 17:35:18 +0000

Our Academy for trainee technology recruiters is back and better than ever. What’s more, we have already confirmed two programmes for ten trainee places on each. The first will commence on Tuesday 4th May and a number of applicants have already been shortlisted. However, it’s not too late to send your application in for our May Next Step Academy programme but don’t delay.

Twenty Academy Places for 2021

More great news! We can also announce a second programme to begin Monday 27th September, so you have two opportunities to get the best possible start in a truly rewarding career. There are ten places available for each programme.

Who is the Next Step Academy for?

The Next Ventures Academy is a carefully developed, on-job learning programme for trainees, new to recruitment or graduates out of university. It takes place at our London Headquarters, 140 Aldersgate Street, EC1A 4HY. Neither a technology background or a degree are mandatory, what you do need is the ability to learn and a passion to succeed in a sales environment.
Past successful candidates of the Next Step Academy have come with various previous experience such as from the hospitality, car sales, property sales or a university degree. Some time spent in a business development or sales role may well give you a head start but drive and ambition are key.

How does it work?

Your introduction begins with a week resourcing, where you will learn the skills you need to approach candidates and build your confidence. You can expect to get off to a flying start with classroom and team-based training. You will be supported closely by your trainer throughout.

Within the first month, you will join a selected team, this will be based on technology interests and learning style. You will refine your skills with help and support at each step.

With a month of experience on your own desk within a team, you may move towards candidate and client relationship management.
After assessment and meeting targets, you will begin the development of your own clients, with ongoing support all the way. No one holds you back, if you show you have what it takes, progress is accelerated to move you on a rapidly as possible.

A word from one of our previous Academy graduates.

Next Ventures was for me the one and only. I had set my sights on this company after being introduced by a former alumni from University (that I’m now happy to call a colleague).

It was always going to be a challenge, relocating from another country to join a company and my start wasn’t without its difficulties. I remember, despite having made the journey before, I managed to get lost on my first day.

This didn’t matter and Holli the office manager made me feel very at ease so that I could still join the training. This is the way at Next Ventures, understanding, inclusion and above all else – bringing the best out of someone.

Training, support and guidance are essential to development and that is something Next Ventures provides in abundance. It is a challenging environment where your hard work will be recognised and rewarded. If you have the power to self-motivate and be the driver of your success – then Next Ventures will give you the vehicle to achieve that. Hope to see you on the team soon!

Mike Powell, SAP Recruitment Consultant

Why choose a career in technology recruitment?

Technology and more specifically enterprise technology is a growth industry. All business organisations are under continuous pressure to adopt and transform using the latest applications and infrastructure. Nearly all large corporations project increasing budgets on technology.

Finding the talent to successfully implement these technology projects is a major challenge and is why clients rely on trusted recruitment partners like Next Ventures to fill these roles. By delivering carefully qualified candidates a successful recruiter can expect a highly rewarding career with excellent prospects to look forward to. You also get to build long standing relationships with clients and the satisfaction of helping candidates find their ideal jobs or careers.

What you can expect in return.

First year on target earnings of £35-£45k are realistic with some exceeding this and six-figure salaries in 2-3 years being perfectly achievable. Our very generous commission of up to 35% uncapped is about the best in the industry but it doesn’t stop there.

Next Ventures value and reward hard work and our numerous incentives include all expenses paid quarterly Club Trips abroad, an annual Club Trip as well as monthly Lunch Club meals and many other prizes for achieving targets.

Visit our Next Step Academy page.

Or our Work for Us page, we are recruiting at all levels.

Why not take the Next Step?

The post Next Step Academy 2021 appeared first on Next Ventures.

SAP Learning & Certification Hub

tony — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 15:05:29 +0000

In Partnership with Next Ventures

Our partnership with UKISUG enables us to offer additional savings on their limited Learning and Certification offer.

Through UKISUG Membership, SAP Learning Hub and SAP Certification Hub, you’ll be able to keep your skills up to date over the next 12 months and become certified in areas critical to you. We felt that this could be of interest to independent contractors given the constantly evolving nature of SAP’s landscape.

SAP Learning Hub

SAP’s most comprehensive learning offering on the market and contains over 5,000 courses, allowing you to find all the SAP training and SAP Certification you’ll need in one place. You’ll have all the content available to get you ready for your certification exams. A 12-month licence typically costs £2,400.

SAP Certification Hub

Once you’re ready, you can schedule up to 6 SAP Certification exam bookings over your subscription period. A 12-month licence typically costs £434.

Costs & Savings

Full Price Learning & Certification Hubs: £2,834

UKISUG offer for both Hubs PLUS UKISUG membership: £1,670

Save an additional £50 via Next Ventures

This offer is only valid until 7^th July 2021. All prices exclude VAT. Licences to be delivered by 1^st August.

Conditions apply so contact UKISUG for full information.

SAP Career Opportunities

Looking for your next SAP role? Start your search HERE for SAP jobs.

Find Out More

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Most Common 20 Cyber Security Interview Questions to Help You Succeed at Interview

tony — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 20:16:00 +0000

In the modern world where data is gold, threats are ever increasing that could compromise or damage the data that we own. Cyber security aims at protecting the cyber space from threats that could jeopardise our infrastructures and cause business impact. As more companies are using information technology to bolster their businesses, security professionals are in high demand. If you are looking to succeed in this arena, the following guidance on the most common Cyber Security interview questions you may face will help you.

According to Frost and Sullivan’s latest Global Workforce Survey shortage of security professionals in 2020 is 1.5 million. According to this report by Kaspersky drastic measures are required to fill the cyber security skills gap.

Kaspersky Cyberskills Report

Growth in Demand

Burning Glass found the number of cyber security jobs posted have increased by 94% in the past six years. The number of general IT jobs by comparison have only increased by 30%. Demand for cyber security talent has grown at three times the rate of the overall IT job market accounting for 13% of all information technology jobs advertised.

It may be helpful for you to know the cyber security questions they may ask at an interview.

Search Next Ventures Cyber Security jobs

If you are looking for a new role in cybersecurity, or moving to this field, then the following common cyber security interview questions and guidance will help you secure your next career move.

These questions will help you regardless of the position and role you are applying for.

Our guidance is perfect if you’re looking for interview questions as a SOC Analyst, or if you’re looking for interview questions as a Cyber Security Consultant, and every position in between.

Question 1. What’s the difference between symmetric and public-key cryptography?

Job Positions

GRC Consultant, SOC Analyst, Cloud Security Architect, Data Protection Officer

Guidance

You should have an understanding of cryptography to explain this concept. Your concepts about the different cryptographic algorithms such as AES, DES, RSA & ECC should be clear. Take your time in learning the advantages and disadvantages of each type, as these could form the follow-up questions.

Question 2. In public-key cryptography, you have a public and a private key, and you often perform both encryption and signing functions. Which key is used for which function?

Job Positions

Penetration Tester, Data Protection Officer, Security Program Manager, PKI Consultant, Network Security Engineer, IT Auditor

Guidance

Understanding the difference between symmetric and asymmetric cryptography is critical for anyone working in the cyber security field.

Public key cryptography becoming more complex offers more challenges. Grasp the concepts of different kind of keys as this is the key to your next dream job.

Question 3. What’s the difference between encoding, encryption, and hashing?

Job Positions

Security Program Manager, Backup Expert, Security Analyst, Security Engineer

Guidance

The application of various security concepts in real world scenarios can really help you ace the interview.

Topics that explain CIA triad forms the basis of your knowledge in Cyber Security.

Question 4. What are your favourite security assessment tools? And Why?

Job Positions

Penetration Tester, SOC Analyst, Cloud Security Architect, Network Security Engineer, Application Security Expert

Guidance

In cyber security, there are a plethora of tools for various purposes. This question will judge your expertise to use the tool depending on the scenario. It also ensures that you are not dependent on tools to get the job done.

Question 5. What are the various ways to handle account brute forcing?

Job Positions

SOC Analyst, Application Security Expert, Network Security Engineer, Senior Consultant Cyber Security, Penetration Tester

Guidance

A very simple question that will show your understanding of account management and passwords. A key concept of authentication, make sure to have a comprehensive understanding of password security.

Question 6. What is Cross-Site Request Forgery?

Job Positions

Penetration Tester, SOC Analyst, Cloud Security Architect, Data Protection Officer, Web Security Expert, Application Security Engineer.

Guidance

CSRF is mostly concerned with securing web applications and is one of the top threats.

Take your time to understand the top threats to web applications and which controls to use. OWASP top 10 can be a good starting point.

Question 7. What is the difference between stored and reflected XSS?

Job Positions

Penetration Tester, SOC Analyst, Cloud Security Architect, Security Consultant, Web Security Expert, Application Security Engineer

Guidance

A technical question that is mostly asked of professionals who are ethical hackers and can exploit XSS vulnerabilities.

It is highly recommended to understand the why and how of threats to be confident about common cyber security issues.

Question 8. What’s the difference between a threat, vulnerability, and a risk?

Job Positions

GRC Consultant, SOC Analyst, Cloud Security Architect, Information Security Officer, Risk Analyst, Cyber Security Risk Manager

Guidance

Try to answer this question by linking the concepts of threat, vulnerabilities and how it combines to create risks for assets.

While answering, don’t just rely on definitions.

Question 9. What is salting, and why is it used?

Job Positions

GRC Consultant, Risk Analyst, Cyber Security Risk Manager, Cloud Security Architect, Data Protection Officer, Database Security Expert

Guidance

Salting is used in hashing to store passwords.

Whether you are an experienced professional or entering the realm of cyber security, make sure to have an idea about password protection mechanisms.

Question 10. Please provide one challenge you encounter while implementing controls for people, process and technology?

Job Positions

GRC Consultant, Senior Consultant Cyber Security, Cloud Security Architect, Data Protection Officer, Information Security Program Manager.

Guidance

Before going for an interview always create such scenarios that could elaborate your problem solving and analytical skills. This question is often asked for consultancy jobs including big4 firms.

Question 11. What are some of the best practices to secure servers?

Job Positions

System Security Specialist, SOC Analyst, Windows Security Expert, Information Security Consultant, Penetration Tester

Guidance

Try to answer this question starting from high risk areas, such as no antivirus, weak access control, shared passwords etc.

Question 12. How cybersecurity is different in Cloud as compared to on-premises?

Job Positions

GRC Consultant, SOC Analyst, Cloud Security Architect, Data Protection Officer, Information Security Director, Data Privacy Officer

Guidance

As more companies are shifting to Cloud, the security concerns are also materialising.

It’s important as a security professional that you understand the scope of risks and threats that target the data in the cloud.

Question 13. What are some of the risks introduced by a remote working environment?

Job Positions

GRC Consultant, SOC Analyst, Cloud Security Architect, Data Protection Officer, IAM Consultant

Guidance

In the post COVID-19 era, remote working is a norm. The risks introduced by the remote working environment are unique and must be understood in detail.

Security professionals must have the knowledge to secure the future.

Question 14. What type of control is audit logging?

Job Positions

Information Security Auditor, SOC Analyst, Cloud Security Architect, Data Protection Officer, SIEM Specialist, SPLUNK expert.

Guidance

Audit logging is a detective control that can be used to monitor various kinds of activities.

Advantages of audit logging and how to use them effectively for enhancing organisation resilience must be part of your knowledge base.

Question 15. What is SIEM?

Job Positions

GRC Consultant, SOC Analyst, Cloud Security Architect, Security Analyst, SOC Manager

Guidance

Security Incident and Event Management solutions are an essential part of cybersecurity posture.

This is the starter question but your answer will reflect the depth of your knowledge.

Question 16. How can we protect ourselves from ransomware attacks?

Job Positions

Senior Security Consultant, VAPT Expert, SOC Analyst, Cloud Security Architect, Data Protection Officer

Guidance

Ransomware attacks are the most lethal attacks in terms of finances. Organisations continue to suffer in 2020 with growing ransomware threats.

Understanding various types of ransomware and knowledge of the latest ransomware is critical for an outstanding performance in interviews.

Question 17. What is pivoting in cybersecurity?

Job Positions

Penetration Tester, SOC Analyst, Information Security Architect, Data Protection Officer, Cyber Security Consultant, Threat Intelligence Analyst

Guidance

As a defender of cyberspace, you should have an idea about the actions of threat vectors and how hackers gradually take over the infrastructures.

Threat hunting and threat intelligence is an interesting topic and you should have an idea about common terms. MITRE ATTACK framework can provide excellent guidance.

Question 18. What is the difference between segregation of duties and least privilege?

Job Positions

Security Consultant, Information Security Project manager, IAM Consultant, Data Protection Analyst

Guidance

Understanding cybersecurity controls for people is very important.

SoD and least privilege form the basis of access management.

Question 19. How can you differentiate the results of vulnerability assessment and penetration testing reports?

Job Positions

Penetration tester, SOC Analyst, Senior Consultant Cyber Security, Chief Information Security Officer

Guidance

Objectives achieved by vulnerability assessment and penetration testing are different and unique.

If you are able to answer this question correctly, it will show your expertise in extracting useful results from VAPT.

Question 20. How you can protect data in the cloud?

Job Positions

Data Privacy Consultant, SOC Analyst, Cloud Security Architect, Data Protection Officer, CISO

Guidance

Cloud environment offers unique challenges to data protection and privacy. Limitations are also defined by regulations and cyber security standards.

Understanding the cloud landscape will benefit you and will make you ready for the huge future market of cloud security experts.

These questions should help you ace that interview, whether you need more prep on cloud security interview questions or threat intelligence interview questions.

To speak to a consultant about your next cyber security opportunity or to help resource cyber talent please visit our Cyber Security page.

earch Next Ventures Cyber Security jobs or Submit your CV here

The post Most Common 20 Cyber Security Interview Questions to Help You Succeed at Interview appeared first on Next Ventures.

Women in the Technology Industry

tony — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 12:44:06 +0000

The workplace is going through transformational changes for the better, with initiatives for the BAME community, equal pay and gender equality. This really is an exciting time and being in the recruitment industry, we get the opportunity to influence this directly for our clients.

Levelling the Ratio of Men to Women

In particular, we have seen a big surge in “Women in Technology” over the last couple of years. Companies have set out clear, strategic agendas to embed their commitment to levelling the ratio of men to women in the workplace. There are a few reasons as to why there is such a disparity, often stemming from traditional views of women in the workplace, the lack of support when balancing career vs family and women’s perception of themselves.

At this current time, women represent approximately 17% of those working in tech, with a large proportion working as System Designers and IT Business Analysts. It has however been documented, that women and gender diversity has not only social, but economic benefits, with executive teams being 21% more likely to have above-average profitability than those without, equating to approximately £2.6 billion each year. The proof is in the pudding!

Attracting Women to Technology

There are two fundamental areas that are being addressed; attracting women to tech and retaining women in tech, both of which require a separate collaboration of ideas. According to Forbes, women are 45% more likely to leave the tech field than their male counterpart. The graduate level has proven the most successful path for women entering the world of tech, which has been helped by increasing exposure to the industry whilst at school and university and removing the ‘geeky tech’ stereotype. Retaining women often lies with the support, empowerment, career paths and equal pay that is offered for longer term success.

The tides are turning and it is important to highlight that it is not about hiring a woman or promoting a woman because she is a woman. She needs to understand that she is the best person for the job and the infrastructure is in place to uphold, empower and thrive in what is no-longer a ‘male dominated’ environment.

Gender Challenge for Major Tech Companies

The technology giants such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google and Microsoft still have a long way to go to meet their gender equality goals as evidenced in this 2020 data.

Working to Support Our Clients on Diversity

Next Ventures work with a number of clients across all industries; from Financial Services, Not-For-Profit organisations and Global Consultancies, who have implemented initiatives to attract a more diverse workforce. For example:

Return to Work Programmes (from Maternity Leave) – Returnships were introduce to the UK in 2014, as a high-level internship that is professionally paid and can last up to six months. The purpose is to aid professionals who have taken a career break to get back in to senior positions, by boosting their confidence and building technical capabilities. This can be for a variety of reasons, but most commonly maternity leave. Approximately 37 companies offered this scheme last year in the UK, with 90% dominated by the female demographic. This can include phased/part time work, flexible working hours to coincide with childcare and tailored work policies.
Women in Leadership – Empowering women in the workplace and having designated tracks for women to get promoted has proven a really successful tool in retention. In some organisations, programmes are created to accelerate high potential women leaders in their organisation using seminars, training, employee resource groups to inspire and seamlessly integrate into senior level positions.
Gender-Neutral Recruitment Processes – Companies are needing to devise a more flexible recruiting structure that takes in to account women’s specific needs and aspirations. This can include the simple concept of gender-neutral language in job descriptions, which has resulted in deterring women candidates should it feel directed to men. It is important however, to ensure that anyone with hiring responsibilities is educated on gender bias and are able to distinguish between positive action and positive discrimination. In addition, the inclusion of women interviewers during the process can create a more relatable and supportive perception of the employer.

Meeting Gender Quotas

In the last few years we have seen strategic processes put in place to aid in the growth of the female workforce, with quotas. At Next Ventures, we have the perfect toolset which enables us to offer every possibility to a candidate and client, forming an innovative, empathetic and market-leading search. Thus, assisting technology teams to exceed their gender equality targets whether it be short term or incremental increases over a longer period of time. This can include but is not exclusive to:

Building self-awareness, focusing on unconscious bias and conscious inclusion
Actively sourcing and presenting quality diverse talent
Identifying and informing our clients of barriers to diverse talent in our processes

With the wheels in motion and the industry awakening to the value both as customers and employees, the opportunities are endless for both the individual woman but also the success of the organisation. If there are any prospective clients or candidates who would like to know more about how we can help, then please get in contact.

This article by Phoebe Gregory

For more information on Women in Technology and how Next Ventures can help deliver change contact Phoebe here:

Phoebe@next-ventures.com

The post Women in the Technology Industry appeared first on Next Ventures.

Has Your Data Been Exposed

tony — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 14:19:33 +0000

This most challenging and unprecedented year has brought many specific data security challenges to organisations and their Cyber Security teams, around the world. COVID and the sudden digital transformations needed to engage with customers, supply chains and remote working staff have severely stretched organisations cybersecurity resources. The sheer scale of the immediate pandemic challenge may be responsible in some cases for overlooking some data risks and leakages that predate or are unrelated to this current crisis.

One such example may be platforms like GitHub. Nightfall DLP, a data loss prevention platform recently published an article highlighting five significant examples of such GitHub oversights. There are lessons to be learned about protecting your code and security credentials.

1. Rogers Communication, Canada

Rogers Communications, a major Canadian telecom company recently discovered two open accounts on GitHub with source code, internal user names, keys and passwords. The data may have been outdated and may or may not have exposed customer information but never the less represented a very real risk.

2. Amazon Web Services

Early in the year, a DevOps Cloud Engineer working for AWS exposed a gigabyte of data to a GitHub repository. It was reported by Gizmodo that to the good fortune of Amazon Web Services this was quickly spotted by researchers at UpGuard who notified AWS. It was determined that confidential information and AWS and RSA key pairs were in the data which highlights the danger of an individual acting inadvertently or maliciously can pose.

3. Data Leakage From Dozens of Large Corps

In July 2020 a developer by the name of Tillie Kottmann was managing a repository of leaked code he had gathered from companies like Adobe, GE Appliances, Roblox, Motorola, Qualcomm, Nintendo plus many more. The data varied and in some case may have posed little or no threat but it indicates the scale of this potential problem, this incident reported by Bleeping Computer revealed data on 50 companies.

4. Hard-Coded Security Credentials

The summer of this year saw nine US healthcare organisations exposed for leaking the PHI (Protected Health Information) of up to 200,000 patients. Improper practices such as hard coding login credential within code were uncovered by a Dutch security researcher called Jelle Ursem it was reported by Nightfall.

5. Data of 16 Million COVID-19 Patients Revealed

Health information of 16 million Brazilians was revealed on GtHub when an employee of Albert Einstein Hospital in the city of Sao Paolo uploaded a spreadsheet containing passwords and credentials to two databases, E-SUS-VE and Sivep-Gripe containing the government COVID data including that of president Jair Bolsonaro. A GitHub user spotted this and reported it to Estado newspaper it was reported in ZDNet last month.

The Lessons to be Learned

There are important lessons for Cyber Security teams and leaders to be learned from these high profile GitHub leaks of 2020.

Firstly organisations need to know when code is outside their own environment. Employees may have perfectly good reasons but everyone needs to know and understand visibility in the activities and the security or authorisation procedure for the use of facilities like GitHub or other repositories.

Secondly bear in mind that even old or obsolete code can pose real cybersecurity threats by providing an attacker with useful information about architecture and languages of your systems. This information in the wrong hands could assist and make a successful malicious attack more probable.

Thirdly poor practices like hard coding credentials or other weak security practices need to be addressed and organisations implement and enforce higher standards across their teams. Tools like Nightfall can assist with scanning and giving visibility to commits for secrets and credentials and even offer GitHub specific tools.

Nightfall.ai for more information.

If you are looking for your next role in cybersecurity or looking to build or expand your corporate data security team please visit our Cyber Security recruitment page.

For more data security developments find out about the rise of confidential computing.

The post Has Your Data Been Exposed appeared first on Next Ventures.

2020 Office Awards

tony — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 12:36:57 +0000

2020 has certainly been a most challenging year but one in which the NV team have displayed determination to overcome every hurdle.

We’re proud to say that throughout this COVID crisis year, Next Ventures have not furloughed any staff, have continued to promote and continued to hire.

This wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the whole team.

Today’s awards ceremony was not our usual style but a socially distance celebration of some star performers and a few more lighthearted nominations too.

Thanks to you all. Let’s look forward to a better, healthy, happy and successful 2021.

The 2020 Award Winners Were:

Top Biller – Neil

Directors’ Recognition – Dilan

Rookie of the Year – Marco N

Employee of the Year – Staffini

Exemplary Attitude Award – Holli

The post 2020 Office Awards appeared first on Next Ventures.

How Cyber Security has evolved?

tony — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 15:37:22 +0000

Digital transformation has been rapid and changed the way we see the world. The digital revolution opened new doors to ease human life, transform the way we do business and facilitates the digitisation of our finances. Next Ventures has witnessed the pressure on Cyber Security to keep pace this rapid development and help organisations protect their systems with digital security professionals.

Before the Digital Revolution

Let’s recall the time when technology wasn’t so advance and an IT person had to manage fewer tasks and fewer devices. Talking about the resources which were located locally, in the vicinity of the area provided less privilege to cyber attackers. Thus, all an IT head had to do was to configure an efficient firewall and effective measures to protect the network.

New Cyber Threats

However, threats were still there, though limited in nature but their impact wasn’t as vicious as they are now. By creating a large hub of networking devices and the advancement of technology the threats can come from anywhere. For now, we can’t even take a smart bulb for granted since it can welcome attackers through its internet connectivity and used to launch a DDoS attack. These threats can lock our data in the form of ransomware, cause data breaches leading to the great loss of organisational data and compromise of personal data.

The Effect of Breaches

Such data breaches not only affect an organisational performance but cause severe damage to an organisation’s reputation. Therefore, technology professionals started to take action against cyberattacks to protect organisations and began to develop more complex protection controls which were more demanding in terms of resources.

New Technology

But now technology has been evolving exponentially leaving behind its antique architecture. Digitisation has taken over the world making all the impossible things possible in the area of technology. IoT, cloud, artificial intelligence, and machine learning has transformed the way device and people are connected. Thus creating new challenges in every aspect especially in the field of Cyber Security.

Earlier it was supposed that Cyber Security was only a way of protecting a device from malware. But now the mega number of devices connected on the internet can be used to launch attacks on confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of sensitive data.

With the passage of time and the advancement of technology, digital businesses such as online banking, e-commerce, healthcare technology, and social media are creating opportunities for cyber attackers. Thus, it becomes important for an organisation to critically deal with those threats.

Proactive Strategy

Advance cyber attacks require a proactive and comprehensive cyber resilience strategy, supported by professional Cyber Security people, process, and technology. Protection from cyber attacks is no more limited to firewalls or antivirus. Organisations that still rely on orthodox cybersecurity controls are at risk of severe business disruption and heavy financial losses. Therefore, along with these ways, it is necessary to formulate protection policies and principles making it difficult to access control by unauthorized persons.

Now it’s the time for an organisation to invest in its IT teams and professionals, provide the necessary training, polish their skills, develop smart monitoring solutions, and create a resilient layered protection mechanism. Only then it would be able to deal with the cyber attacks by early detection and take immediate actions against any suspicious activity, creating zero tolerance for data breaches.

Multilayer Security

Sophisticated attacks can be prevented by layered security controls. Security Operation Centres, Vendor Management, Data Protection, secure configurations, secure software development, vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, risk management, information security governance are some of the ever-increasing domains of cybersecurity.

Data protection regulations like GDPR, HIPAA and cybersecurity standards like NIST CSF, ISO 27001 are increasing the pressure on companies to attain compliance and follow best practices to retain customer trust. Cybersecurity is no more a static field but requires entire departments and senior management commitment to ensure cyber risks are mitigated before any harm is caused to the organisation.

Locating Experienced Professionals

Diversity in cybersecurity controls requires professionals who can govern, manage, and operate information security effectively. Certified professionals with experience are scarce and hard to find. Businesses are facing an acute shortage of professionals who can defend the cyber boundaries of organisations. Next Ventures can help organisations overcome the information security skill shortage challenge. Our business-centric approach helps find professionals who can prevent, detect, and respond to cyber-attacks.

Based on business requirements we provide access to permanent and contract based candidates. Our belief is that each appropriate cybersecurity position that we fill, makes cyberspace a little more secure and safer.

Please visit our Cyber Security page, email us at Security Team or call 0207 549 4040 to discuss your talent acquisition requirements or current Cyber Security job opportunities, our team of Cyber Security recruitment specialists are waiting to hear from you.

The post How Cyber Security has evolved? appeared first on Next Ventures.

G-Cloud 14 Framework for the Public Sector

tony — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 13:46:37 +0000

Government Digital Marketplace

Our cloud support services can now be found on the Government Digital Market Place, listed in the current G-Cloud 14 framework. Public Sector organisations can use the Crown Commercial Services portal to procure our cloud support services from a list of compliant suppliers.

G-Cloud Compliance and Standards

Public Sector buyers can use this framework to buy with the confidence that we have met the standards set by the Crown Commercial Services and complied with the framework agreement required to support their cloud technology implementations. Our CCS G-Cloud listed services cover a wide range of cloud technology, applications and infrastructure support consultancy for the public sector transformation projects.

Advantages of buying through G-Cloud 14

Buyers get competitive prices because suppliers can sell large volumes of their products and services to UK public sector organisations as though they were supplying a single customer.
CCS vets and reviews suppliers regularly. This saves you time finding suppliers and checking their reliability.
A large number of suppliers from multinational companies to small and medium-sized business (SMEs).
Contracts include performance management, obliging suppliers to improve value and service over time.
Contracts comply with public sector procurement regulations.
Standardised contract terms reduce administration.
Free to use for public sector organisations.

The framework is continually enhanced through customer feedback, to help facilitate transformation projects for the users.

Crown Commercial Service supports the public sector to achieve maximum commercial value when procuring common goods and services. In 2022/23, CCS helped the public sector to achieve commercial benefits equal to £3.8 billion – supporting world-class public services that offer the best value for taxpayers.

Our listed consultancy services are:

Oracle e-Business Suite & Fusion Cloud Implementation & Support
SAP Cloud Migration, Implementation Support and Consultancy
Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM Cloud Consultancy
Salesforce CRM Cloud Consultancy, Implementation & Support
Amazon Web Services Cloud Implementation & Support
Google Cloud Implementation & Support
Microsoft Azure Architecture Services
DevOps Cloud Engineering Services
Cloud Security Architecture and Design Services.

Public Sector buyers can find our service by visiting The Digital Marketplace

More information can be found on www.crowncommercial.gov.uk

The post G-Cloud 14 Framework for the Public Sector appeared first on Next Ventures.

Managing Change and Transformation

tony — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 10:29:27 +0000

Insights for Change Success

Next Ventures have been partnering countless businesses and organisations through transformational technology implementations for nearly 20 years. Today, more than ever, we are seeing a focus on transformational change and what this means to organisations, how will they ensure successful outcomes?

We have invited an authority on Change Management to give some insights on the process and discipline of Change and Transformation, Change Management, Change Agent Networks and much more.

Our guest Melanie Franklin is an author of numerous text books on Change and Transformation, is the Chief Examiner of the Agile Change Agents certification from APMG (Agile Project Management Group) and co-chair of the Change Management Institute in the UK and can claim 30 years of experience in Change and Transformation.

Full Interview Transcript

Welcome from Joe 0:02

Hi everyone, I’d like to welcome you to our very first episode of the change network podcast. And for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Joe Brown. I work for next ventures. We’re Technology and Transformation agency, I head up the Change and Transformation desk here. And so I’m actually very pleased to introduce Melanie Franklin has very kindly agreed to give us some very valuable time this morning to give some insight into why Change is relevant for every business, every leader so Mel, it’d be fantastic if you could just give us a bit of insight as to first of all, your background and what you’re doing now really, and then we can we can kick off.

Melanie Introduction 0:42

Well, I’ve been doing a Change and Transformation for about 30 years, I was heading up projects and programme management several of the investment banks. I started as a business analyst I became a project manager programme manager and that’s how I headed up the project and programme management function. And then I moved into Transformational Change because large scale programmes are actually sort of changing organisations.

So what I do now is I work alongside boards in various different organisations around the world and I am there to support them on their change journey. Part of that is about building up the capability for change that others have in the organisation. So it is all about up skilling them working out what it is we need them to know, trying to put some of that across in a very persuasive way. I’ve written a number of textbooks on change and transformation. I’m the chief examiner of the Agile Change Agents certification from APMG International. I’m co leading the Change Management Institute in the UK. And I also head up a couple of thought leadership panels around the world on the direction of change, change leadership, change building capabilities.

Response to COVID – Joe 1:54

Fantastic, you’re quite busy lady then but you know, it’s it’s Fantastic that we’ve, we’ve got you on this podcast for our first episode. And as I say, You’ve not only got that background in, you know, the hands on actual delivery of transformation projects, but you’ve also got the expertise from a thought leadership perspective, you’ve done, you know, both books, and you did Change Management Institute as well. We’re really, really grateful to have you on here. And I’m sure that both of our networks are going to find a lot of value from from listening to this today. So thank you.

The first question I had is that is one of the kind of key topics I’ve been speaking to leaders about at the moment, which is essentially that when lockdown first came about, businesses obviously got on hold lots and lots of different transformation programmes that they felt was, you know, they were going to struggle to deliver and, you know, in a remote working scenario, basically so it’s a position now where businesses have got this backlog of projects that deliver not only ones that have been on been put on hold, but also projects that they need to do now in response to COVID. And so, what kind of what kind of changes would you advise businesses to prioritise in a situation like this?

Help Make It Happen – Melanie 3:09

Well, I don’t advise them to prioritise anything, I am definitely going to be the one that helps them make that happen. But what I am seeing in terms of their prioritisation is streamlining, automation, simplification of processes. It’s all about the cost cutting that many organisations feel they need to do. But also a recognition that when they had to get out of their offices, and everybody has stopped working from home, it really was a sort of sharp reminder that perhaps we need to be a little bit slicker in the way that we do things and messing about with lots of bits of paper and having lots of data entry by our staff isn’t necessarily the cleverest way we can do things. So I think coming into September, after these, whatever summer break people are going to have, I think there is a real move towards a good tidy up.

There’s certainly been a move out of the office. Let’s try and get things done. And people have done tremendously well on that there’s been a great deal of productivity. But the restructuring that I think will go further isn’t just the automation. I think that will lead to to a revamp of the target operating model for some organisations, particularly having had the shock of, well, we’ve furloughed a number of staff, and actually we’re living without them, which I think is a big concern for those who’ve been furloughed. And the decision on who to return back to the office or in fact, returned back to the workspace. So I think a restructuring is likely to be a part of whatever happens coming up in the next couple of months.

What’s The Focus? – Joe 4:40

I suppose what you mentioned about kind of top tidying up there is quite important. I feel like a lot of businesses at the moment are really thinking about Okay, what what is actually adding value right now to our business, and then kind of taking out everything that doesn’t fall in that category. And so obviously, you’re suggesting that a lot of businesses at the moment are doing the streamlining of processes, the automation and do you think that that should be should be a focus for organisations today? kind of look at their processes and streamline it at the moment, or do you think, it depends on business?

Keep An Eye on Costs – Melanie 5:16

Well it definitely depends on the business. But I think if you look back at other recessions, so if we look back at 2008 to 2011, one of the discussions I had in a boardroom about eight weeks ago was exactly this point, which was that your customers might not be in a position to pay for excess amounts of things. So in terms of they won’t value for money, unless you streamline unless you get a grip on your own cost base, can you genuinely deliver that value for money?

That doesn’t say that customers don’t still want innovation? Because they do, but I think we have to recognise that perhaps. When it comes to recessionary times. It is about being slicker in terms of what you deliver, knowing what your costs are keeping an eye on eradicating those costs, so it’s almost like the lean mentality is going to drive I think a number of changes that are coming out.

Leading Transformation – Joe 6:15

So kind of following on from that, and I spoke to a CIO, just yesterday, actually, who mentioned that, you know, business leaders, especially in crisis, but often, you know, in more normal circumstances will adopt quite a rushed, quite a forceful approach to delivering transformation and kind of almost ignore the change management piece and equal piece. So would you say that that’s something that can work? And, and also, what would you say are the risks of doing something like that?

Crisis Driving Change – Melanie 6:44

Well I certainly understand where the CIO is coming from, because I think a number of senior executives have had this idea that while we made this change happen, we didn’t really manage it. We didn’t really plan it. It just happened overnight, and we’ve been successful. So we’re now brilliant at change. I think we’re forgetting the fundamental which is that there is a huge driver for the changes that took place around lockdown which everybody understood so if you like the urgency of the change was not in question so don’t confuse the two situations.

These changes around lockdown were driven by a very specific set of national or international circumstances, that everybody was getting played to them on the news every night, we have politicians who were doing daily briefings that created a sense of much wider social urgency to this. Now that isn’t the case, if you’ve decided that you’re going to change your target operating model, or that you’ve decided that you want to put in some kind of platform that’s going to streamline the amount of data entry in your organisation. So I think we would be naive to think that the same sense of urgency applies, and I think half my job is about how do I help people find a reason to change with this one, I didn’t have to with everything else. That becomes the sort of the starting point of do people feel that the change is valuable, worthwhile, make sense to them? Because why would they put their effort and their energy to something that they think is actually the wrong direction? So I don’t think that that element of change management has altered in any way that when it comes to organisational change, that’s what many of us in change management, do we help people find their motivation for making the change happen. I think that’s still an essential part.

What’s The Change Risk? – Joe 8:42

On the risk side of that, then so if if a business does decide in a normal circumstance, let’s say to force change on people, I think you mentioned to me the other day to do change to people rather than to do it with them so what would you say the risks of doing that?

Financial Implications – Melanie 9:01

I think there’s a financial risk that should capture everybody in the boardrooms attention, which is that we will be paying for change we commissioned tangible change. It might be an IT system, for example, where we have decided to procure a platform, and we’re going to implement it. And of course, the reasons are very sound, that we believe that we can take a lot of steps out of our process, that we can start redeploying people to other more value added tasks. So lots of good reasons for that the business case for that change, if you like. But it is predicated on the fact that that system will go into use it will become the new norm. Of course, the risk of not getting people on board with the change not getting people involved is that they don’t use the new platform. They carry on with their Excel spreadsheets, they carry on with inputting their data, and they carry on spending their time not doing the value added activities. So the organisation doesn’t get the return on investment it was expecting, not at the level it was expecting and not at the speed it was expecting it. It might dribble over the next couple of years and get some kind of improved but it certainly won’t be what they were aiming for. I think there’s the financial risk. So change management really is a value added task, because what it’s doing is it’s a risk mitigation strategy. It mitigates the risk that you won’t get the anticipated return on investment.

The other risk mitigation action that comes out of effective change management is that we actually protect our staff from spending their time on things that perhaps we don’t want spending their time on, chiefly having an exit strategy. Because when people are fearful of change, when people are worried about what’s going to happen, then they start looking at other jobs, they start looking at other careers, they start looking at doing something else in their lives. Because they think, well, it’s inevitable, I’m going to lose my job, I might as well or they start down the path of feeling incredibly stressed. So it becomes a mental health issue, which is a risk for organisations. And of course, it’s a risk to productivity because they then take time out, they then take sick leave.

So I think there is something around the human cost of change if we don’t do it well.

There’s also the immediate financial cost of not doing it well.

Change Fatigue – Joe 11:22

Absolutely. And would you say always because obviously one of the biggest challenges in change management, often dependent on the organisation, is change fatigue. Would you say that forcing change on an organisation is going to enhance that effect? Or would you say that that’s not going to change?

Don’t Overwhelm People With Change – Melanie 11:42

Well, I think all organisations are now getting to a crisis point in that the amount of change the volume of change that organisations are experiencing is, it’s huge. It’s unprecedented. And it’s not slowing down. And it’s not just the COVID crisis. This is to do with new technology. it’s to do with socio political changes. it’s to do with regulatory changes and demanding customers. Those who want greater pace of innovation all of the time, and who are constantly comparing their experience with one company with their experience of another and then go, why aren’t you doing this for me? So there’s a huge push towards what it is we’re actually sort of trying to deliver.

In my own work. I think that’s one of the most depressing things is when I know that people are becoming overwhelmed, they’re becoming fatigued by change. And they’re sort of saying, Please, can you stop the change? And I’m going, No, I can’t. Because there’s an awful lot of change that organisations are not choosing to implement. They are actually the takers from the marketplace. They really don’t have a choice. So this idea that please stop the waves hitting the beach, the King Canute defence, it doesn’t work. I spend a lot of my time working through strategies with organisations about how they can better deal with change fatigue, the most important strategy that underpins that is that people don’t feel that their organisation has got a change here or change their change that change there, that they’re going off at tangents all the time, that what we actually have to work on is that the change is a cohesive picture. And that the next thing I’m asking you to do actually follows through on something I’ve already asked you to do and it fits into something that’s coming up next. It’s almost a continuous flow but that takes real talent to be able to do that, and really quite a lot of hard work to knit the story together. So I think it’s an important thing for reducing stress, but it’s an important thing that is hard to achieve.

Contractors’ Role In Delivering Transformation – Joe 13:47

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you mentioned that you mentioned the word story that which was something else I was just about to say is, I guess, kind of bringing them in on that story, and making sure that it has a beginning and middle and an end so that everyone knows where they stand at any one point, I suppose. Yeah, that’s really good insight. A lot of businesses that I speak to they that well, in fact, most businesses use very contractor heavy themes when they’re delivering change. So obviously, talking about costs and you know, how to reduce that. So, what do you say about, you know, is it effective to have a contractor heavy team or would you suggest organisations build more in house capability?

Centres of Excellence and In-House – Melanie 14:31

I think what’s happening is that organisations are deciding to build an in house capability not because there’s anything wrong with contractor heavy teams. In fact, bringing in talented contractors to help make change happen is really important. They bring an amazing set of new skills to the organisation. But the problem that organisations are now starting to realise and I think this is something that is a product of where we are now, in terms of the volume of change. So I think this is something that’s now starting to emerge is that organisations are realising that it doesn’t matter how many people or how many consultancies they turn to, to help them with their change agenda. They have Need the in house capability for two key reasons. Number one, the volume of changes such that there is absolutely no way that they can employ as many contractors as they have ideas and ambitions. So they absolutely can’t staff from externally the huge amount of change they’ve got going.

And secondly, of course, that you actually want a capability that for your organisation changes nothing special, it’s normal, we’re really good at changing direction, putting in new systems, new processes, launching new products and services. This should be a capability that the organisation has, and I am really starting to see over the last couple of years, there’s been quite a shift. Those organisations that kind of get change management. And if you’d asked me a few years ago, an example of how they got change management would have been that they had a Centre of Excellence as sort of Central team. They had a change management sort of method or framework. They have lots of templates and they have lots of have in house resources, sort of a central team of change managers, often contractors to be fair, who they would lend out to various sort of projects and programmes. Now that Centre of Excellence is becoming something completely different, which is that it’s becoming the the owner the voice of change management, but its job is how do you develop the skills for change in every role at every level within the organisation. So that’s the really quite demanding thing.

I’m seeing that shift I it started a few years ago, and it’s now becoming something very, very common that this is how we now behave. So you might be a finance manager, you might be somewhere in marketing, but you are expected to actually be able to understand how to move from this way of working to this way of working, that you can lead yourself, you can lead your own team, you can lead your peers from one to the other. It’s now starting to become a standard skill set. So when you ask me about change is sort of something that’s relevant for every role. I couldn’t agree more. Because I think that that’s what I’m starting to see as a reality.

Evidence that organisations are starting to do this on a more organised basis that it’s now the norm for organisations to be setting up agent, networks, change agent change champions, change advisors, change ambassadors, you name it, the names are out there. I did a webinar last week in the US that had over 500 people registered for it in a very short space of time. It was all about building a change agent network and the number of questions I got five pages of questions in the first few days of registration, when I said pose your questions and I’ll seek to answer them on the webinar. And if that was an indication of just How many organisations are now trying to do this as part of the democratisation? Really, change management is not a skill for a specific small group of people over here. It’s great if you’ve got amazing experts in psychology, behavioural economics, neuroscience, you can really help me change but over here. You need this huge volume, and that’s what organisations and now starting to develop.

importance Of Change Agent Networks – Joe 18:37

Absolutely, that’s, that’s something that I’ve, I’ve come across quite a lot. I mean, it’s, it’s something that organisations have always really done in, you know, large scale transformation programme setting up change agent network because obviously, you know, if you’ve got a company that’s 50,000 employees globally, you’ve got one kind of central team, you can never understand all the different cultures yourself, you can never understand the behaviours, the motivations, the ways of working. And so that change agent network is can’t not have it. But I suppose now it’s it’s becoming more of a permanent thing. That when when that change needs to it needs to be delivered, people are ready. It doesn’t have to be done, you know, as in when the transformation programmes are being kicked off basically, that’s a really good point.

Widening Roles In Change – Melanie 19:27

I’m starting to see that flow through into job descriptions, I wonder if you are as well, which is, I was looking at job description for a change manager role today. And the expectation is that you will not only be sort of planning, managing, I think it was delivering and implementing were the four words they used for this change, but that you are also a part of skills and knowledge transfer, skills and capability building in the network of those impacted by change and the fact that that was actually being called out quite specifically, as part of your job means that now if you’re involved in change, you can’t just be managing the change, you also need to be infusing your stakeholders, perhaps helping them understand the life cycle of change the emotional impact of change while people resist change, how to motivate people through change.

So you actually have to be part trainer part deliverer now. So I’m starting to see that the role is widening. Would you agree? You’re starting to see that?

People Need To Be Engaged – Joe 20:35

Yes, absolutely. I mean, change agent networks are absolutely huge. And I’ve certainly seen it appearing in job specs nowadays. A lot of organisations are maturing in their change management function now, it’s all about making that change stick. That’s what’s really important. That’s what I’m hearing anyway, is that you know, saying up this change agent network means that whatever has been implemented, what have you brought those contractors in today’s you’ve invested in doing and it’s not going to stick unless you’ve got people on the ground continuously driving adoption and engagement on that until it just is the way of working. Especially with with transformations, intangible kind of transformations, like a cultural change, for example, you know, it’s not it’s not just right, let’s take this system out, and let’s put that in. And because then you can kind of just remove access to the other system, maybe and people use it but with cultural changes and ways of working, it has to be something that’s constantly constantly reinforced. That’s certainly what I’m finding anyway.

Neuro Hacks – Melanie 21:39

My work in the next few months is going to be all about the neuro hacks, the neuro scientific sort of tweaks that we can do that sustained behavioural change, because I think that’s the next piece for those of us who are very experienced in change management. I think we’re starting to see that that’s the expectation on our shoulders, that we are very good at creating that sustainable behavioural change. So I think the what excites me about change, right? judgement is that it is a profession that continually evolves. And that I think we owe, in part, our lifecycle to project management from many years ago, but I think we’re now starting to see that where our special space is in how we get into the heads of those that were asking to work differently.

So I think that the whole piece around neuroscience and behavioural economics and the psychology of change is just a huge sort of an amazingly interesting thing that we’re doing and I’m finding in my capability building work that a lot of what I’m spending my time doing is talking through the tips, the tricks, the techniques that help people say, oh, I get it, or oh, okay, I’ll give that a go. I’m willing to give that a go. So there’s that that moment of clarity or that enthusiasm for getting involved in the change. That’s when I know I’ve been successful. And that’s I need to replicate around 40,000 60,000 80,000 staff around the world. So that I think is the next big area of development. I think we’re only just at the start of that, but it’s a it’s an interesting one.

Neuroscience For Change – Joe 23:22

Just scratching the surface. As you mentioned, I still see a lot of organisations these days that are very old school, that they do things kind of merging, change management, project management together. And so obviously, you know, we’ll see a lot of project managers applied to my change managers roles, for example. And but obviously now, as you’ve mentioned, that the understanding of, you know, people’s behaviours, why they do things why they think it’s that ways is so much more advanced now, and actually read a book on neuroscience for organisational change by Hilary Scarlett (Neuroscience for Organizational Change) and a couple of months back now, and not just completely revolutionised, the way that that I I view change. I you know, I had no idea about what I was recruiting for until I kind of read that book and it it just goes right back to the kind of primal nature of human instinct. And in terms of, you know, why people act in certain ways, really. So yeah, absolutely. I’m seeing a lot more talk about kind of psychology and neuroscience and the applications to, to change management. That’s why I think change management is taking off as its own discipline in its own right, in such a big way at the moment.

Broad Church Of Change Management – Melanie 24:33

I think this is why when we’re looking for brilliant change managers, I think one of the key things that we’re looking for is that there’s a real curiosity about people, because actually, what you’ve just described is, how do we make change happen? It’s it goes down to how does the brain work? And if you’ve got a curiosity about building relationships, engaging with people, building trust, empathy, walking in their shoes, and wanting to curate the message you put across so that it’s most impactful. Those are an awful lot of sort of relationship building skills that I think are held by those that are sort of our real exemplars in our profession, those that can really make the difference. But, I would say that also coming from the world of project and programme management, if that is your base starts, I think you can still have an incredibly successful career in change because the other part of what I’m looking for, in a brilliant Change Manager is somebody who is incredibly organised, because the volume of work that we do, which is an awful lot of encouraging conversation, remembering to contact that personal point that benefit out requires you to process a huge number of tasks on any given day.

I know from my own experience that I call on my, my programme planning skills probably every single day to get through the workload and think yeah, I can just about do this. And, I so I do have a belief that you know, The world of change management is a very broad church. And we welcome people who come from a communications a corporate communications, background, and HR and organisational design background. Those of us who come from a project and programme management background, those of us who come from a psychology background. We’re all welcome because we’ve all got something to contribute. So I think it’s quite hard to describe the best background for a change manager, what you have to concentrate on is yet but what are you able to do?

The Skills Required – Joe 26:39

It’s so difficult, to recruit change managers that are really good because all of the skills are a lot of the skills you look for and the qualities are very intangible, you know, people skills, it’s stakeholder management is you know, does this person actually understand other people’s mindsets and the way they think, can they empathise? It’s all it’s all kind of qualities that are difficult to interview a lot of the times difficult to interview for, and whereas project management and and you know, Business Analysis and all of the very much take this out put that in, it is just that. As long as they’ve done it before it can work.

But yeah, I mean, I suppose you know, going back to, you know, having the project background and moving into the change, I suppose there’s an element also of understanding the people that you’re working with in a deeper way, understanding the project management side of things. And because at the end of the day, they’re also stakeholders that you’re going to, you’re going to have to manage as a change manager. And so, you know, having worked in a role like that before, I imagine that it would help to move into that.

Agile Change Agent – Melanie 27:46

I’m in the Agile Change Agent course that I developed for APMG. We deliberately, very deliberately tried to meet the needs of this broad church, because what we’ve done is we’ve put in one half of the course is sort of structural, it talks about all of your planning skills, all of your ability to identify benefits, I think Identify your stakeholders. And then we start to look at yes, but now you’ve got all of that how do you build relationships and creating supportive sort of working environments where people are prepared to take risks. And for me, that sort of just sums up that what you’re looking for is both that sort of, there’s sort of the structural piece alongside the behavioural piece, and the to actually have to meet together very, very well, if you’re going to be successful in making change happen.

Transformation Urgency – Joe 28:40

The other thing I want to talk about, I think we we kind of touched upon it earlier, in terms of, you know, the sense of urgency. I’ve been speaking to a lot of businesses recently, in fact, pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to has had an experience where in the last five months, they’ve delivered more change than they have in the last five years. So we touched on it earlier in that obviously, that’s partly because there’s this wider societal sense, a sense of urgency is being created by, you know, the media and everything that we’re seeing online and that sort of stuff. Would you say that there’s a way of I was gonna say replicating, but getting as close as possible to that sense of urgency to be able to deliver that change more quickly?

Driving Change – Melanie 29:20

I think coupled with a sense of urgency, I think that everybody’s also had an experience of where leaders and that’s the hierarchical leader role within their organisation have actually been far more present and have been fast swifter with their decision making, and have been closer to making things happen. And I think that if I look at the Prosci report (Change Management Methodology) that comes out every year about what’s needed for successful change management every year, top of the pile of things that we look for is sponsor engagement. And I think that the last few months have just shown how incredibly powerful it is when senior leaders getting engaged because what they do is instead of being passive and listening for progress and maybe making the out commented progresses As fast as they’d like it to be, no, no, they’ve been hands on.

They’ve been in there, they’ve been driving the agenda. They’ve been championing the change around the business, all the things that we’ve always asked them to do. And that has cut through so many governance layers, that you can’t afford to make a decision. One of my friends is the CEO of an NHS Trust. And he said to me, it was absolutely amazing that we made decisions about how we were going to repurpose certain wards, how we were going to set up so that we could allow visiting in some parts of the hospital but no visiting in other parts of the hospital. He said, we just cut through everything that we normally do where we have these ideas, but we then mould them over for weeks or months at a time and nothing really shifts. And he said I was I got in there, he said, and I was making sure these things happen. I’ve seen that in other organisations as well where I can really see when the CEO is driving the change that there is real productivity, there’s real pace behind it and other places where perhaps the changes are still going through their sort of their governance layers. And that for every sort of decision making layer, almost, you lose motivation, you lose impetus. So I think it’s not just the rationale, the sense of urgency, rationale, but it’s also how it changes organised.

This also goes to the heart of where is change management placed in the organisation you refer to earlier is, you know, often we’re aligned with project and programme management, but what we, what we really are doing, if you’re talking about transformation agenda, what you’re doing is you’re actually the the function that delivers on the strategic ambition of the organisation, and therefore we need to seat at that table. And I think that’s one of the the ongoing sort of issues with changes that perhaps we’re not at that level. I am lucky but I think I’m quite rare that I spend my time genuinely in the boardroom having the conversation about the impact of changes, how the changes are going to be managed, how they’re going to be owned and sponsored. And I am at that table, and I’m talking about change management as a risk mitigation activity. But I think that’s quite rare. But I think that if there’s any lasting change to be done, it’s a recognition for senior leaders to reflect and go, how did we survive? How did we make all these changes happen? I was quite involved in that. My direct reports were actually quite involved in that. Maybe that is the secret sauce. And maybe that’s the thing that we have to talk more about.

Mitigating Against Failure – Joe 32:57

Absolutely. I mean, I’ve certainly seen that you know, when there’s all of those different governance layers, as you said, in all that red tape to get to every layer that you go through, it’s another conversation, and therefore it’s another stakeholders opinion. And it’s another person that wants to do something slightly differently. And that’s why it can always it can always take quite a lot of time to get a strategy nailed down to the point that, you know, a business is ready say, right, let’s actually kick this off. Whereas, you know, the change that we’ve seen in the world in general, it’s just crazy. Like in train stations, you’ve got hand sanitiser stations everywhere. I mean, that that’s a that’s a massive change programme in itself, just putting hand sanitisers everywhere in every station within the space of weeks, that’s no mean feat in itself. So, you know, it’s certainly, a case of having that decision maker directly saying, let’s do this, let’s do it this way. And, you know, not having to go through with all of that red tape so, so yeah, I think that’s a really good point. So businesses I’ve found as well are often quite hesitant to change because once you once they do commit to that change, it can be hard to go back. And obviously, when a business is kind of investing quite a lot of money in in transforming something, it can be quite worrying. So what would you say businesses can do to mitigate that risk of a programme going wrong before actually investing all that money?

Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity – Melanie 34:30

Well, I think that the word agile is often used in all sorts of different ways. But I think that what we need to start looking at is that we don’t do the sort of almost the drop dead approach, which is that what we do is debate all of the potential requirements, how we might do something, look at the totality of the investment upfront and then decide, are we going to leap off the cliff? Because the world doesn’t really respond too well to that way of working at the moment because there was so much change. You know, the old Department of Defence in the US in the in the 1980s came up with this idea of VUCA volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity never was there a truer set of words to describe where we are now.

I think there is that this idea, or if you want a more academic reference, Dr. Peter Senge (author of the book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization) was written similar things in the 1990s, which is start small. Don’t plan everything upfront, put something into operation and get the feedback, get the genuine live experience of how do people react to it? Because otherwise what you’re doing is you might be making a judgement call. I think our customers would love this. I absolutely think that this would cut our costs by 40%. But you’ve no evidence on that at all. And I think the thing is that you can go through those governance layers and everybody shares their opinion, but I’m just screaming, where’s the evidence? Give me an example. So just cuts projects down to the earliest possible work example that you can create. You can call it a pilot, a prototype an example an early on implementation. I don’t care what you call it. But can we try a little bit of it?

I’m having to build, I can’t say much about what I’m doing but I’m having to build a massive new organisation. Starting sort of now and I know that there’s some early launches planned around October time. And the one thing I keep saying is that, oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s just do do a little bit and see how it works. Let’s bring some people on board, let’s do a little bit of work. And if it goes well, because we think it will, we’ve got fantastic business case, but add a little bit more to it and then add a little bit more. You don’t have to go right out the gate with completely fully formed from the get go. And I think, actually, the way the world and the 21st century, the way the 21st century is played out. I think that that’s actually incredibly naive to believe that you can do a whole load of work back in the office, package something together and go to your customers hey, we’ve done this for you and for them to go. Oh, I’m so grateful, this is wonderful.

Surely we should do a little bit, work with the customers to see what their feedback is, see what their reaction is. And based on that, be prepared to maybe change our journey, depending on what their feedback is, because they really are the ones that count. What scares me is how few organisations that perhaps are grasping that they’re looking, they’re sitting there debating the potential pros and cons, I’m going potential or hypothetical is different to actual put a little bit of your idea into use, put it into operation, implemented it, and then find out what the real reaction is. And you can then scale it or stop it. You know, those are your choices. Whereas if you don’t, you you’ve deferred choices. You don’t stop it, you don’t scale it because why? Because you’ve gone for a full scale. Implementation costing God knows how Money and taking up so much time. So I think there’s a, I think there’s we just have to be, I think it’s a huge change of mindset. It has to reflect the fact that the world has changed. And maybe this is the moment maybe this is the moment to step back and go, actually, there’s lots of evidence that the world has changed. And maybe this is the time to rethink how we do stuff around here.

What’s Your Advice For Sustainability? – Joe 38:31

Yes, absolutely. I suppose with that agile approach, you’re going to, you’re going to lose out a lot less if something like COVID happens for example, if something happens, that just changes everything, you know, you can never anticipate something like that. But you know, at least adopting the agile approach can mitigate that loss and you haven’t invested everything at once. With agile, I certainly in the last year even, I’ve noticed agile in change management, as a discipline really, really kind of taking off. No doubt thanks to you and your course Melanie, I mean, previous to that was very much associated with it projects, as in, you know, we’ll release this part of the system or release this small application and see if that works. And but you’ve also applied that to the changes as well now, which I think is really important too.

Just going back to the the kind of Central Change Management function of an organisation and to kind of close out, what advice would you give to organisations who want to mature their change management capability and make it sustainable?

Leading With Passion – Melanie 39:47

I think that what you want to employ people who not only really understand change management, but perhaps have a passion for sharing their passion with others, that they have a commitment to building the skill set across a wide range of roles. So I think this is a conversation I’ve had with an awful lot of practitioners recently is that your job is twofold, you’ve got to take certain changes and make sure that they are pushed through in a way that we would normally see that our our skill set is required. But at the same time, are you also with every single opportunity, role modelling, and it also taking the time to explain how did you do that? So if you do the stakeholder analysis, or if you do the impact assessment, or if you do a readiness assessment, are you able to explain how you do that? Why you do it, what results you’re expecting to others? So are you constantly looking for a group of people that you can upskill? Because I think if that’s what I’m looking for, when it comes to building a change management capability, it’s about how do I, I’m going to lead by example. But the key thing is I’m going to lead others to do the same thing so that I can then move off and do something else. But I think it’s that how do you replicate and build out your capability to others within the organisation.

Thanks To Our Guest – Joe 41:16

Yes that’s really good. Melanie, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the podcast. And it’s been absolutely fantastic to have you on. I think we’ve, we’ve discussed some really interesting topics and topics that are really hot at the moment. And so I’m absolutely, you know, I’m positive, this is gonna help a lot of people in our network to get their transformations delivered. Not only that, but to make it stick as well within the organisation. So don’t forget to build your change agent networks, everyone, and it’s very important, and just build that capability so that when you leave, you know, it’s still there. So, Melanie, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Again, can’t thank you enough. Hopefully we’ll we’ll do it again at some point as well. Yeah, and that’s it. So do tune in to the next month podcast as well. Every every episode is going to be uploaded at the end of each month. So I’ve got a really exciting guest for next month as well and to be announced near the time. But, Melanie, thank you and have a lovely week.

It’s Been A Pleasure – Melanie 42:18

Thank you very much it’s been a pleasure. Thanks

The post Managing Change and Transformation appeared first on Next Ventures.

Adapting your digital transformation whitepaper

tony — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 16:21:25 +0000

How organisations re-evaluate their business model and evolve in the new normal

We have produced this whitepaper in collaboration with Global Digital Transformation and Business Delivery Executive, Kelvin Cheema. A deep-rooted and globally recognised Business and IT Digital Transformation Director, Kelvin provides C-suite leaders with strategic and advisory services that enable organisations to achieve their customer-centricity transformational goals and objectives.

Three Assessment Filters

In this document, Kelvin explains the three assessment filters to adopt in recovery; quantifying key business prioritisation decisions – helping businesses lay the foundation to thrive in the repercussion of the current crisis.

In today’s post COVID-19 climate where the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, Kelvin helps businesses emerge from crisis mode into rebuilding and reimaging. Aiding C-suite and business leaders define their new normal, translate and deliver their vision – enhance digital shared services for sustained revenue, growth and competitive advantage in rapidly evolving markets.

The post Adapting your digital transformation whitepaper appeared first on Next Ventures.

Change and Transformation Management Recruitment

tony — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 15:38:25 +0000

Next Ventures Focus on Talent for Change

News Release 8 July 2020; London UK – Next Ventures have expanded their technology staffing and consultancy services to offer Change leadership, inspiration and enablement to ensure the success of client organisations’ Transformation programmes. This Change & Transformation service will operate across and is supported by our enterprise technology practices.

Next Ventures have been supporting change and transformation initiatives since 2001, by delivering the specialist talent needed for organisations to rise to their technology, digital and operational challenges, and to adapt to the ever-changing needs of their customers and employees.

We focus on 5 key practice areas across all industries, covering the majority of IT hiring needs.

SAP | Business Applications | Development & Integration | Cloud & Infrastructure | Data

With offices in London, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland, USA and Brazil we deliver compliant staffing and consultancy support globally.

Next Ventures knows that attracting the right candidate or selecting the right consultant for a niche role or project, can be difficult for many organisations. Stakeholders have important day jobs to do, Next Ventures offer full-time focus on each role and project and commit to delivering within industry-leading timescales, saving your hiring managers’ time and making sure you get the best possible candidate. The Consultancy’s ecosystem of trusted transformation professionals allows for the best of both quality and speed.

“There’s a big opportunity for organisations to change right now. Market rates for consultants are very low at the moment and some of the most talented professionals in London are available immediately for transformation programmes”

Joe Brown, Lead Consultant, Change & Transformation

“Leaders need to consider transforming their businesses right away to adapt to the new normal. If they don’t, they could be left behind or, at the very least, left catching up with the businesses that acted faster.”

Richard Lacey, Founder of Next Ventures

Next Ventures have worked with a number of high-profile clients on both contract & permanent recruitment and mobilising entire teams for larger statements of work. Clients have included the likes of Deloitte, Roche, Dyson, Coopervision, and Accenture along with many other consultancies. For more information on Next Ventures and the all-new Change & Transformation services, contact Joe Brown using the details below.

Contact Details

Company: Next Ventures

Contact Full Name: Joe Brown

Contact Role: Lead Consultant, Change & Transformation

Website: www.next-ventures.com

Email: joe@next-ventures.com

Telephone Number: +44207 324 2833

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COVID-19 Secure return to work

tony — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 12:50:06 +0000

We are planning for a safe return to working in our office and have carefully assessed the potential risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Following HM Government guidance we have taken reasonable measures to manage risks to the lowest practicable level to protect everyone’s health. Working together we can ensure that the Next Ventures office provides a safe, COVID-19 secure working environment.

The Key Objectives

- Maintain social distancing in the workplace wherever possible.
- Where the social distancing guidelines cannot be strictly followed in full, mitigate and reduce the risk as far as possible.
- Provide facilities for hand sanitising.
- Increase the frequency of handwashing and surface cleaning.
- Using screens to separate people from each other.
- Using back-to-back or side-to-side working (rather than face-to-face) whenever possible.
- Reducing to a minimum face to face interactions.
Risk Assessment

The full risk assessment can be reviewed by following the link below. If you have any feedback or comments on the assessment please inform Holli Chandler.

Changes to the Building

There will be changes in place when entering the building and accessing our offices. Landsec building management has provided more information which can also be found below.

Getting to and from the Office

You must follow the current Government guidance regarding the use of PPE and masks when using public transport and the communal areas of the building as requested by Landsec.

Compliance Certificate

Landsec Guidance

Risk assessment

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Video Interviews, be ready to give your best!

tony — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 13:32:29 +0000

It has become far more common to interview candidates by video link over recent years but now, in the wake of the current COVID 19 crisis, you can expect it to become the norm. If you are not already accustomed to this make sure you are prepared as you will almost certainly be required to do so soon.

Our Tips to Help You Succeed

We have some tips to help ensure you make the most of any online interview opportunities. However confident you are about your suitability to the role some thought and preparation is always vital to make the best impression. Sometimes even the most confident and capable individuals still find the idea of being on camera a little intimidating, taking the steps we suggest will certainly help you give your best performance.

It Is Just Like a Conventional Job Interview

The format may be different and you are not turning up at an office and physically meeting your interviewers but in all other respects, it’s the same as any conventional interview.

Be prepared for the usual questions like:

Tell us why you would be right for this role?
What are your strengths and biggest achievements
Why have you left your previous employment
What would you say are your weaknesses

Do your homework regarding your prospective employer and the position you are applying for, prepare as you would for any interview. This includes your own physical presentation, dress for success and not just above the waist. Wear an outfit that is appropriate for the role, formal is best and safest in most cases but if you know that it’s a trendy youthful tech startup, where smart casual is de rigueur then go with that if you’re comfortable.

Avoid Technology Gremlins

Test and test once more, make sure the software and hardware work. If you need to download and create accounts for apps such as Skype, Zoom or whichever it may be, ensure it is all working and try it out with a friend or family member to confirm. This includes sound and image from your device, preferably a laptop rather than a phone or handheld tablet. Picture and the sound quality need to be good so make sure the microphone and lighting are all adequate.

Make sure your device is plugged into power or at least fully charged up to avoid a sudden black screen and that you have full WiFi signal, take no chances of falling offline.

Location For Your Interview

Experiment to find your best location. A well-lit living room or study with an uncluttered background is a good choice. Certainly avoid distracting or unprofessional environments where sounds or interruptions could put you off or leave a bad impression. Outdoor or public places are best avoided.

When you have found the best spot, make sure nothing else could interrupt the interview such as alarms, reminders, noise from other devices or even someone coming to a door.

Sit comfortably in front of your laptop with notepad and pen handy, a desk or suitable table being ideal.

Dress Rehearsal

Once you have tested all your tech, hardware and software, chosen your location, are happy with the lighting and practised your answers to the predictable questions, you should have at least one dry run.

When you are not in the same room as your interviewer things like body language and eye contact do not come naturally so it’s worth rehearsing them. Practice looking into the camera and maintaining good posture so that you remain centred on the screen and focused on your interviewer. Check also that your voice is recording clearly so that you can be easily understood.

Observe The Usual Formalities

At the end of the interview make sure you thank your interviewer for their time and the opportunity, just as you would if you were meeting them for the first time in person.

Follow up with a note the next day reaffirming your interest in the job and mention something you learnt or discussed during the interview which adds a nice personal touch.

Take these steps and you should be better prepared to nail your video interview, whether it’s your first or one of many, your are certainly more likely than ever to be invited to interview remotely in the future.

If you are looking for your next role in technology take a look at our latest vacancies or submit your CV.

Good luck and remember we are always here to help you find your next technology job in one of our five specialist practices:

SAP | Business Applications | Development & Integration | Cloud & Infrastructure | Data

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SAP Enterprise Core Components Support Extended

tony — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 17:27:42 +0000

Many SAP users will be breathing a sigh of relief with the announcement that SAP has extended ECC support by two years to 2027, premium support options further beyond, to 2030. SAP’s 2025 withdrawal of support for ECC deadline, had been looming over businesses but it can be assumed that SAP has seen the need to reassess the situation. Slower than hoped for migration from Enterprise Core Components to S/4HANA and pressure from users are almost certainly the reason for this decision.

SAP S/4HANA Innovation Commitment to 2040

SAP has also announced this month their commitment to support S/4HANA to 2040, they are clearly looking to reassure their customers starting out on their S/4HANA migration path that their investment in the technology is safe.

Michael Kleinemeier, of SAP’s Executive Board, went on the record saying:

“We know that on this important path; our customers should not have to sacrifice stability for innovation, particularly during times of accelerated change. That’s why we’ve made the commitment to deliver innovations to our flagship product, SAP S/4HANA, through updates for at least the next 20 years. Customers will have this secure backbone in place delivering continuous innovation they can count on for business value.”

Other Factors Obstructing Migration

Businesses are faced with all sorts of financial pressure so making such a large commitment to migrate their ERP system must look risky and expensive. High costs and managing such wholesale change with unclear returns on investment makes a business case difficult to build.

In addition, these organisation may also be considering the potential skills crisis due to the general shortage of technical implementation talent, recruiting for digital transformation will grow ever more challenging. Here in the United Kingdom, we have the additional spectre of off-payroll working rules, IR35 regulation and the uncertainty of the impact it will have on the industry.

What Impact Will these Announcements Have?

The majority of SAP users will have S/4HANA on the agenda and may already be on a path to transformation so not many will be thinking it’s okay to relax. SAP’s commitment to developing S/4HANA for a minimum of 20 years strengthens the business case migration where some organisations may be questioning value and ROI. These announcements may have just taken a little pressure off the situation and granted some more time to plan and budget for the best strategy for your organisation.

Building the Right Implementation Team

When it comes to implementing your S/4HANA migration the support of a dedicated resource of referenced SAP talent will be invaluable. We have the experience of many years of SAP staffing, both contract and permanent, both at home and internationally see our Nobia S/4HANA case study. Our own guidance for contractors to UK businesses regarding IR35 Regulation is available to help clarify status here. Contact our SAP Team to discuss your requirements.

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Sunday Times International Fast Track

tony — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 11:57:19 +0000

Next Ventures are proud to be ranked in the 11th edition of The Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200 published on the 16th February 2020. The list recognises the resilience and ambition of the top 200 private UK companies in the growth of international sales.

The recruitment industry faired well with 19 entries, almost 10% of the list. Within our industry, Next Ventures ranked 15th by % growth, however when measured by total international sales of £47.5m the ranking raises to 5th among recruitment businesses.

Next Ventures have remained unfazed by political uncertainties and continued to focus on their core strengths of providing the highest quality of niche technology talent to enterprise, internationally.

You can read the full Sunday Time supplement below:

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Recruiters Prosper When You Offer Them Opportunity

tony — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 11:39:23 +0000

At Next Ventures, we try to live up to our name, in every way.

Some might understand our brand name to revolve around helping our candidates and clients to reach their next level. After all, the fast-moving technology space is all about entrepreneurial spirit, blink-and-you-miss-it progression and meritocratic success. If you put all your thought, love and smarts into your idea and back it with everything that you have got, you have a chance to shoot for the stars.

While we certainly enable our clients to smash their “next ventures” as they set new goals and raise their bar, the essence of our brand is not all about them.

Another interpretation lies a lot closer to home.

In order to help our clients, we first have to empower our consultants.

Amazing people join Next Ventures (and stay with us for years) because we support them in whatever their “next venture” might be. Every individual within our business is on a journey that we promise to nurture in any way that we can.

Whether you want to work in a more lucrative European market, take on more management responsibilities or simply double down on your recruiting skills, we believe that our recruiters prosper when they are given the opportunity to take their next step.

Whatever that next step is…. for them.

Creative growth and rapid progression

When everyone is pulling in a direction that means something to them, in a supportive environment that allows for creative growth, rapid progression for all is guaranteed. And when our recruiters are growing, they do an increasingly amazing job for our clients and candidates.

Many corporate brands put their clients first, but we believe that when a recruitment employer puts the progression and growth of their people first, their clients and candidates will benefit so much more. If each of our people feels that they are on the path to their “next venture” within the team, they will put in all the extra effort required to turn their candidate and client relationships from good to outstanding. Our approach of recognising and rewarding our team, empowering them to meet and exceed their ambitions, is where we all win.

We celebrate our consultants’ success

The videos below are just a few of the recent success stories of which we are so proud. We believe that feedback is a crucial part of keeping the mix right, and it warms my heart to hear the motivation and ambition in their voices. These two superstars have achieved so much, but they know that they can aim as high as they want.

As we enter a new year and a new decade, most people are resetting their goals and refreshing their dreams. It is one thing for opportunity to come along, but when that opportunity is married with a supportive environment, wonders can happen.

I wish all our candidates, clients and colleagues (past, present and future) a truly wonderful 2020. Let’s make this decade into an amazing series of next ventures together.

The post Recruiters Prosper When You Offer Them Opportunity appeared first on Next Ventures.

Annual Awards and Christmas Party 2019

tony — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 17:17:19 +0000

This year’s Christmas party, at an exclusive West End club, was again a celebration of another record-breaking year and opportunity to reward some exceptional individuals.

Their hard work and truly remarkable achievements have helped keep our ambitious growth projections on track.

The annual event is an opportunity to bring the whole Next Ventures team, from London and overseas, for a memorable bash and thank all our diligent staff for their efforts over the past year. We thank the whole team for the hard work in 2019 and look forward to another record-breaking year in 2020.

The 2019 Award Winners Were:

Perm Top Biller – Jak

Contract Top Biller – Kristiina

Most Improved Consultant – James

Best Newcomer Award – Andrei

Business Development – Marco

Back Office – Aneesah

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When our recruiters flourish

tony — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 16:13:44 +0000

At Next Ventures we love to celebrate in all our consultants’ success!

Reading this recent Glassdoor review, left anonymously by one of our consultants, just made us feel proud that we can empower ambitious individuals to achieve their goals.

In his own words

“I have been working at Next Ventures full-time for more than a year.

Before joining Next-Ventures I worked at a different agency where I was heavily micro managed and not trusted to work in my own way. I was under the impression that all recruitment is like that, until I joined NV.

Since my first day on the desk 1 and half year ago, I have been trusted to build my own desk with the strategy (geographical focus, and technological) that I have chosen for myself.

The management has always been supportive and trusted me to achieve everything that I have set for myself.

This empowering and entrepreneurial environment sky rocketed my career, having done 45 placements which resulted in 2 promotions and increasing my income by 1000 % .

The commission structure is the best in the industry for a company this size, and the Directors have managed/mentored some of the best recruiters in the industry.

Besides the life-changing earnings, I have already been on 4 Club trips: Dubai twice, Mykonos, and skiing in Austria, on target to qualify for the yearly Miami trip, and have also attended over 10 monthly lunch clubs. All in 5 start establishments with all expenses included.

The owners of the business have a very personable, meritocratic view of recruitment and will praise and reward any hard-working consultant that just simply does his/her job.

I get sent 30-40 job offers a month from other companies, but not once have I considered what else is out there, because there is not one aspect of my professional life that I would change since I have been working at this company.

Trust yourself, work hard, and at Next-Ventures you will achieve anything that you could possibly wish for from a leading IT Recruitment Agency.”

Proof we are getting it right

We are reassured when we see success stories such as this example, that our values, culture and approach to enable rapid career progression, really does work. Yes, we do know from the content of the review, who we’re talking about and we wish this consultant even more success for the future. We also offer thanks for the hard work and recognition.

Are you looking to take your Next Step?

If you have ambition and the drive to succeed in technology recruitment why not speak in confidence to Jigar, our Internal Recruiter:

Direct: 0207 549 4038
Mobile: 07951 007 316
Jigar@next-ventures.com

linkedin-jigarpatel

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Why Work With Next Ventures?

tony — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 14:02:55 +0000

When you are selecting a partner, who might provide a service to you, you want to get to know them from a number of angles.

At Next Ventures, we thoroughly believe in primarily letting our focus on enterprise technology recruitment do the talking, but every now and again we will write a blog or share something on social to help illuminate what we are all about.

Although much of this content might not be explicit in “selling” our unique brand of awesomeness, today I would like to outline just why every single enterprise technology candidate and client might consider giving us a call.

Let me talk about how we go about our work, I want to share a few thoughts on our reputation, and I simply have to focus on our obsession with specialisation.

Next Venture’s Team Values:

Like any family, we have certain standards of behaviour that we are proud to uphold. We expect nothing less than excellence as we take any chance to showcase our cultural values:

1. They Care

When you care about the person in front of you (candidate or client), you make the effort to listen attentively, question thoughtfully and deliver on your promises. The outcome of your interaction matters, but you also want to make your difference to their long-term prosperity. How impactful is your part in their life?

2. They Listen And Advise

As technology over delivers in simply gathering applications, our people take huge pride in their consultative approach. Clients pay us because they want to work with niche experts who are not afraid to speak their minds. However, we do not think that we know it all – to give advice, you often first have to take it.

3. They Go The Extra Mile

When you are hiring for a client with a specific culture, you have to immerse yourself in what it means to work there. This is the kind of challenge we relish and where we can demonstrate how we go the extra mile to get the fit right. When we win for our clients we can all enjoy the victory together.

4. They Are Honest

We encourage our consultants to be candid in all their dealings, while at the same time always offering to find a solution to the challenges. There is enough varnish and bluster in the world – when you work with someone from Next Ventures, you know that they will tell it as they see it.

We want them to trust their feelings. When you are facilitating life-altering decisions about other people, sometimes you have to assess things at an emotional level as well as a practical one. Our management teams want to ensure that we are making rational judgments for the right reasons, but we also understand that our gut has a role to play.

What is Next Ventures’ Reputation in The Market?

Trusted Partner. 70% of our placements come from existing clients. A preferred supplier list means stronger relationships, a recruitment partner who genuinely understands specialist hiring challenges, and above all – quality delivery. This extensive repeat business we enjoy is testament to our continuing ability to meet and exceed client demands.

Passionate. When we take on a role or job, we absolutely deliver no matter what it takes. The dedication runs through with each client and candidate engagement. We deliver because we are passionate about technology recruitment and dedicated to fulfilling against our promises.

Proactive. Utilising sophisticated in-house headhunting techniques, we are prepared to be incredibly proactive to thoroughly map a market ensuring we deliver not just the best available – but the best possible candidates for the job.

Experts. Our expertise is developed by focusing only on the niche technologies encompassed within each of our five practices, our consultants becoming specialists in their fields. Each of our global offices are supported by multi-lingual consultants who are highly trained in their technology domain, combined with invaluable knowledge of local culture. Additionally, each NV consultant works on either permanent or contract/interim employment, truly specialising.

Global. We currently have 470+ contractors deployed across more than 20 countries through our network of 7 wholly owned subsidiaries. Our 7 global offices give us many options when implementing specialist project teams to our international clients. We look to offer the most cost-effective proposal to our clients whilst delivering compliant solutions, across all regions in which we operate.

Our recruiters obsess about specialisation

Our five key practice areas demonstrate the breadth of our service. We are passionate about supporting each of our recruiters in becoming subject-matter experts in these niche fields. We attend conferences not just to network, but to learn. We encourage online courses to keep up with developments in each market. We teach our people that every conversation with a client or candidate is an opportunity to immerse themselves in their world. The more involved our people are, the more knowledgeable they become.

Here is an overview of our five key practice areas

SAP

We have been an SAP specialist since 2005, sourcing candidates for international enterprise organisations, major system integrators and consultancies, providing precise technical and functional expertise that is specific to their industry and geography.

Cloud and Infrastructure

With the explosion of applications moving to the cloud and the proliferation of digital tech, cyber and infrastructure talent has never been more in demand.

Data & BI

Data science and machine learning are at the forefront of where technology meets society and top international talent is scarce in the area of Data and Business Intelligence.

Business Applications

Enterprise technologies are easily under-utilised if you do not have the people with the right understanding of how to make the most of their capabilities. Whether you require heavily customised or out of the box implementation of your chosen ERP solution, we can find the talent to make it a success.

Development and Integration

Focusing on our clients’ business challenges allows our software development talent to pinpoint the exact blend of solution required – combing business understanding with a deep technical knowledge.

With technology sourcing, it genuinely “takes on to know one” and our recruitment conversations are conducted at a granular level of detail that no other recruiter can match. If we don’t understand the nuances, we can’t predict the outcomes.

Being outstanding means putting candidates and clients first

For 18 years Next Ventures has maintained steady, progressive growth and along the way collecting a Sunday Times International Track 100 and three Sunday Times Fast Track 100 awards. These and many other accolades reassure us that we are getting the formula right.

Our ongoing success is down to the 70% of clients with whom we enjoy long-term partnerships, and to every single candidate who walked through our doors and thought:

Visit Next-Ventures.com to find out more.

“Yes, Next Ventures really get it. In my experience, their approach really works delivering for both clients and candidates. Keep up the good work. Krystian – Krystian Szastok from Newtide Digital“

The post Why Work With Next Ventures? appeared first on Next Ventures.

CCS Approved Digital Supplier

tony — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 14:13:48 +0000

Next Ventures are proud to announce that we are approved suppliers of Digital Outcomes and Digital Specialist to the public sector via the Crown Commercial Services (CCS) DOS 4 framework.

The CCS is the largest public procurement organisation in the UK and plays an important role helping central government and public sectors purchase a wide range of goods and services.

Compliance and Standards

Meeting their standards and the commercial agreement means that public bodies and local authorities can now turn to Next Ventures for support with any of their technology implementation projects, that fall within the framework. They can be assured that such engagement will be fully compliant with Procurement regulations and standards. We can supply consultants and specialist for a wide range niche technology projects under the DOS 4 Digital Outcomes framework for the digital transformation of public sector services.

Advantages of buying through CCS

Buyers get competitive prices because suppliers can sell large volumes of their products and services to UK public sector organisations as though they were supplying a single customer.
CCS vets and reviews suppliers regularly. This saves you time finding suppliers and checking their reliability.
A large number of suppliers from multinational companies to small and medium sized business (SMEs).
Contracts include performance management, obliging suppliers to improve value and service over time.
Contracts comply with public sector procurement regulations.
Standardised contract terms reduce administration.
Free to use for public sector and third sector organisations.

This latest variation of the framework has incorporated more enhancements, designed through customer feedback, to help facilitate transformation projects for the users.

Crown Commercial Service supports the public sector to achieve maximum commercial value when procuring common goods and services. In 2018/19, CCS helped the public sector to achieve commercial benefits worth £945m – supporting world-class public services that offer best value for taxpayers.

More information can be found on www.crowncommercial.gov.uk

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Welcome to Our October Academy

tony — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 13:18:51 +0000

Welcome to our new Next Step Academy students. The October intake of ten, eager future technology recruitment stars, is underway.

Classroom and team training

Their first week has begun in the classroom where the Next Step programme starts to build confidence in their abilities to develop and progress quickly. This foundation enables them to move quickly through the stages of desk work, client work and eventually, with continued learning and development, on to a full 360 recruitment position.

Career Development

We wish them all the best of luck and look forward to watching them rapidly progress in this demanding but rewarding career.

Find out more about the programme visit The Next Step Academy page here.

The post Welcome to Our October Academy appeared first on Next Ventures.

Next Ventures Summer Event 2019

tony — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 17:34:49 +0000

What a fantastic Next Ventures Summer Event we had this year!

It was great to see so many smiles and so much team spirit on the day. Go Ape provided plenty of adventure and individual challenge whilst the It’s a Knockout Event got seriously competitive. Congratulations to ‘Team Savage’ for collecting the medals.

Big thanks to everyone for making it such an enjoyable day and being such a great team.

We hope you enjoy the gallery with pictures from the day.

The post Next Ventures Summer Event 2019 appeared first on Next Ventures.

The Next Step Academy

tony — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 10:57:51 +0000

We are recruiting now for our October intake of trainees into the Next Step Academy. There are just eight places available for next month’s programme so any ambitious young salesperson, with their sights set on a rewarding career in the city, should be taking a closer look at this on the job IT recruitment training.

Who is the Next Step Academy for?

Next Ventures’ own Academy is a blended, on-job learning programme developed by us for trainees new to recruitment or graduates out of university. You don’t need a technology background, what you need is a passion for sales and ambition to succeed.

We have found that past stars of the Academy have come with a variety of previous experience such as from the hospitality industry, car sales, property sales or a university degree. Certainly, a year or two in a sales or a business development role in another industry may give you a head start but a strong ambition to succeed will be essential.

How does it work?

You start with an introduction week as a resourcer where you will be taught the skills you need to approach candidates and build your confidence. This first week will include classroom and team-based training to get you off to a flying start.

Group based development follows, closely supported by your trainer, you are introduced to some real jobs and get a view of some of our specialist technologies and markets.

By the end of the first month you will join a selected team, based on your own technology interests, learning style and best fit. You will be given clear targets and supported every step of the way to refine your skills.

After a month on your own desk in a team we will assess progress and begin your further development stage, moving you towards candidate and client relationship management or 360 role.

Finally, subject to meeting clear targets, you will begin with your own client business development, with ongoing support all the way. We won’t hold you back if you have what it takes, we aim to make your progress as rapid as possible.

A word from one of our previous Academy graduates.

“Four years ago, I graduated with a degree in Hospitality & Business Management, and with no clear career plan. Today, I head up an SAP Perm team of 7 in our London office. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s definitely been worth the journey. NV have truly nurtured and supported me, and I’m pretty excited to see what comes next!”

My tips for anyone starting on the Next Step Academy: Do it! The hardest part of stepping into a career in recruitment is getting the right training to provide you with a valuable knowledge base. NV’s blended learning is very dynamic; from desk training, self-learning projects and interactive workshops, you’re really set up for success before your first official day as a Consultant.”

Jak Tompsett, SAP Perm Team Lead, UK

Why choose a career in technology recruitment?

What you can expect in return.

Visit our Next Step Academy page.

Or our Work for Us page, we are recruiting at all levels.

Why not take the Next Step?

The post The Next Step Academy appeared first on Next Ventures.

How Our Entire Business Benefits from Incentive Trips

tony — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 15:57:47 +0000

We are proud that money is not the only motivating factor at Next Ventures.

Sure, the industry-leading 35% uncapped commission is a solid reason to give your all, but the real secret sauce that drives our 20% YOY growth is the overall NV experience that we offer our employees. We care about creating a winning culture where people want to perform – not only for themselves but for those around them.

Many people see a recruitment business as a collection of hungry lone wolves, hunting down their commissions and closely guarding the juiciest clients. If there is a meaty role, why would you want to spend your time doing anything else but filling it?

The thing is that lone wolves don’t survive for long. Wolf packs hunt together and grow together, and at Next Ventures we try to incentivise our people in the same way.

It is true that the majority of our renowned top biller trips are individually oriented – the rewards should rightfully go to those that do the most work, but every top biller knows that they cannot be successful without close collaboration with their colleagues. They get a referral from someone on another desk, they are sent an interesting candidate from someone else and they might be given advice on how to handle a situation by a third person.

All this might add up to them going to Dubai as a top achiever in the quarter.

However, they know that on their return they have to give back to the pack…. This time they might be the one suggesting the candidate, giving the referral or offering the advice. When there are amazing experiences on offer, they know that together the team is stronger.

After many years of experimentation, it is clear that it is experiences rather than money that offer the biggest incentive. If we gave people money, they would probably buy a slightly more expensive car or get a few more shares, but that hardly gets the pulse racing. If there is a 7-day (all expenses paid) trip to Cape Town which will be over and above your annual holiday allowance, then that is something worth striving for and something that you would remember forever. It would also give everyone else something to work towards next time.

Such incentives are common in sales-oriented businesses, but we often wonder whether they might serve to increase productivity in other types of business too. Millennials are less motivated by financial rewards – they want to create a life to remember (and to share on Instagram), so why not offer them specific experiences to aim for?

Much of our success and growth over the past few years has come from bringing in the most talented (and hungry) young sales professionals and channelling our atmosphere of collaborative excellence to allow them to shoot for these incentives. Those who got stuck in were not only earning six-figure salaries in a short space of time but they also racked up a lot of stamps in their passports. Our incentive trips are far more than just a flight and a hotel, they are carefully planned experiences shared experiences with friends (who happen to work at the same place).

When everyone is striving for excellence (and rewarded for it with amazing incentives), the overall level of achievement skyrockets. A rising tide raises all ships when a trip to Miami is on the line.

If all this sounds too good to be true why not visit our work for us page or get in touch today.

The post How Our Entire Business Benefits from Incentive Trips appeared first on Next Ventures.

Next Ventures Group Year End Financial Results

tony — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 16:49:34 +0000

Technology focused recruitment business, Next Ventures Group, are delighted to announce their audited financial results for 2018. These figures highlight their impressive track record of year on year growth and profitability, providing services to the Large Enterprise sector.

The specialist recruitment business which provides implementation teams to large Enterprise clients, systems integrators and consultancies has achieved the following numbers in 2018:

Key Financial Highlights for 2018
Revenue increased to £56.3 million, a 19.5% increase on previous year
Net fee income – £14.1 million, a 24.8% increase on previous year
Contract net fee income – £10.3 million a 24.1% increase
Permanent net fee income -£3.8 million a 26.7% increase
EBITDA margin – £3.8 million, up 19.6% on previous year

Head quartered in London with 6 international subsidiaries, the privately held group has continued to grow sales both in the UK and internationally in this highly competitive sector.

The business has not been distracted in any way by Brexit and political uncertainty, maintaining their successful formula of focusing on quality delivery, meeting the demand for specialist systems implementation resources, within international clients.

The growth achieved has continued to be organic without acquisitions and no external investment or debt.

Specialisation remains at the core of delivering the best service in this sector and NV’s formula of dividing services across 5 practice areas within niche technologies means that consultants truly understand their markets and can efficiently deliver the most qualified, in demand talent for their clients.

The IT areas of practice are:

SAP
Business Applications
Cloud & Infrastructure
Data
Development & Integration

The company continues to invest in its people, delivering consistent internal training as well as hiring successful consultants with proven capability who are strongly networked within their niches.

NV’s innovative ‘Next Step Academy’ learning programme offers great on the job training and mentoring to 30-40 graduate intakes per annum. NV staff are market-leading, quality focused experts and this has allowed the business to differentiate itself from the competition.

The demand on enterprise clients for Technology Transformation is constant with continued evolution of technology and the incessant pressure to improve efficiencies and customers’ digital experiences. The need to source the right talent for such technology implementations is a growing challenge to all Enterprise businesses and Next Ventures solves this challenge.

The business plan has proven successful and the management team are confident this level of growth will be sustained.

“Our continued expansion is testament to our great team of ‘Niche Focused Recruiters’, who strive to deliver the highest calibre resources to our clients. We are proud to assert that the NV team is the best in the business! Our growth this year is particularly pleasing on the back of our outstanding growth of 42% in 2017! The political uncertainty is not ideal; however we are weathering the storm exceptionally well, and the Next Ventures team will continue to win whatever the resulting landscape, in Europe and beyond!”

Richard Lacey, Co-Founder

The post Next Ventures Group Year End Financial Results appeared first on Next Ventures.

London to Paris Cycle Challenge

tony — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 12:14:37 +0000

The Next Ventures team successfully completed this gruelling challenge covering over 321 miles, setting off from London on Wednesday 24th July and arriving in Paris on Saturday the 28th. The journey was difficult but hugely rewarding with the team raising in excess of £12,000 for their six chosen charities.

Day One

On day one the course set off east towards Dover following the beautiful but undulating North Kent Downs providing no end of stunning views but also a seemingly endless number of hills to climb. However, the riding was not over when we reached the white cliffs because we had to climb back on our bikes after our channel crossing to reach the first hotel on the outskirts of Calais, our first stopover.

Day Two

The second day started early in an effort to spare us from the ferocity of the predicted heatwave. It certainly helped but our progress to Arras, across open Northern French countryside, saw the team enduring temperatures of over 44 degrees with precious little shade for relief.

Day Three

Mercifully day three saw temperature subside to more bearable mid-thirties, as the course continued towards the town of Compiègne. This day took the team across the Vallèe de la Somme where we saw some of the many war memorials and cemeteries commemorating the fallen of The Great War 1914-18, very sobering indeed.

Day Four

Our weary team was nearly there but on the final day of cycling, from Compiègne to Paris the weather had another little trick to play. Day four started wet and just 16 degrees. The rain, light to start, got steadily heavier and continued for more than four hours but the drenching didn’t slow us down. The same can’t be said for the extraordinary number of punctures that beset us after Richard had remarked over breakfast, “funny no one’s had any punctures yet.”

Grand Arrivèe

To our relief, the clouds broke and the sun shone for our final approach through Paris to the Tour Eiffel and our Grand Arrivèe. The Next Ventures team had completed the challenge, overcoming scorching heat, countless climbs, endless roads and pouring rain. The aching limbs and various sore parts of the anatomy are quickly forgotten and what we have achieved makes it all feel worth it.

The nominated charities were:

Cancer Research UK
Mind
Prostate Cancer Research
Children with Cancer
Brain Tumour Support

Total raised for charity £12,000

The team:

Richard Lacey
Nick Savage
Matt Martin
Neil Temple
Jak Tompsett
Tony Scardarella

Next Ventures would like to thank everyone for their support and contributions to the fundraising.

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Tech Recruitment Team Leaders Should Keep Their Industry Focus

tony — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 15:54:39 +0000

One of the biggest motivations for many technology recruiters is the feeling of playing a part in some of the most innovative developments that are rocking our world.

At Next Ventures, we are proud to deploy an award-winning team of recruiters who are obsessive about industry knowledge and forensic in their appreciation of how their candidates make their difference.

You can’t be a great tech recruiter without living the industry. Even when you become a manager of recruiters (and especially when you become a manager of recruiters).

When a recruiter has mastered their skills, it often makes sense to pass them on to the next generation and become a team leader. You might not necessarily stop billing yourself, but your activity does tend to change significantly.

In certain recruitment companies, you might find yourself focusing so much on the activity and behaviours of your team that you can lose touch with the essence of the industry that you recruit for. When you lose sight of the product, you lose the ability to understand your candidate base (or the candidate base of your team).

At Next Ventures, we encourage our recruitment team leaders to retain their passion for technology. Tech is so fast-moving that they can’t afford to allow their experience to become redundant, and while they are not on the front line of recruitment, the benefits of actually understanding the requirements of the role are undeniable.

The moment you take your finger off the pulse, it is hard to find again.

Part of the challenge lies in how a recruiter measures success, and, by extension, how a team leader manages their teams. We are not a KPI heavy environment, we allow our people flexibility in terms of how they work, and we believe that the closer we are with our candidates and clients, the more successful we will be. This is impossible without deep industry knowledge, and although it is hard to measure, you certainly can’t do a fantastic job without it.

We are currently expanding our mid-tier management team and an integral part of the interview process is getting a sense of how passionate and knowledgeable potential new hires are about the industry. Our clients would expect no less and neither would our recruiters! No one appreciates being managed by someone who doesn’t understand the detail of your assignments. It is hard to offer advice when you don’t appreciate the nuance.

With the advance of technology in the fields of sourcing and selection, I believe that developing an advanced level of industry knowledge will be crucial for recruiters to keep adding value. We talk a lot about valuing human interactions – recruiters (and their managers) simply have to be able to talk the industry talk.

An important part of this is investing in training, but when it comes down to it, you simply have to create a team that loves their industry and that never wants to stop learning.

If you are a technology recruitment manager with a few years of success behind you (but you want to work for a technology-obsessed employer), please get in touch.

Find out more here next-ventures.com/workforus

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5 Reasons Why This Industry Is Perfect for the Second-Job Sales Professional

tony — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 11:21:44 +0000

Any early sales career can often feel like Will Smith’s character Chris Gardner frantically trying to sell his outdated bone density scanners in the film “The Pursuit of Happyness.”

Chris has a small child to feed, he has relationship issues with his wife, and he is tied into a long-term contract to sell these useless pieces of kit. He is intelligent, charming and driven, possessing all of the characteristics of a great salesman. He is simply selling the wrong thing.

His story continues with an unpaid internship at a stock brokerage, a period of homelessness, and a continual struggle to break free from the cycle of failure. He knows deep down that he is a “good” salesman, and he eventually succeeds, but only when he manages to change his environment (and his product).

Young professionals rarely go into sales because of the product that they will be selling.

They enter sales because they have an affinity for building relationships, they are great communicators, and they feel a passion for their customers. They buy into the “great salesman can sell ice to Eskimos” myth and give their first couple of years in sales everything they have got. And importantly, sales people get rewarded for their hard work and success more than in any other positions!

But many aren’t happy in that first job, and far from all earn as much as they would like.

At Next Ventures, our happiness formula is simple: we source the best technology talent for some of the most cutting-edge companies, in an industry that is transforming the world.

In recruitment, when people are your sales product, there is no higher motivation.

We believe that once someone has a couple of years of sales experience behind them, technology recruitment can be the perfect industry for the second-job sales professional.

Here are five reasons why:

People are the ultimate feel-good product. In the ultimate search for purpose, it doesn’t get much better than helping people to secure their dream job. Waking up each morning knowing that you are going into battle for your candidates and clients puts a spring in your step, and although the mathematics of the job ensures there is more than your fair share of disappointment, it makes eventual success all the more enjoyable. When you are working for multiple clients who are all on different journeys, the cycle of interviews and placements ensures a steady stream of feel-good vibes.

The subtleties of finding a fit keeps it fresh. Let’s face it, selling the same product every day can get a little boring. In recruitment, every search and every client is different. In technology recruitment, the industry is changing so rapidly that the demands of each individual job role are forever in flux. In terms of keeping an early-career sales professional on their toes, there are few industries that are more challenging.

Humans drive technology, not the other way around. The technology industry is guaranteed to be “hot” for the foreseeable future, but it is easy to forget that without the right people, most technological innovations would remain on the drawing board. When you are placing someone into a tech firm, you are making your unique contribution to the next iteration of technological change. That is incredibly exciting.

People change jobs, so demand will always be there. During challenging economic times, the sales cycle can grind to a halt for many products. No sales means no commission. While recruitment is not immune to these cyclical changes, it is a fact that people will still change jobs and need to be replaced. It is also true to say that the tech industry is one that will remain strong for many years to come – at Next Ventures, we are riding that wave.

There is unrivalled (and uncapped) earning potential. Last, and by all means not least, if you are good at recruitment, you can earn a lot of money. Top performers can see six figure salaries within three years, the best, considerably more! If you take the time to understand your candidates and clients, you give yourself every chance of success. There is a lot of rejection in recruitment, often for no fault of your own, but with resilience and determination the sky is the limit.

Obviously, being a great recruiter is about more than being a great salesperson, but if you are not a great salesperson, then you cannot become a great recruiter.

At Next Ventures, our fantastic training programme will teach you everything else. We are hiring for our highly regarded Next Step Academy right now.

Visit next-ventures.com/next-step-academy for more information and contact details.

Your sales career (and your life) could be transformed if you join us.

The post 5 Reasons Why This Industry Is Perfect for the Second-Job Sales Professional appeared first on Next Ventures.

How the Sales Aspect of Recruitment Helps Ambitious Grads to Start Their Careers Strong

tony — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 11:37:46 +0000

When you are in the formative first few years of your career, you quickly realise that you have a lot to learn.

In most graduate sales positions, you start near the bottom and learn from those above you, doing “your time” sorting out the admin and feeling your way into corporate life. You follow a tried-and-tested path of progression and if you keep your nose clean, you might be a Director by your mid-thirties.

There is nothing wrong with this, but for a grad with a fire in their belly, boredom is a risk.

They are ambitious, they want to be outside their comfort zone, and they do not want to be limited in their progression. Of course, they know that they will need, but they want to grow without shackles or training wheels. They want to work in an environment where they can express themselves creatively, where they can ask a question and have the freedom to find their own answer rather than read it in a manual somewhere.

Most of all, they want to face tests and challenges that will teach them lessons that will stay with them for the rest of their careers, no matter what they might end up doing.

There are few more testing environments for a grad than information technology recruitment.

The sales-led nature of the recruitment industry means that you have no choice but to earn your success. If someone is making £100k+ after two years in our Next Step Academy (it has happened many times), you can be sure that achievement is uniquely hard won. Our industry-leading mentoring programme may have coaxed them in the right direction, and our deeply-personalised development plans will have supported them, but the majority of the work is down to their tenacity, resilience and determination.

Sales is unforgiving, but in recruitment, there is the added aspect of human unpredictability. When people are your product, there are so many factors that might complicate a transaction. The “people” lessons that young recruiters learn on the way to smoothing out these transactions will stay with them for whatever a relationship challenge pops up in their future career.

Maybe that is why the Next Step Academy is so popular and has been so successful for Next Ventures and its trainees?

The most difficult lesson for a young grad to learn is how to influence and shape the opinions of others. When you are making fifty calls a day, hopping from client meeting to client meeting, and closing deals that will change your candidates’ lives, you tend to learn that lesson pretty quickly. Actually, you don’t just learn it, you master it.

Starting out learning the (limitless) sales lessons of an early-stage recruitment career can set someone up for success in so many industries. Yes, they may well choose to earn a tonne of money with us and have fun doing it, but if not, they can be certain that they will go on to flourish in any industry where people skills are required.

Of course, the jaw-dropping incentive trips, fun and inclusive office atmosphere, industry-leading reward scheme, and super-supportive colleagues go a long way to making it the most enjoyable start to a career too. We take our responsibility as an early-stage employer extremely seriously and we understand that if a young professional has not got a smile on their faces, then they are never going to make the most of their potential.

We are going to be looking for our next “class” of Next Step students soon.

If you are an ambitious young grad who wants to supercharge their people skills, make a real difference and build a solid foundation for your career, then you might want to consider joining us at Next Ventures. Oh, yes, and you can earn a lot of money too.

Find out more about the Next Step Academy here

The post How the Sales Aspect of Recruitment Helps Ambitious Grads to Start Their Careers Strong appeared first on Next Ventures.

Young Professionals Flourish When Their Mental Health is Supported

tony — Wed, 15 May 2019 11:20:38 +0000

Overcoming obstacles in the earliest stages of a career often requires significant mental resolve. You have never encountered certain situations and you feel that so much is riding on how you cope.

Many will sink before they swim, but they won’t want to show it.

Much as younger professionals might be seen to possess boundless enthusiasm and limitless potential, under the surface they sometimes need more help than they might admit. The seeds of mental health issues are sown during this vulnerable period.

Alternatively, with the right level of understanding, vital lessons can be learnt.

If you have an employer by your side to support you through the mental stress.

In the UK, one in four people will experience a mental health issue in any given year, but you can be sure that for younger professionals is a far higher percentage. It is not that employers don’t care about them, but many wear a suit of impenetrable mental armour so thick that you couldn’t possibly guess that problems might be brewing. Sadly, too many think that there is something “wrong” with them, and for weeks and months on end they crumble inside.

It doesn’t have to be this way. During Mental Health Awareness Week, it is important to send this message out to every young professional:

“Mental health matters. Your employers are there for you. They care about you. Share your troubles and you will be surprised at just how supportive they will be.”

Alongside the wonderful work done by www.mentalhealth.org.uk, PWC are currently championing a “Green Light to Talk” initiative in the financial services industry, where this week 300,000 financial services professionals will be wearing green ribbons to promote a more supportive attitude towards mental health conditions. Buildings across London will be lit up in green and the whole country will come together in recognising one of the most damaging threats to our society.

This blog is our way of sharing that we at Next Ventures care too and that it’s important to talk about it.

We want our large intake of “Next Step Academy” grads (and all our other younger employees) to know that there are always people around to listen and understand. We might not have an in-house professional resource to help, but we are currently evaluating options and adjustments. It is important to start with the right attitude – we know that mental health matters, so what can we do to make a difference to our people?

Every member of our wider team who interacts with our young talent is acutely aware of just how hard it is in those early years. They have all been through it and they are all willing to lend a sympathetic ear to help them take that “Next Step.”

It is easier to open up when you know that you will be understood rather than judged.

A mental health condition is like any other medical condition – if you talk to people about it, you can find your own way of managing it. Happily, many younger people are comfortable talking, and increasingly the older generations are understanding just how important it is to listen. The more we spread the word, the more normalised these conversations will become.

If you are a grad or an industry veteran, when your mental health takes a dip, you will be surprised about just how many people will be ready to assist. Mental health conditions affect everyone at various stages in their career.

For many, the “Next Step” is sometimes simply about asking for help.

It is the duty of all of us to give it when we see it is needed.

#mentalhealthawarenessweek

For more support visit

www.mentalhealth.org.uk
www.mind.org.uk
www.samaritans.org

The post Young Professionals Flourish When Their Mental Health is Supported appeared first on Next Ventures.

Steve Kearney Joins NV

tony — Sat, 20 Apr 2019 10:52:16 +0000

Senior Appointment

Next Ventures are very pleased to announce the senior appointment of Steven Kearney who joins as Financial Director.

Steve brings with him a wealth of experience with thirteen years in the Public Sector. Working initially with PwC in Cyprus Steve’s responsibilities were focused on building an international reconciliation and bank system balancing function for the American payments solutions provider TSYS.

Joining the bold Israeli tech on-demand mobility start up Gett in 2012 developed Steve’s pedigree further, appointed Global Financial Controller he managed Israel, US, UK and Russia. During his time there the company grew from 50 to 1800 staff while Steve managed the setup of financial control and reporting processes across the organisation. That business has grown to a valuation of $1.4bn in 2018 gaining the rare accolade of Unicorn company.

Steve’s successful track record has continued more recently with an appointment as Financial Director to a UK based team where his administration has seen a 400% increase in revenues combined with reduced costs and improved EBITA.

When asked what attracted him to Next Ventures he said;

“A company with big ambitions for growth is always exciting. Their strong international focus and desire to capitalise on the current opportunity to grow their overseas capacities makes the position very attractive. It’s clear to me that much is already in place to achieve these goals, 150 plus clients across 20 countries and a passion to deliver the very best in niche technology talent globally is a great foundation.

I see my role as crucial to achieving the longer term ambitions by helping cross functional teams come together and nurture the new mindsets to meet the necessary changes. Being a successful financial director today is so much more than reports and accounting.”

NV Co-Founder Richard Lacey commented;

“Next Ventures are very much on track to achieving our revenue projections hitting £57 million in 2018 and a great start towards our 2019 target of £70 million. Our market is buoyant. The adoption of technology and digital transformation demands on large enterprise is unrelenting. Our quality delivery model is key to successfully meeting these demands.

Steve’s forward thinking approach to his FD role at Next Ventures and the invaluable international experience he brings with him will undoubtable be a great asset. We are all looking forward to working closely and can’t wait to see the innovation and direction he will certainly bring.”

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International Women’s Day March 8

tony — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 15:16:03 +0000

International Women’s Day March 8

We’re proud to celebrate the the valuable contribution that women make to our business. We are an inclusive organisation actively promoting equality.
International Women’s Day provides a perfect opportunity to celebrate their work so here are the women of Next Ventures among who’s ranks you’ll find our Head of Legal, Top Biller, Management Accountant, Head of Talent and much, much more.

We believe gender equality is good for business as well as for society.

The post International Women’s Day March 8 appeared first on Next Ventures.

Recruiter Hot 100 List 2018

tony — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 15:07:35 +0000

Recruiter Hot 100

Next Ventures features in the Recruiter Hot 100 List for 2018 making the top 20 overall and entering the Hot 10 Technology recruiters, thanks to growing both gross profit per head, whilst increasing headcount at the same time.

Next Ventures in Technology Hot 10

Read the article here

The post Recruiter Hot 100 List 2018 appeared first on Next Ventures.

Next Ventures Summer Event

tony — Sat, 20 Oct 2018 13:08:47 +0000

Our Summer Event was a great day bringing the whole NV team together for an enjoyable, action-packed day of activity. As expected plenty of competitive spirit was evident and we all had a lot of fun. We were grouped into 18 teams and of course there were prizes for the top performers.

Special mention for the winning teams:

In first place Team 8; Richard, Ellie, Adam, Thomas & Connor

In second place Team 17; Kristina, Elliot, Barak, Marco & Soufiane

In third place Team 11; Neil, Dominika, Richard, Liban & Sophia

Top scoring individuals:

In first place was Adam, second went to Nick and third to Jed. Well done guys, some real sharp-shooting, axe-throwing, arrow firing, quad riding, segwaying, multitalented indeed!

Below is a video of some of the highlights.

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Liz Mulhall-Brewer joins NV

tony — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 13:08:47 +0000

Next Ventures are excited to announce the appointment of Liz Mulhall-Brewer who joins the business as Head of Talent Acquisition. Liz joins NV with some great industry experience; initially starting her recruitment career as a Business Change Contracts recruiter, she then moved in-house to experience recruitment on the other side of the fence. After 2 years of working in-house, Liz moved to Cognitive Group as their Talent Manager where she was responsible for all internal hiring. After 3 successful years at CG she saw the headcount double and 95% of these hires were sourced directly.

When asked why Liz joined NV, she stated:

“What really drew me to NV was the opportunity they have to grow. NV has five niche practice areas; SAP – Data – Business Applications – Development & Integration – Cloud & Infrastructure. When you factor in that Next Ventures are building teams with geographic focus, each team is spilt into permanent and contract recruitment, they are built both locally and for their international offices, the volume of hires the business needs to make, to get strong market coverage, is much bigger than any opportunity I have had before.

In addition to the ambitious plans for growth, Next Ventures have a great story to tell. Their passion for quality, focusing always on building partnerships, never just short-term gains and nurturing creativity in their employees to go above and beyond is very refreshing. These values have attracted two recent superb hires of Nick Savage and Nick Gatenby, strengthening sales and internal employee training and development.

I have been genuinely impressed with all I’ve seen and can’t wait to add my contribution to this undoubtedly successful formula”

NV co-founder Darren Rosenfeld commented:

“Liz will be a real asset to our business, whilst her key focus is on talent attraction, she is really passionate about people development. She will enhance the great work already being done by Nick Gatenby in empowering NV staff, strengthening our position as the go-to niche technology agency in London for enthusiastic and talented recruiters.”

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Nick Savage joins NV

tony — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 13:08:47 +0000

Nick Savage Joins Next Ventures

Next Ventures are excited to announce the senior appointment of Nick Savage who joins as Director of the SAP and Business Applications practices. Nick is a seasoned leader with a successful track record of building specialist recruitment teams, specifically focusing on SAP and Large Enterprise Technology globally. Most recently as Managing Director of NP Group, Savage oversaw their global strategic technology talent solutions. Previously he has held leadership positions at Red Commerce Ltd, Sapient and Modis (the Adecco Group).

When asked why he joined NV, Savage said;

“As part of their core IT strategy, and to enable key digital transformations, todays Enterprise Clients look for partners that can deliver Enterprise Technology talent globally. Not many businesses can, but with Next Ventures, I very quickly recognised their pedigree in recruiting for SAP and Oracle, combined with specialist teams that focus on Business Applications, SAP, Data, Cloud & Infrastructure, Development and Integration, and felt NV can truly add the level of value needed by today’s companies that other recruitment businesses cannot.
Commercially NV has ambitious growth plans with the platform in place to meet these. They have an expanding contractor base currently working with more than 150 clients in key enterprise transformation programmes across 16 different countries. Unlike many others, NV are truly focused on expanding their operations globally and on track to meet these ambitions.
Internally NV has a training and development framework in place, with a clear employee journey fostering engagement and advancement at all levels. All this tells me there’s an opportunity to expand and develop the management team further, which personally gives me a real opportunity to help create something memorable and exciting”

NV Co-Founder Richard Lacey commented;

“Next Ventures SAP and Business Applications practices are the ‘crown jewels’ of our capability and when Nick became available our search for a very strong quality focused leader was over. Nick has exactly the right attributes to take our current teams to the next level cementing us as the go to supplier of ERP and CRM recruitment services to the Large Enterprise market. Nick has extensive team and client development experience in the SAP and Oracle ERP domains and his consultative approach is synergistic with our philosophy of close partnership with clients and focus on quality over quantity . 2019 and beyond is going to be great fun and we all look forward to working with Nick to grow to £75million and beyond”

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How will Artificial Intelligence or AI affect your industry?

tony — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 13:08:47 +0000

How will Artificial Intelligence or AI affect your industry?

The age of Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning is upon us and what’s more London is at the heart of it. Reports suggest that 80% of industry executives already expect AI to increase performance and productivity. Are we really on the cusp of a technology revolution or are we getting carried away with the hype?

Government and industry belief

Secretary of State for Business and Industrial Strategy, Greg Clark recently stated that “If we get our strategy for AI right, then the UK will be able to reap the rewards for our economy for decades to come”

In April this year, Mr Clark launched the government’s AI Sector Deal policy confirming commitment to the sector with a package of almost £1 billion of support. This is split £603 million of government, industry and academic contribution, with £342 million existing budget and a further £250 million for connected autonomous vehicles.

According to a report published by PwC last year AI will cut workloads by 30% by the mid 2030’s but with a similar productivity boost at the same time. They conclude that AI has become central to the corporate agenda and may be worth £12 trillion globally by 2030.

Clearly the government and most industry leaders believe that AI cannot be ignored, implementing artificial intelligence in business is now on everyone’s agenda. Many believe that the best way forward is to take a long term view, be ambitious but start small with a view to quickly scale up. As with many new technologies, one adoption difficulty may be how to train for it. According to a Capgemini report from last year 79% of companies implementing AI believe that it’s bringing better data and new insights to their data analysis. 74% say that it is making their organisation more creative and 71% say that AI is helping them to make better management decisions.

Cutting edge developments in London

Right at the cutting edge of the machine learning revolution and based here in London are DeepMind, who’s co founder and CEO Demis Hassabis has a plan to ‘solve intelligence and then use that to solve everything else’. DeepMind started on this mission eight years ago with aspirations to use AI to help solve some of our most complex challenges such as climate change and radically improve healthcare. Their advances and work on Neural Networks, which replicates the neuron structures of the human brain, were recognised by Google who acquired the business four years ago making it part of the Alphabet group. They have famously demonstrated with their AlphaGo program, it’s ability to learn the ultra complex game of Go and defeat the reigning world champion Lee Sedol last year. The ancient Chinese game chosen because it’s vastly more complex than chess with a number of board positions estimated at 2×10 ¹⁷⁰. DeepMind’s work has provided Google with breakthrough energy savings in data centres and their NetWave product, utilising an advanced neural network to produce stunningly realistic voice synthisis for Google Assistant, in English and Japanese.

AI ace at Wimbledon

We can see then that AI’s potential for managing and filtering vast amounts of data are very real and a real life example of this being put to great effect was at Wimbledon this year. Working in partnership with IBM with their system know as Watson, AI powered automated online highlights of games for tennis fans. The system auto-curates video based on crowd noise, player’s movements and game statistics to deliver edited highlights at a speed that would have otherwise been impossible. This was integrated into the Wimbledon website and social media channels to provide richer content and better engagement for tennis fans greatly improving the experience. The Wimbledon and IBM team certainly delivered an AI grand slam to delight fans.

Machine learning in recruitment

Our own industry of recruitment could see some transformation, there are already a number of AI driven products helping with the more mundane, repetitive tasks which most in the industry would be only too happy to relieve, freeing up time for more valuable tasks. Will AI revolutionise our industry? No but some additional efficiency and time-saving should be expected. As a people industry we cannot dispense with the human touch, dealing with candidates and understanding cultural fit, as well as the many other nuances that go with making the right decision, is far from binary.

As a leading technology recruitment firm Next Ventures are here to help you with all your niche technology requirements within large enterprise. Whatever your implementation or project needs speak to a human at next Ventures, we look forward to helping you. Please contact a human here.

The post How will Artificial Intelligence or AI affect your industry? appeared first on Next Ventures.

Move to Larger Office in Amsterdam

tony — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 13:23:30 +0000

Growth in the Netherlands

Due to continued growth Next Ventures, the IT recruitment specialist, have moved their Netherlands subsidiary Next Ventures BV to new offices in Europe’s leading tech capital, Amsterdam.

Next Ventures are one of the fastest growing and multi award winning, niche recruiters, focused on ‘Large Enterprise Technology’. Building on the continued success of their Netherlands office, which opened in Amsterdam November 2015, Next Ventures BV have relocated to larger premises in the heart of the city.

Their continued investment into the Netherlands operations will enhance further their ability to support their impressive roster of clients.

“The decision to be based in Amsterdam is to better serve the needs of our growing client base in Benelux for more niche technical skillsets. The continued investment and new larger office is testimony to the Amsterdam team’s success in achieving this and confirms we are getting it right.”
Richard Lacey, Founding Director

New Tech Capitial

Amsterdam is establishing itself as the leading tech centre in Europe. In a recent study by Hubspot, the CRM and Marketing platform, the city came out ahead of Berlin, Dublin and London. That study was focused towards start ups but Amsterdam is also home to nearly 600 international ICT companies, 170 of which have chosen Amsterdam to locate their headquarters.

Names like Microsoft, Cisco, Interxion, Infosys, Huawei, Oracle, Intel, IBM, Verzion and Google are all taping into Amsterdam’s excellent IT infrastructure. There is an impressive list of reasons why the city is such a tech magnet such as being home to the worlds largest data-transport hub AMS-iX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange). The city boasts the fastest European mobile speeds by far. A lower than average cost of living combined with significantly higher average salaries add to the attraction.

“Our services are better aligned, for both candidates and clients, by more face to face time spent with the talent pool of skillsets that are in such demand here. It is this time with local talent that allows us to fully understand their motivations and so introduce only quality candidates to our clients, quickly when needed.
Amsterdam is an incredible city to both work and live in with so much to offer. The business culture here is different to the UK so even more important that my team are Native Dutch, who truly understand how business is conducted. Our growth is testament to the excellent team we have built, all are true subject matter experts in their field and I am excited to see what the future brings as we continue to attract more talented people to come join us.”
Richard McCarthy, Country Manager

Amsterdam scores highly on the lifestyle front too with it’s canals, arts and culture, architecture, and low traffic volume all contributing to the Netherlands being ranked number one in terms of work-life balance according to the 2018 OECD Better Life Index.

All this makes it easy to see why the city is so popular with Large Enterprise Technology, tech start-ups and such a magnet for technology talent. Hubspot recognised this and awarded Amsterdam ‘The Best European Tech City to Work In’.

Next Ventures BV Amsterdam Office, Keizersgracht 555, 1017DR Amsterdam.
+31 (0) 202 622 190
info@next-ventures.com

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What Do Graduates Look For?

tony — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 13:08:47 +0000

Graduates’ Priorities

Current research shows that graduates’ priorities, when seeking employment are continuing to shift gradually. We wanted to understand better what graduates look for in an employer and a recent study by the Bright Network has provided some interesting insights into the work culture that graduate seek.

When looking at an employer’s reputation and image the most important factor was clearly Fast Growing and Innovative. This was followed by Financial Success and Inspiring Management. Prestige, Corporate and Social Responsibility and finally Exciting Products and Services followed in that order.

The people and culture of a business are very important and here the number one priority, by a significant margin, is Friendly and Respectable Work Environment. This is followed by Recognition and Reward then Creative and Dynamic Environment. Flexible Work Conditions, International Firm and Championing Diversity came in 4th, 5th and 6th.

Characteristics of the job had a strong front runner of Professional Training and Development followed by Job Security and Challenge. Opportunities for Travel/Relocation, Higher Level of Responsibility and Team-Orientated Work making up the lower half of priorities.

Priorities for remuneration and advancement showed that Clear Path for Advancement was ahead of Competitive Base Salary and High Future Earnings. Sponsorship of Future Qualification, Competitive Benefits and Overtime Pay ranking lower in that order.

Finally what is most likely to put a graduate off a prospective firm? Here an Unimpressive Meeting with people from the company was most likely to put them off. Negative Feedback from friends or family and Long Complicated Application Process ranked 2nd and 3rd. Negative Press, Lack of Information and finally Perceived Lack of Diversity made up the remaining top reasons.

What are the Key Findings?

So from this survey we can see that the most important things that graduates look for in an employer are:

Fast Growing
Friendly and Respectable Work Environment
Professional Training and Development
Clear Path for Advancement
Look to be Impressed by Representatives of the Business

The focus is continuing to move in the direction of finding employment in an environment that has a friendly, diverse, supportive culture that nurtures and encourages development.

How does this relate to the culture at Next Ventures?

For us culture is about the personality and character of the organisation, it runs through everything we do. We encourage and nurture creativity in individuals both working alone or within teams, collaborating with colleagues. A balance of hard work, social activities, generous rewards and a long list of benefits that all incentivise maintaining the highest standards of delivery for our clients and candidates.

We actively enable fast-track career development, ensuring the training and support is in place to make this possible. This starts with our industry-leading structured program of training, The Next Step Academy which guarantees the best possible start for our graduate intake.
This is followed by on the job mentoring and guidance so that career progression is as fast as possible and limited only by an individual’s ambitions. From the very beginning, the emphasis is on delivering the very best quality service, driving our new recruits to become true Consultants, trusted by their candidates and valued by their clients for the reliable quality of delivery.

Starting as a resourcer, a new graduate recruiter may quickly progress through to consultant recruiter, senior consultant and team manager in a very short period of time. As one of the industry’s fastest-growing niche technology recruitment agencies Next Ventures can offer the very best career prospects to graduates.

If you are an ambitious new or recent graduate looking for an employment opportunity that offers:

Fast-Track Career Path
Generous Salary with Uncapped Commission Structure
Dedicated Graduate Training – The Next Step Academy
Amazing London Office
Diverse, Friendly Team
Rapidly Growing Business

Find out more about the Next Step Academy here >
See the job post and apply here >

The post What Do Graduates Look For? appeared first on Next Ventures.

Strong First Half Year Financial Results

tony — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 13:08:47 +0000

Strong Financial Results for First Half of 2018

Deal or no deal, Brexit does not seem to be affecting Next Ventures’ impressive growth. The London based niche technology recruiters, that focus on the international large enterprise sector, are unfazed by all the uncertainty around our exit from European Union. Their half-year results, just released show continued success and underline their claim to be one of the fastest growing technology recruiters in the UK.

Continued growth in revenue and profit by this privately held group has been entirely organic, without outside investment. Neither the intensely competitive marketplace nor economic uncertainties have slowed their progress.

In response to the earlier success of the Netherlands subsiduary, further investment has resulted in increase headcount and new offices in the heart of Amsterdam, a city which has been recognised as a leading European tech hub.

NV, who specialise in providing global implementation teams to large enterprise clients, systems integrators and consultancies, have achieved the following numbers in 2018:

Six month key financial highlights of 2018 compared to the first 6 months of 2017.

Revenue increased to £27.5m, a 28.9% increase on 2017
Gross Profit £6.7m, a 31.3% increase on 2017
Net Profit before taxation £1.81m, a 34% increase on 2017

Last year’s realignment of the Next Ventures delivery model, to focus its services within 5 niche practice areas, creates a much clearer vision for growth, and highlights to the group where future investment should be spent when considering team expansion.

Focused on software manufacturers such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Salesforce, Tibco and IBM. 70% of the company’s business is written outside of the UK market; with highly qualified contract and permanent talent being successfully delivered into 22 overseas territories, which ably supports the global nature of most of its client base.

The company drives all employees to deliver a consistent quality approach to all clients and candidates. To this end NV is an investor in its people constantly re-training internaly as well as hiring successful consultants who are proven and networked within their niches. Their ‘Graduate Academy Program’ offers great on job training and mentoring to 30+ graduate intakes per annum. NV staff are market-leading, and this has allowed them to differentiate against their competitors.

The Next Ventures management team are confident that they will continue further targeted investments in the remainder or 2018 and are committed to significant growth well into 2019.

They source IT talent both locally and internationally across five practice areas:

SAP
Business Applications
Cloud & Infrastructure
Data
Development & Integration

“Our continued expansion is testament to our great team of Recruiters, who strive to deliver the highest calibre resources to our clients! Our growth this year is particularly pleasing on the back of our outstanding growth of 40%+ in 2017!! I have to say that Brexit has been no problem to us and I remain extremely upbeat about our departure. We just need to accept the peoples mandate, stop debating it, pull together and come up with a viable exit! Next Ventures will continue to win whatever the resulting landscape, in Europe and beyond!”

Richard Lacey, Co-Founder

The post Strong First Half Year Financial Results appeared first on Next Ventures.

Nick Gatenby joins NV

tony — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 13:08:47 +0000

Nick Gatenby Joins Next Ventures

Next Ventures are delighted and very excited to announce the arrival of Nick Gatenby who joins as Head of Training. Nick brings with him a wealth of experience and an impressive track record in delivering Training and Development within the recruitment industry. This experience fits with the growth plans at Next Ventures; as the ambitious increase in consultant headcount planned will need to be ably supported by an individual who has experience delivering quality training to a hyper growth business.

Nick evaluates the opportunity as being due to, the platform for growth and the work culture at Next Ventures

“Next ventures is a genuine business; what stands out throughout to me was that every person in the company, from Top to Bottom is here to do the best job they possibly can. From the Leadership team who have real passion to grow the business, through to team leaders and consultants who are cutting their teeth in this tough industry: they all simply want to do their job to the best of their ability. NV’s retention of staff is exceptional because the business ethos allows people to be autonomous, this in-turn creates people who become self-sufficient, creative, and gives them the freedom to work in a way that suits them.

This clearly works as NV continues to achieve strong year-on-year growth. The way the business is setup gives NV a unique platform for growth, as there’s clear market definition, with a strong geographic focus. NV’s platform has lots of opportunity to scale, both locally and internationally; when I looked at NV I knew this was a business that would be successful with or without me; which is what compelled me to join as I wanted to be a part of that success and to play my part in their next stage of growth”

Nick aims to build on the superb Graduate Academy program and other ongoing training already in place. He acknowledges the success of keeping it simple: with clearly defined market specialisms and a focus on High Quality recruitment, being the key to on-going success.

Nick’s personal goal is to build a simple and accessible training platform that allows varied skill development, new idea generation and a thirst for learning within the business. He hopes to help every member of staff understand what they need to learn and develop, how to access the knowledge and support them to implement new ideas into their way of working. NV’s training mission is to continuously focus on improving its business, by continually improving the skills of its people, who make up this exciting company.

The post Nick Gatenby joins NV appeared first on Next Ventures.

How Will VR Impact the UK Tech Industry?

tony — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 13:08:47 +0000

The concept of “virtual reality” or VR has existed for over 30 years, but it may now finally be coming of age. New VR technology, such as Google Daydream, as well as existing tech such as Google Cardboard and Google Glass in the related field of augmented reality (AR), are on the verge of becoming part of everyday life.

Nintendo’s recent runaway success with their AR game Pokemon Go has added $7.5billion to their market value. This shows just how much of a market there could potentially be for games that effectively make use of VR and AR technology. But is there more to the tech than just new forms of gaming? And what impact will it have on the UK tech industry?

The growth in VR gaming

According to some predictions, gaming is likely to make up around 84% of the VR market by 2020. Much of this is likely to centre around mobile gaming, which is expected to make up 45% of all gaming before the end of the decade. Mobile gaming has a big advantage when it comes to VR take up, as it relies on technology people already own, rather than requiring them to go out and purchase dedicated VR technology.

The UK is the world’s 6th largest video games market with the industry being worth around £4.2 billion in 2015. This means VR gaming is likely to have a massive impact on the future of the UK gaming industry and the market place. Companies who can effectively develop and market VR titles will have a huge advantage in the near future and the success of Pokemon Go is likely to see an increasing number of games companies rushing to leap on the bandwagon.

VR in the workplace

So, if gaming will make up 84% of the VR market, what will the other 16% be? Well, at least some of the leading VR technology is likely to be seen in the workplace. Modern workplaces are being less and less tied to traditional offices, with homeworking and outsourcing meaning many key workers are no longer based in a central office. Virtual reality offers great opportunities for remote working, in particular virtual conferencing, where people can have the experiencing of being in the same room as each other, even if they are hundreds or even thousands of miles apart.

VR will also be extremely useful for testing and training, allowing employees to learn in a safe, controlled virtual environment. By providing an immersive learning experience, it should be possible to make in-work training much more effective than with traditional methods such as learning out of books and role playing.

Augmented reality tech will also allow people to perform their jobs more efficiently by providing valuable information overlaid in real time onto the world. This will make it much faster and simpler for employees to get the information they need, allowing them to make faster and better decisions and increase productivity.

Getting your business ready for the virtual revolution

By next year, there are predicted to be 750,000 computer science jobs in the UK, with only around 50,000 people graduating from computer science degrees each year. This means there is a looming skills gap and companies that want to stay competitive will need to work harder to attract the right employees.

Business that want to be prepared for the VR revolution will need to make sure they have a clear understanding of the skills they need and how to find the right individuals to provide those skills. Companies that are most effective at finding and attracting high quality VR-savvy team members will be well positioned for success in the VR dominated industry of the near future.

Do you have the right employees for the UK VR boom?

If your company wants to ride the next wave of VR technology to success, you need to make sure you have the right team members in place to help you do it. Next Ventures is one of the UK’s most successful technology recruitment companies, working with some of the biggest names in UK tech. We can help you find the perfect candidates specialising in VR, AI and Emerging Technologies, so your business can be at the cutting edge of this huge opportunity for growth.

One of the secrets of our success is our industry-leading graduate academy, “The Next Step”. This allows us to train all of our graduates to the highest possible level, meaning each new team member can offer you the same first-rate service.

Whether you are a business looking for the ideal employees to push your business forward, or a recent graduate wanting to work with the very best in tech recruitment, contact Next Ventures today.

The post How Will VR Impact the UK Tech Industry? appeared first on Next Ventures.

AI in the Workplace – What Does The Future Look Like?

tony — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 13:08:47 +0000

We’re used to the idea that increasingly sophisticated machines are taking jobs from people in the manufacturing industry, but white collar jobs have usually been safe from this kind of automation. However, with the growing intelligence and availability of software designed to automate clerical tasks and other traditional office work, it looks like artificially intelligent apps could soon replace a large percentage of office workers.

In fact, it is possible that as many as 35% of current UK jobs could be automated in the near future. While this might sound scary, especially if yours is one of the jobs that a piece of software could be doing within the next few years, the picture is not all doom and gloom. While AI will likely transform our workplaces, it also offers some great opportunities to improve the way we work. So just what does an AI-assisted future look like?

How AI will affect your business

Although AI replacing workers may be bad news for some employees, it could represent a golden opportunity for many businesses. AI has the potential to be faster, cheaper and, crucially, better than people currently doing the kind of jobs that could soon be automated.

Using machine learning and other techniques, intelligent software has the capacity to analyse thousands of times more data per day than a human ever could, pulling out all sorts of useful insights. AI will be able to make highly accurate predictions, allowing you to take advantage of opportunities you otherwise would have missed. By removing the possibility of human error, it can also make your business less susceptible to potentially costly mistakes.

The fact that AI is likely to significantly reduce companies’ overheads and make them more efficient should not be overlooked, but ultimately it is the fact that they will be able to do a superior job which is likely to be the key factor in their uptake. However committed company owners are to their staff, those who get on the AI bandwagon are likely to start significantly outperforming those who don’t, making this change more or less inevitable across a whole range of industries.

Could AI make better managers?

One area people might expect humans to remain essential is management, however, not everyone agrees. In a recent survey, around a quarter of people said they would prefer to be managed my machines. This rose to nearly a third for younger people aged 20-39.

The suggested reason is that many people prefer the idea of decisions about hiring and workplace management being handled by unbiased software, rather than by fallible humans. Younger people in particular seem to have faith in the decision-making ability of software over humans.

As prominent artificially intelligent technology, such as Tesla’s self-driving cars, begin to prove themselves better than people, the acceptance of and trust in AI among the general population is bound to grow. As this trend continues, people are likely to want to allow AI a bigger part in the decisions that govern their everyday life, which means artificially intelligent managers are likely to be something both workers and companies owners demand.

How to prepare your business for the rise of the AI

Initially, artificially intelligent software is likely to work alongside your existing team members, providing insights and suggestions while humans retain the power to decide which of these ideas to implement.

This will be essential until the algorithms used by these apps get smart enough to be left to go it alone. This is a lesson Facebook recently learned when it fired the editorial team overseeing its Trending Topics algorithm, letting the software run unsupervised with some unfortunate consequences.

For businesses, this means instead of making mass redundancies, you will need to focus on retraining your teams and making the right new hires, so you have people with the skills to manage smart software. Over time, as the software gets clever enough to begin working more independently, you can re-skill those team members who are no longer needed in their current roles or allow your teams to shrink through natural wastage, meaning you can minimise the need for redundancies.

Find the right employees to navigate AI in the workplace

Next Ventures is one of the world’s top technology recruitment firms. We find the very best candidates to help tech companies adapt and thrive in the ever-changing world of the technology industry.

We have recruitment professionals specialising in finding people to work with all kinds of tech, including AI in the workplace. The superior quality of our team is driven in large part by our innovative graduate academy, “The Next Step”, which trains our new team members to the very highest standards.

So, if you are a tech company looking for the right people to keep your business moving forward or a recent graduate keen to get started in tech recruitment, contact Next Ventures today.

The post AI in the Workplace – What Does The Future Look Like? appeared first on Next Ventures.

How ‘Intrapreneurs’ Are Revolutionising The Tech Industry

tony — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 13:08:47 +0000

Too many companies are stuck in a 20th century mindset when it comes to their employees. People who come to work, do what they’re told, hit their targets and go home are all very well, but are they really what modern tech companies need?

Increasingly successful tech companies are driven by highly motivated, entrepreneurial individuals who push the boundaries of their job roles and do much more than just fulfil the basic terms of their contract. These “intrapreneurs” possess the dynamic qualities of high-achieving entrepreneurs but rather than starting their own enterprises, they use their skills within a company to push it forward in new and surprising ways.

This spirit of intrapreneurship is revolutionising the way tech companies work and is one of the main factors behind the success of many leading technology businesses.

So, just how do you recognise a potential intrapreneur and how are these highly valuable individuals making such a difference to the tech industry?

How to spot an intrapreneur

Like entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs tend to be very driven with a strong focus on success. They are good at spotting opportunities, developing creative strategies to take advantage of those opportunities and motivating others to help implement their strategies. Intranpreneurs are thought leaders and tend to be the ones others come to for help and advice about running their own projects.

Intrapreneurs may not be at management level, but they will usually be the driving force in any team they are in, being highly persuasive and becoming a hub that the rest of the team organises itself around. Intrapreneurs can sometimes clash with more traditionally-minded managers who want people to “know their place”, but their very refusal to know their place and to keep doing things the same way they have always been done are what make intrapreneurs so valuable.

How intrapreneurs benefit tech companies

The tech industry never stays still, so employees who are content to keep doing things the same old way day in, day out can quickly become anchors on your business’s progress. Intrapreneurs are the opposite: they are the ones running out in front, finding new and exciting opportunities to take the company forward in surprising ways.

Intrapreneurs take real ownership of their job roles and tend to go above and beyond to make a success of their areas of responsibility. They have high levels of creativity and initiative and will often produce big results using minimal resources. This means intrapreneurs can bring high levels of innovation to your company but without requiring you to spend a lot of money on developing their ideas before you know whether they are likely to be a success or not.

Perhaps one of the biggest advantages to hiring and keeping intrapreneurs in your company is that these are otherwise the people who would be out there creating the new ideas and technologies that could threaten your own business. New Facebook employees are given a handbook laying out the company’s mission, history and culture. Famously the handbook states:

“If we don’t create the thing that kills Facebook, someone else will.”

This is the key to intrapraneurship. By incentivising clever, creative, highly motivated people to work for you, rather than to branch out on their own, you are making your company more resilient and adaptable, meaning you are less likely to find yourself put out of business by some clever new idea that your company could have been the one behind.

How to foster intrapreneurship in your business

One way to create a spirit of intrapreneurship is to make sure you are creating space for this kind of thinking in your organisation. Google famously used to allow its employees to spend 20% of their time working on their own projects not directly related to their everyday responsibilities. This has recently been replaced with a more focused approach, but crucially, Google employees are still allowed time to work under their own initiative on potentially game-changing ideas.

It is also highly worthwhile working intrapreneurial characteristics into your hiring criteria when looking for new employees. By providing enough scope and flexibility in your job roles to attract intrapreneurs and then screening potential candidates for their potential as intrapreneurs, you can start to stack your team with the right kind of employees. Intrapreneurship breeds intrapraneurship, so the more of the right kind of people you get on board, the more they will feed off each other’s energy and help to keep pushing your company forward.

Take the ‘Next Step’ to find future intrapreneurs

Next Ventures are a world leader in technology recruitment, helping some of the top names in tech find the very best employees who can take their businesses to the next level. Our graduate academy, “The Next Step”, produces exceptional technology recruitment professionals who know just what companies are looking for and how to connect them with the right candidates.

If you are a graduate who wants to learn how to become a truly elite technology recruitment consultant or a tech company looking to find superior candidates in the tech industry and intrapreneurs to add to your talent pool, Next Ventures is the clear choice.

To find out more about taking recruitment to the next level, please contact us today.

The post How ‘Intrapreneurs’ Are Revolutionising The Tech Industry appeared first on Next Ventures.

Why Disruptive Recruitment is Fundamental For Technological Change

tony — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 13:08:47 +0000

We all know that the pace of technological change is increasing all the time, which means the way we work is also constantly in flux. The days of employees having fixed responsibilities and completing the same processes day-in, day-out for years are over. This poses a problem for both employers and the recruitment industry: how do you hire staff when you don’t know how changes in technology could impact their job role in the future?

Disruptive recruitment allows you to be more innovative and flexible in your approach to hiring staff. This allows you to form more resilient and adaptable teams who are better prepared to cope with changes to their roles and responsibilities brought about by new technology. But just how does disruptive recruitment work? And exactly how does it help companies cope with technological change?

Redefining expectations

Because employees in technology companies need to be so adaptable, hiring shouldn’t just be about finding people who match a company’s current needs. While it is, of course, important that a new employee is able to do the job they are being hired for, it’s essential to take a more long-term view during the hiring process.

What this means is that employers and recruiters need to focus on finding employees who are highly adaptable with a deeper understanding of the fundamentals involved in your field, rather than just a shallow knowledge of the specific area they are being hired to work in.

It’s also a good idea to broaden the scope of new roles to allow a degree of overlap between different employees. This allows you greater flexibility in your teams so that, as new technology emerges, teams can be easily reorganised to better fit the new requirements created by new technology.

Building talent pools

Creating a robust flexible team is all about building and managing your talent pool. One way to do this is to simply hire a successful team lock, stock and barrel. This has the advantage of allowing you to bring on board teams who already have a successful working relationship with each other. It also allows the new team to hit the ground running, rather than having to wait while they learn to work with each other.

Focusing on talent, rather than just specific skills, means that as technology changes and the skills you require change with it, you can be confident that employees will still be able to perform well. So, for example, someone with an exceptional eye for design but limited knowledge of the specific software or platform you work with can be a much better long-term hire than someone with loads of relevant experience but less native talent. This is because their talent can be applied to any technology, meaning they will have the same value even if the technology and their exact job role changes.

Many employers fall into the trap of thinking of employees as interchangeable, basing their value just on their specific skills. However, understanding the value of individual talent and then building teams of people with complementary talents means you will have a robust and adaptable unit who can cope with the changes new technology brings to their work.

Making recruitment smarter

Technology is getting smarter all the time and recruitment needs to follow suit. What this means is that recruiters and employers need to get better at understanding what makes a successful employee. Of course, employers will already have their own ideas about this, but it’s also a good idea to take a more systematic approach.

By interviewing successful employees and finding out what they value about their co-workers and what qualities of their own they feel have led to their success, it is possible to start building company-specific profiles of the ideal employee. This can often lead to surprising revelations about the skills and personal qualities needed to succeed in an individual company. This in turn can lead to more effective screening of new employees and hiring choices who will better with your existing team.

Take the Next Step in technology recruitment

Next Ventures are one of the world’s top technology recruitment firms, handling both traditional and disruptive recruitment for some of the best known names in the tech industry. Our graduate academy, “The Next Step”, offers unrivalled training in technology recruitment, meaning our recruitment consultants are industry leaders in placing the right candidates into the right companies.

So, whether you are a graduate looking to get started in technology recruitment or a tech company searching for the perfect new employee to help push your business forwards, Next Ventures can help you take the next step.

To find out more about taking recruitment to the next level, please contact us today.

The post Why Disruptive Recruitment is Fundamental For Technological Change appeared first on Next Ventures.

Is there a Millenial Leadership Gap Developing?

tony — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 13:08:47 +0000

As an increasing number of baby boomers hit retirement age, there is a growing concern in some sectors that there aren’t enough younger people with the necessary skills to fill the leadership positions being left vacant. Indeed, a recent survey found that fewer than half of HR professionals think they have enough potential leaders in their talent pool.

This is particularly seen as an issue with millennials, now in their 20s and early 30s, who should be some of the key players looking to step up into leadership positions, either now or in the near future.

But is there really a lack of leadership potential among younger workers? Or is it simply that millennials’ ideas about what makes a good leader are different from those of older generations?

What do we mean by leadership?

When assessing whether there really is a lack of future leaders in business, we need to define what we actually look for in a leader. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development defines leadership as:

“The capacity to influence people, by means of personal attributes and/or behaviours, to achieve a common goal.”

The stereotypical leader motivates their workforce through a mixture of carrot and stick. Work hard and you’ll be praised, maybe even get a bonus or a pay rise. Fail to do your job adequately, however, and you’ll get told off, put on probation or even fired. These kind of leaders are usually highly autocratic, setting the direction for their team based on their own ideas and instincts.

Millennials, however, tend to have different values to baby boomers. They are more like to value friendship, openness and companies with more of a social conscience. This is reflected in their ideas about leadership. Younger people are more likely to look for leaders with strong communication skills, who make them feel listened to and valued.

This raises the possibility that, rather than there being a real leadership gap, there is simply a gap between what the different generations perceive as leadership potential.

Do millennials lack ambition?

One accusation frequently thrown at millennials is that they don’t have a strong work ethic or enough ambition, however there is little objective evidence to support this. Instead, many ambitious young people are simply choosing to head out on their own, rather than working their way up the ranks in established companies.

Around 14% of UK workers are now self-employed and this number is expected to grow significantly in the coming decades. This is not surprising given that the self-employed often earn more and have greater freedom and flexibility. The UK also has a thriving startup scene, with a record-breaking 608,100 new businesses starting in 2015.

For many younger workers, the idea of being self-employed or starting up a company of their own makes sense. The rapidly changing nature of technology means that there are all sorts of opportunities for new businesses for people savvy enough to identify and exploit them. It’s also increasingly possible for clever people to start businesses with nothing more than laptop and a wifi connection. This makes starting a new company a low-risk, potentially high-reward prospect which is obviously a very attractive idea for anyone with ambition and a little entrepreneurial flair.

How to attract and nurture future leaders

The key then is to understand what a millennial leader looks like and then figure out how to attract them to your company and how to keep them there.

Improving communication between younger and older employees is key. This will help baby boomers understand what millennials are looking for in their leaders and will give younger workers an insight into the skills they need to be considered potential leaders by senior management.

It’s also important to provide clear development pathways for young employees, so they know exactly what their potential career trajectory will be within your company. Combine this with first-class development and mentoring and you are giving strong candidates a clear reason to choose working for you over starting their own businesses: the opportunity to learn and grow in a stable environment.

Show clever, ambitious young people what you need from them and that there is room for them to reach their full potential in your company and many will jump at the chance. This will allow you to develop the strongest possible talent pool of potential future leaders.

Where to look next for future business leaders

Next Ventures is one of the world’s top technology recruitment firms. We work with some of the best known names in the tech industry to help them find the talent they need to keep their businesses growing strong. Whether you are looking for millennial leadership candidates or any other kind of employees, we use a unique mix of innovative methods to find you the very best people.

A key part of our success is down to our graduate academy, “The Next Step”, which produces forward-thinking technology recruitment professionals who go above and beyond to help our clients find the perfect potential employees.

So, if you are a company looking for your next exceptional employee or are a graduate keen to break into the exciting work of technology recruitment, please contact Next Ventures today.

The post Is there a Millenial Leadership Gap Developing? appeared first on Next Ventures.

ERP and CRM: Are they Finally Working Together?

tony — Sat, 30 Jun 2018 13:08:47 +0000

Businesses should treat data and its management as a critical business asset. By prioritising data value realisation and development, and creating information architecture that allows for innovation and customisation of the data, we can maximise its contribution to business success.

IDC calculates that by 2020 there will be 44 trillion gigabytes of data in the digital world, a figure which is increasing by a huge 40% per year. It’s also thought that only 22% of available information in 2013 was able to be analysed – only 5% of which actually was. Even more data exists today.

Data is the lifeblood of modern business. Global and local operations in nearly every field rely on content information analysis and feedback to discover their past performances and inform their future strategies. Because there is such a huge market of information – not just what exists for free, but also the new stores of purchasable, personal data that are popping up – picking what’s relevant to these goals is difficult.

The way businesses approach data analysis and use needs to become more efficient. It’s time to move away from basic data management and think about integrated, business-minded analysis of data as it is created.

The Information Transformation

40% of the manufacturing workforce is made up of knowledge workers. The many facets of information – possession, analysis, etc are vital to these roles. However, businesses are struggling to provide data management and access systems that are unified and have an adequate user interface.

The plight of the knowledge worker continues with the growing cross-platform nature of modern business. There is a burgeoning need for software and networks to allow collaboration across departments or even industries – but the way data and its applications are currently ‘siloed’ doesn’t allow this.

An ‘information transformation’ would help workers to get the most from their data. This transformation means abandoning the stockpiling of data and instead devoting resources to value realisation and development, as well as better information architecture.

One way of doing this is by merging fields that, once separate, have since been shown to work better together. We’re talking about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). These two types of information management and deployment compliment each other so well that technology giants are already getting in on the action.

This digital transformation requires a degree of business process agility, and a unification across the business, not supported by the traditional ‘siloed’ ERP and CRM approach of the past. – Jujhar Singh, corporate VP for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Microsoft Dynamics 365

Microsoft is overhauling its CRM and ERP and repurposing them into a cloud-based software. This technology is specifically aimed at businesses and large-scale users of the Microsoft Office 365 suite.

With a release date later this year, its several separate applications are all precisely designed for a wide range of fields; financials, field services, marketing, customer service, and many more.

All these apps are useable on their own, but are designed with integration in mind; the modern business is less focused on isolated systems and more likely to need cross-departmental utility.

This integration is completely drawn from cloud technology, which allows each of the Dynamics 365’s customers their own database. With these totally online, updates are quick and easy, and everything can be done remotely.

Appsource, released along with Dynamics 365, is an application marketplace for the same target customer. Potential users are able to try the cloud-based apps Microsoft releases before committing to the fully-integrated Dynamics platform. It is targeted at businesses as a whole, not individual users. So, with this in mind, Microsoft’s licensing model will provide access to apps based on complete employee roles, instead of forcing the customer to assign apps one-by-one.

Our new role-based approach will give customers the flexibility the need to support modern, more agile, more diverse employee roles. – Singh.

SAP Hybris Commerce

Another hybrid of CRM and ERP, this software is aimed at both business-to-customer and business-to-business engagement. SAP decided to integrate customer engagement and business tools because of certain research that came to light: 91% of marketers believed personalisation was the key to superior customer engagement, but also reported using 11 different, siloed channels on average. This is poor functionality for a good concept; Microsoft and SAP Hybris are about to change these statistics forever.

Omnichannel commerce and the ability to deliver exceptional digital experiences are more important than ever. – Brian Walker, Chief Strategy Officer at SAP Hybris.

The new SAP Hybris Commerce includes:

The SAP Hybris Customer Experience solution, which is a redesign of content management and means only one tool is needed to manage content on all channels.
A promotions engine, wherein users can make and launch their own dynamic marketing without any IT expertise.
Extensive back-office framework, which facilitates customer support and innovation by allowing quick construction of custom apps and tools as you need them.

SAP Hybris Commerce, like Microsoft Dynamics 365, is available as a cloud-based app. It’s point of difference is that it can also be installed on-premise or downloaded.

What we see with these two products is that combining CRM and ERP data can result in a much more modern take on data usage; but more importantly, it’s easily able to keep innovating within itself.

Like SAP and Microsoft, other businesses should treat data and its management as a critical business asset. By prioritising data value realisation and development, and creating information architecture that allows for innovation and customisation of the data, we can maximise its contribution to business success.

Next Ventures is partnered with SAP technology along with many other cutting-edge data integration companies. If you’re thinking about merging your ERP and CRM, get in touch.

The post ERP and CRM: Are they Finally Working Together? appeared first on Next Ventures.

How The Cloud Is Revolutionising ERP

tony — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 13:08:47 +0000

Enterprise Resource Planning has been in operation since the 1960s, but the advent of the cloud is revolutionising ERP and the way that it has been used in recent times.

With a predicted 47% of companies planning to take their ERP system to the cloud within the next five years, the race is on for companies to adopt full cloud-based capabilities. Thousands of companies are reliant on ERP for their everyday business operations, yet some have been running out-of-date versions with no support contract in place. Others are running ERP on in-house mainframe systems that do not represent cutting-edge technology. These are expensive ways to manage ERP and are also huge security and compliance risks which may put a company in breach of strict industry regulations. Organisations in this position are urged to make the move to cloud-based ERP.

Advantages Of Cloud-Based ERP

The cloud offers many benefits for companies who are utilising an ERP system. It is installed and managed from a single platform which end-users back in the office, or from a remote location can access from a web browser as if it was installed on their desktop or mobile device. The cloud services provider (CSP) is responsible for securing the data and managing the software on the servers within their cloud-based environment. This provides clear cost-saving advantages over paying IT staff to manage and maintain in-house ERP. All patches and upgrades will be completed by the CSP without the need to rollout a new version to the end-user desktop. The next time a user logs in following an upgrade, they will be seamlessly presented with the updated version of ERP.

Performance of ERP in the cloud is also superior. Resources in the cloud are assigned to a customer based on their requirements. If those needs change due to a spike in usage, perhaps due to growth in the organisation or just a peak season for the industry, then extra resources such as disk space or memory will automatically be given to the ERP system. This will ensure that cloud-based ERP will always be able to handle the volume of activity that you throw at it, without fear of overload leading to a system crash or downtime. Cloud service providers boast exceptionally low downtime rates – Amazon Web Services for instance was offline for only 2 hours and 30 minutes throughout the whole of 2015.

Third Party Unity

Hosting all your internal applications on a single server within the cloud also provides your organisation with a more efficient architecture. If your ERP is stored on the same platform as other business applications such as CRM or an accounting system, then this provides a unified way in which your apps can share a database and communicate with each other. This scenario also offers real-time reporting and a single user interface as a bonus.

Mobility

Cloud-based ERP has adapted to provide excellent solutions for mobile users. This is particularly true in the manufacturing industry where developments with the mobile platform are unifying the way in which delivery tracking, material handling, warehouse management and logistics are accomplished. These are areas where current information is vital to the smooth running of a global manufacturing and distribution company. Mobile ERP apps are at the heart of this exchange of information and include the ability to provide alerts to senior managers back in the office about events that are taking place in the field.

The Digital Skills Market

As the rate at which companies are adopting the cloud is increasing even beyond the predictions of experts, it is important to realise what this may mean for the digital skills market. There may of course be a downsizing consequence to IT departments in some companies who are moving to the cloud for reasons of cost. IT professionals who may be at risk are those who have remained stagnant and have not equipped themselves with either the skills or abilities to move forward into the next stage of the digital era. However, those who possess cloud training will be much in demand as this industry is rapidly expanding to include new areas such as Backend as a Service and Cloud Ops.

If you need help and guidance in deciding where your niche technology career is heading, then don’t hesitate to contact us today. Alternatively, if you are in need of cloud-based or ERP professionals, then get in touch. We will be able to perfectly match your staffing requirements by tapping into our pool of top calibre professionals who can propel your organisation further forward in the digital era. Want to know more? Contact us today.

The post How The Cloud Is Revolutionising ERP appeared first on Next Ventures.

Will All ERP Move To The Cloud?

tony — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 13:08:47 +0000

Enterprise Resource Planning software assists businesses in the organisation of their operational workload. ERP provides a flow of data which helps to inform management about performance indicators and gives leadership teams the necessary insight to make key business decisions.

Many companies can benefit from the implementation of ERP but serious thought will need to be given to its management. Currently the two main options for a company are cloud-based ERP or in-house ERP. Both have their advantages, but as with many types of technology in the last few years, there has been a significant increase in companies moving their resources to the cloud.

Improved Performance And Maintenance

A cloud ERP model uses a cloud vendor to house the ERP data and software in its cloud environment, which an end user then connects to from a typical Internet web browser on their desktop. Cloud ERP solutions are managed by the vendor and will be regularly improved with upgrades and patches as soon as they are released. This ensures that users will access the most current version of ERP which will provide better functionality and security.

Performance of cloud-based ERP is also usually superior to that of an in-house ERP system. Cloud services run on architecture that is designed to provide the maximum level of network performance to its customers. As most cloud-based packages are taken out on a pay-per-use basis, this means that if there is a spike in ERP usage, then the cloud will automatically assign extra resources, such as additional memory or disk space, in order to cope with the sudden surge. This approach to performance almost guarantees that cloud-based ERP will beat in-house versions in terms of uptime. This is especially important given the increase in mobile staff who may need to access the system from their home office, or whilst on the move.

Cost Comparisons

Another tick in the cloud-based ERP column goes to the relatively low cost of setting up the architecture. If a business was to purchase an in-house ERP system, then they would need to afford a large initial payment to cover the cost of dedicated servers and the software itself. The salaries of IT staff also need to be factored into the equation, as they would need to be paid for the management of the installation of the ERP project, plus being able to maintain it as part of their regular workload. If technical staff are not already experienced in ERP, it may be necessary to provide them with specialist training at a further cost.

In comparison, the cost of moving ERP to the cloud is much more affordable. In cloud-based ERP you simply pay for what you use. The cloud vendor’s staff will carry out all the maintenance and hosting tasks which will leave your current IT staff and resources free for other work. An independent analyst report by Hurwitz and Associates found that cloud-based ERP can cost 50% less than onsite ERP for a company made up of 100 employees over the duration of four years.

Deployment

Once again, cloud-based ERP offers the advantage when it comes to rollouts of the system. As all the end user requires is an Internet connection, this means that ERP can be deployed across multiple offices and regions with ease. If your company grows or even downsizes, then cloud-based ERP will simply adapt with it.

On the other side, in-house ERP takes longer to deploy. Initially there will be the need to procure and install the servers and software. There may also need to be communication with end users to get ERP running on their desktops and provide training on how to access it.

Customisation

By this point, you might be wondering if there are any advantages to in-house ERP at all. The answer comes in the form of customisation. Companies who wish to personalise various features of the ERP system can tailor-make their own version of ERP more easily in-house. This is usually because there is direct contact between the internal software development team and the end users. The internal relationship and understanding of cross-departmental requirements within an individual organisation is something that is difficult to replicate into cloud-based ERP. In-house ERP allows a business to enjoy complete control over their system and adapt it to suit any changes in business requirements.

While there are some advantages to keeping ERP in-house, it is impossible to ignore the key benefits that cloud-based ERP has to offer. It is likely that over time there will be a further increase in the adoption of the cloud so that managing your own in-house ERP systems will eventually become a real rarity.

If you are a cloud professional or an experienced ERP specialist who is looking for their next big career move, then we can help you out. Our dedicated infrastructure and cloud specialist recruitment team are able to place candidates in top calibre roles for innovative organisations. Want to know more? Get in touch today.

The post Will All ERP Move To The Cloud? appeared first on Next Ventures.

Tech Recruitment – The Search Is Going Global

tony — Tue, 29 May 2018 13:08:47 +0000

One in four UK firms are now choosing to look overseas in order to fill their tech recruitment vacancies according to a survey of one thousand managers. The growing digital skills gap in the UK shows no signs of abating and is costing the UK economy an estimated £10 billion per year. It is well documented that businesses in the financial sector in particular are those who are most likely to experience a shortage of talent. Skills that are currently lacking in the UK include cybersecurity, big data analytics, cloud computing, IT management skills and mobile computing experience.

However, technology has connected the world and brought us all much closer together, so what companies may lack internally in terms of tech recruitment, they can easily find abroad. Specific IT jobs that are likely to be filled by overseas candidates include vacancies in development solutions as well as business intelligence and analytics.

Outsourcing Creates A Knowledge Problem

Some companies choose not to invest in tech recruitment but instead outsource some of their work to freelancers who are based in countries such as China, Russia or India. This may be a cost-effective solution, but it stunts the digital growth of a company by not investing in the talent of internal digital teams. When it comes to outsourcing, knowledge development is not given the chance to thrive internally and therefore significant digital advancement at both a company and a national level are bound to suffer as a consequence.

Migration Patterns

The tech industry is a fast-paced and exciting sector to work in. Outside of London there are other various technology hubs located in cities around the world such as Berlin, Amsterdam and Silicon Valley. Tech talent is attracted to relocate between these innovative centres by promises of a tech-centric working environment, forward-thinking companies and increased salaries. SJD Accountancy reported last year that there has been a 13% increase in EU tech talent looking for work in the UK. Within the EU, tech talent from Southern and Eastern Europe is moving to Northern and Western Europe to seek out new opportunities. There is also an upturn in tech recruitment drives from outside of Europe, with companies choosing to hire talent from South Africa, Brazil, Russia and North America.

Visa Issues

Of course, the impending referendum on whether or not the UK will leave the EU is causing some uncertainty about EU citizens who take jobs in the UK. If we leave the EU, then it is not currently known what will happen to those who have secured a role before the Brexit vote takes place. For those who have arrived in the UK from outside of the EU boundaries, then they will need an appropriate level of visa in place. The government recently introduced a ‘tech nation’ visa scheme which aims to make it easier to hire tech talent from outside of the EU. However, critics argue that the process is longwinded and is not working to its full potential as only 37 applications for the 200 positions in Tech City were received.

Tech City

What would attract talent from overseas to work in London or other parts of the UK?

Tech City UK is a huge draw when it comes to tech recruitment. Since its introduction in 2010, the East London-based technology hub has become a massive success. In six short years since the launch, it has allowed the number of technology firms in the capital to grow from 250 to 5,000 which include the likes of Google and Air BnB. Tech companies in the capital also received a record-breaking £1.6 billion in investments last year which account for 63% of the country’s total investments. This has really put London on the map as being one of the digital capitals of the world and makes it easier to attract the best talent that the world has to offer.

The technology industry offers so many career and lifestyle opportunities not just for candidates with the right level of skills and experience, but also for recent graduates who are considered entering the tech recruitment sector. We have recently launched our new graduate scheme – ‘The Next Step’ at our UK headquarters and are inviting career-minded, money-motivated individuals who are driven towards working in sales and recruitment to join our team. The courses are specifically designed to give graduates the opportunity to enhance their sales and business development skills whilst supporting their progress as well-rounded recruitment consultants. If you’re intrigued by this exciting opportunity working for a ground-breaking industry, then don’t hesitate to get in touch today.

The post Tech Recruitment – The Search Is Going Global appeared first on Next Ventures.

Our Guide to Virtualisation

tony — Sat, 24 Mar 2018 14:09:01 +0000

Virtualisation is the single most effective way to reduce IT expenses.

For small, medium and large enterprises, virtualization can boost efficiency and agility, and save money on IT infrastructure and services. With virtualisation, performance and availability increases, which means work gets done quicker within an IT system that easier to manage and cheaper to run.

Many organisations have reaped the benefits of virtualisation, but what is it, is it right for your organisation and are you right to be nervous about jumping on the virtualisation bandwagon?

If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by the prospect of full virtualisation, this guide will help you get your head around it.

What is Virtualisation?

Virtualisation, quite literally, is the creation of a virtual version of something, like a server, storage system or network. It’s the use of software technology to run multiple operating systems and applications on the same server at the same time. It’s part of a general trend towards centralising and streamlining all IT operations for increased productivity and efficiency. It’s truly changing the way people use technology.

It’s also a way to segregate IT processes to protect against security breaches. If some malicious code affects one system, virtualization prevents the same breach affecting others. Bromium, for example, uses virtualisation to improve endpoint security. Some virtualisation software also helps your organisation to save energy, tracking areas where you are wasting resources and helping you streamline them.

The available resources in a network can be combined using virtualisation, making it easier to manage complex networks. Physical storage from multiple network storage devices can be pooled into a central console, using software like Maxta, while server virtualisation can mask server resources to simplify server resource management.

How Can it Help You?

Virtualisation has saved companies millions of pounds per year. Costs savings are the most obvious and far-reaching benefits of virtualisation. Here are 5 other ways that virtualisation can help you…

Offers better availability for your applications
Minimises downtime
Increases productivity, efficiency, agility and responsiveness.
Supports disaster recovery, with softwares like Nakivo.
Allows for centralized IT management.

Although the benefits of virtualisation are clear, there are some things you should keep in mind. There are risks and challenges to virtualisation that you should be aware of, for example. Compliance with software licenses is an ongoing challenge, and failure to do so can result in large fines.

Equally, we encourage that virtualisation is assessed on a case-by-case basis, and that you should only go ahead if it is the right thing for your organisation. Be patient, as you may have to virtualise more than one asset to start to see effects. If you don’t start to see positive benefits, you should contact your IT provider.

Are you looking to make the move over to a virtualised IT system, but lack the niche skills in your team to implement the changes? Well, we have a pool of the most talented tech professionals in the UK on our books. Want to meet some of them? Get in touch today.

The post Our Guide to Virtualisation appeared first on Next Ventures.

How to Write a BYOD Policy

tony — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 14:08:54 +0000

Do you have a BYOD policy?

The rise of mobile is clear to see, and yet many organisations have yet to address it in their working practices.

Tablet and smartphone use is on the rise in the workplace, and employers are beginning to realise the new challenges posed by BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). While BYOD can allow for added flexibility, facilitate remote working and aid employee communication out of office hours, security concerns can also have a serious negative impact on your business.

Defining a safe procedure for mobile device use, , the dos and donts for users, in a clear, well-written and implemented BYOD policy, can mitigate against these potential problems, especially in larger organisations.

Do you need a BYOD policy, and how to you go about writing one? In this article, we’ll show you how to write a BYOD policy. But first, let’s look at why you need one.

The Challenges of BYOD

There are always going to be problems when personal and business data is stored on the same device.

The proliferation of smartphones, tablets and laptops is throwing up a number of tech issues for employers, especially with their free and open osmosis between work and home networks. BYOD is one of the hottest security issues being debated today.

The larger the company, the bigger the problem – it means more blackberries, androids, iPhones, iPads and tablets accessing email, secure desktop, outlook and other server or network-based services.

“Once stored on a personal device, data is only as secure as the security measures in place on that device.”

Computer Weekly

Most personal devices aren’t encrypted, so anyone with access to the physical device can easily access any information stored on it. In the event of a device theft, then, the data is only secure as any passwords that protect it as the only line of defence.

Other’s data, controlled or processed by the business, will likely end up stored on employees’ personal devices, for example, which significantly increases the risk of it being lost or stolen. Equally, employees’ personal data can end up on the company server through back-up or document misfiling, posing real risks to your employees.

Employees and employers share the risk, then, so every organisation should draw up a BYOD policy to protect them both.

Writing a BYOD Policy

The best way to allow employees to get the best out of using mobile devices at work, while at the same time protecting and keeping separate personal and business data, is to write and implement a clear BYOD policy for your organisation.

When writing a BYOD policy, it’s important to strike that balance between agilility and security. You don’t want to lock data down so tight that remote workers can’t access it from the road, for example. Nor should you ignore the inherent security risks of BYOD.

Each BYOD policy will be different, tailored to each individual company, but there are some core guidelines that you should aim to follow when writing one. First you should outline which functions a mobile user can access, protecting key parts of your network from external threats.

Next, you should make clear, in a blacklist and a whitelist, which apps can and can’t be accessed with mobile deviceson the business network. Though hardly foolproof, this is an extremely effective way to regulate mobile device usage and minimise security threats. Antivirus apps and other firewall and security software should feature clearly on the whitelist.

Your BYOD policy should outline how users can protect their devices and best practices when a mobile device is lost or stolen. Where possible, the wide range of Mobile Device Management (MDM) tools on the market can configure, secure, monitor and wipe mobile devices and help you enforce BYOD policy.

Finally, it’s important to agree on a BYOD policy once it’s written. Each employee should sign a clear agreement to say that they will comply with the new policy. It should be indisputable to protect employers in the event of human error.

Do you lack the knowledge and experience in-house to draft a comprehensive BYOD policy? Maybe you need to recruit a mobile security expert to help? The expert you need could be in our pool of top digital talent. Get in touch to find out.

The post How to Write a BYOD Policy appeared first on Next Ventures.

In the Event of a Disaster…. The Cloud and Recovery

tony — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 14:08:54 +0000

Are you ready for an unexpected disaster?

The cloud has become a popular solution for disaster recovery purposes, largely due to cost-effectiveness and the possibility of speedy data retrieval.

Some companies choose to backup all their data and applications directly to the cloud using it as a substitute for traditional offsite tape storage. Other businesses will choose to backup locally and then send their data to the cloud, using it as a secondary off-site backup.

Creating An Effective Disaster Recovery Plan

It’s all very well sending everything up into the cloud, but businesses need to have a restoration blueprint in place to deal with an unexpected disaster. Each company is unique and will need to concentrate on their own business model, prioritising which applications and services are vital to their ongoing operations. At the same time, data that is less important to an organisation should be eliminated or given a reduced priority in the recovery plan, so as not to waste time and money on restoring the unnecessary. It is vital that senior management creates recovery time objectives and has a realistic idea of how long each section of the recovery plan will take.

Once your disaster recovery plan is in place, it is imperative that both backup and recovery from the cloud are tested in invocation scenario conditions. This will give some idea of the likely duration before a return to normal business operations.

Cloud Services Provider

There are many different cloud services packages and providers to choose from, depending on your organisation’s specific requirements. Businesses need to choose a cloud services provider very carefully, based on the amount of data they wish to hold in the cloud and the recuperation objectives that they wish to meet. Some cloud services providers will be unable to do more than simply store data, whilst others will offer a fully managed service which could include carrying out a restore plan in the aftermath of a disaster. If you wish to pay for a managed service, then be sure that you understand the small print in the Service Level Agreement and that you’re confident that an operational restore will take place within the agreed time-frame.

It is worth knowing that even though a cloud services provider is responsible for safeguarding your data, your business is still liable for it in accordance with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation framework, which we explained in detail in a previous article – “Under current legislation, the cloud provider is merely a ‘processor’ of that data, while you remain ‘controller’.”

Bandwidth Management

Restoring a large amount of data from the cloud in a disaster recovery scenario is unfortunately not as simple as it sounds. Available bandwidth for the transfer of data as well as redirecting users to the cloud needs to be taken into consideration, and it may be necessary to schedule parts of the restore to take place during off-peak hours. If this is not possible, then don’t be surprised if Internet-dependent are slow or unavailable during the restore. One way to cope with this issue is to create a bandwidth management strategy – speak to your cloud services provider and find out how much bandwidth allocation you have in your plan, ensure that you have data duplication set up and take advantage of any inbuilt bandwidth management features that your cloud services gateway appliances may have.

Cyber Security

Of course the biggest concern with cloud-based disaster recovery is cyber security. A malicious security attack may well be the reason that you need to restore your systems, so reputable cloud service providers must be able to authenticate users securely as well as ensuring the safe restore of data back to your systems. We prefer the use of sophisticated analytics and data-centric security as an advanced alternative to the basic security measures that many providers use. Feel free to ask your providers of proof that their services are current and regularly maintained with the latest fixes.

If you’re a cloud services provider in need of a disaster recovery specialist with advanced skills in data security and compliance, then call us today and select one of the high-calibre IT cloud candidates from our books.

The post In the Event of a Disaster…. The Cloud and Recovery appeared first on Next Ventures.

Preparing Your Workplace for a Digital Future

tony — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 14:08:54 +0000

Is your workplace prepared for a digital future?

We are living in a digital era, and progressive technology is no longer a nice optional extra. It’s a necessity for success in the digital world. Since 1970, technology has consistently improved office worker productivity by 84%. In 2015 and looking ahead to the future, it’s an intrinsic and unavoidable part of doing business.

By making strategic investments in scaleable IT solutions, secure IT systems and the right digital talent, business can stay nimble, agile and profitable in a rapidly changing landscape.

But equally as important as using the latest technology, is creating a workplace that encourages, fosters and nourishes digital growth and innovation. If your workplace is well prepared, it can offer enormous opportunities for business growth.

“Successfully incorporating today’s digital technologies requires companies to operate in new ways”

MITSloan Management Review

Here are a few ways you can prepare your workplace for the coming of new technologies, inspired by Gartner’s Digital Workplace Summit in London back in September:

Draw a Map

It’s important to map your transition to a digital business – how different technologies will be exploited and where role and responsibilities will arise in each department. Where will you need to recruit new tech talent?

A Workplace for a Mobile Workforce

The mobile working population is growing. It’s expected to reach 105.4 million by 2020, an army of employees working wherever they want – at the office, at home, or abroad. To stay nimble and prepare for an increasingly digital future, it’s important to implement an IT strategy that allows employees to work on the go. This includes the ability to instantly access the data they need, whenever they need it.

Employee Engagement

Finding new ways to working in a digital future requires behaviour change as much as new technologies. The individual leadership required to meet the challenges of a digital workplace is dependent on an engaged workforce. Success in the digital future will call for great autonomy and empowerment, and new recruits will demand it, too. How do employees currently work and engage with each other? Are some of the models outmoded, and will they stand up in the digital future?

Use the Cloud

They keys to success in the digital future will be scaleability and mobility, and the cloud offers both. It’s a solution that can be grown gradually – companies can start small, minimising the investment and risk of data loss, and make the transition to cloud-based working gradually. It will be a real asset as companies prepare their workplaces for the digital future.

Security

A 2014 goverment cybersecurity survey revealed that 81% of large companies have experienced a security breach of some kind, costing on average between £600,000 and £1.5 million. Arguably the biggest and most pressing preparation for a digital future, then, is cyber security. As you upscale your technology use, you must make sure that your security is upgraded in tandem, and that you hire the right cybersecurity talent.

IT leaders responsible for the digital workplace must come up with resourceful ways to use technology to work for their individual organisation. The time is now. Map out your digital future, and hire the right digital talent to help you make the transition.

That’s where we can help. We have access to a pool of the nest niche large enterprise tech professionals in the UK and Europe. Hire for the future today!

The post Preparing Your Workplace for a Digital Future appeared first on Next Ventures.

Why Only 1% of Non-Execs are Digitally Literate

tony — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 14:08:54 +0000

Is your organisation populated with the right digital talent to perform in a digital age?

Well, a new study has revealed that some of the biggest companies in the UK may not be. In this article we’ll look at how important digital experience is for decision making in an increasingly digital landscape.

A Digital Landscape

We live in a digital age, and to reap the benefits of the new landscape, organisations must undergo a digital transformation. This means new management methods, a rethink of traditional HR models and acquiring the right talent with the necessary skills for growth.

It also means that digital experience is vital at a decision-making level for innovation and transformation.

“Organisations must be built to change, which in most cases requires rethinking and redesigning the organisation completely”

Jason Hathaway

Unfortunately, though, a new study published in the Financial Times has revealed a serious skills-gap at the higher levels of companies, and particularly around the boardroom table. There is a shortage of digital skills in Europe in general, but studies have shown a noticeable lack of the necessary digital experience among decision-making non-executive directors in Europe.

A recent PwC Global survey of non-executive directors showed that while a majority recognise the need to champion new technologies to respond to the digital age, a miniscule 1% of non-executive directors in Europe’s top 100 companies have proven digital experience in areas like mobile, social media, big data, security and the web. Of the FTSE 100, only four are reported to have ‘serious’ digital experience on their boards.

Directors are aware of the need to keep pace with social media, content marketing, cybersecurity, big data, cloud computing and new management technologies, but few posess the necessary skills or experience to deliver this. Digital experience at a non-executive level can be a strong, objective influence on an organisation’s digital transformation, and can offer a digital perspective to the decision-making process.

“a non-executive director with digital experience ‘can provide a sanity and security check at times of transition’”

Ashley Highfield, William Hill board member

A Talent War

Digital skills at a non-executive level are not enough to compete in a transformative technological business era. As firms recognise the value of digital skills in today’s marketplace, they are scrambling to acquire the top talent at all levels.

The shortage of the requisite talent means that those with the skills to lead digital transformation are in a strong bargaining position, and there is a talent war among top organisations for the right people:

“Some organisations are offering crazy compensation packages as they bend over backwards to attract these people”

Steven Zuanella, Chief Digital Officer at Zurich Insurance

Here at Next Ventures, we have access to that pool of top digital and tech talent and would be happy to discuss how we can source the right skills for your organisation. Let us help you thrive in the digital age.

The post Why Only 1% of Non-Execs are Digitally Literate appeared first on Next Ventures.

What Attracts Top Tech Talent?

tony — Sat, 04 Nov 2017 14:08:54 +0000

The digital industry has suffered from a major skills shortage in recent years. As companies look to expand the tech talent in their digital teams, they are increasingly willing to invest in their own long-term digital future.

Unfortunately, only a small percentage of candidates possess the necessary digital experience and desirable qualifications to be hired into the vacancies that exist. This is a problem for the economy as it effectively means that unfilled positions impact the productivity and growth of many companies across the UK, and the digital sector as a whole. These businesses are unable to devote the necessary resources to the products or services that they provide, so their efficiency levels and profit margins are compromised.

However, for the minority of candidates who are fully equipped with digital skills in niche technologies, they are able to achieve several job offers to negotiate between. This creates a tech talent war between top organisations who are seeking the best digital industry candidates. Businesses then find themselves in the unusual position of pitching their company to the candidate and trying to attract them with a variety of different methods.

Speed Of Recruitment

Candidates with tech talent do not wait around and are often off the market within three weeks, rejecting offers from extremely high-profile companies in favour of another vacancy. Businesses who are interested in a candidate should call them back within a working day of their interview to let them know whether or not they’ve been successful.

Before advertising their vacancies, firms should also analyse their recruitment procedures and be certain that they’re in a position to hire immediately when the right person becomes available. Delays cost tech talent in this candidate-driven market. Digital recruitment processes such as employee on-boarding impress a candidate by helping to take the hassle out of joining an organisation.

Attractive Tech Culture

A potential employee needs to feel that the company they’re considering joining is one that is forward-thinking. Hirers should provide evidence that they’re committed to corporate IT investments, proving that technology is at the heart of the business.

Let the candidate know that they will have room to develop within the organisation. If an employee feels that they will get the chance to mature and progress at a company, then they will be less inclined to look elsewhere to further their interests. Candidates will also be attracted to an organisation if they believe that they will be allowed a voice and an opportunity to affect change.

Google is famously thought to allow its staff to dedicate 20% of their time to pursue their own projects. This is a philosophy which promotes creative and innovative advancements for the good of both the individual and the company. It is thought that Gmail, AdSense and Google News have all been produced from this 20% time.

Flexible Working

Providing a work-life balance has become a key responsibility for companies who are hiring in 2016.

Candidates who face a gruelling daily commute to a static office will welcome the opportunity to work remotely from home or choose flexible working hours where they might work longer hours for a couple of weeks to obtain an extra day’s annual leave. Top tech candidates will expect the existence of remote technology such as cloud-based systems or BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) in order to help them connect to a corporate network as and when they need to.

Hiring Manager

An organisation needs to think carefully about who the hiring manager and panel of interviewers will be when they’re trying to attract the best candidates in the digital industry. First impressions count for everything, so ensure that potential employees meet a manager who demonstrates exceptional organisational abilities as well as being decisive and assertive. The candidate should also feel that the team are passionate about the purpose and culture of the organisation. Make sure that the interviewing team have the power to hire and negotiate the contract of the candidate. A potential employee will be put off if they have received positive feedback but have to go through a further vetting stage with the ‘real’ manager who couldn’t take the time to be present initially.

January / February Vacancies

Many candidates will choose to search for a new job at the beginning of the year, so a company will attract the best tech talent by advertising their vacancies in January or February.

Digital employees will feel more motivated to join an organisation if they have been personally head-hunted. Even if they feel happy in their current role, the idea that they might be valued more highly elsewhere is enough to gain the interest of some impressive digital specialists in 2016.

Whether you’re an expert in the field of niche digital technology or a company in need of some top tech talent, then we should be your first port of call. We have an unparalleled knowledge of the technology industry and can skill-match the best candidates to the top digital vacancies in the current marketplace. Call us today to find out how we can help you.

The post What Attracts Top Tech Talent? appeared first on Next Ventures.

NEXT VENTURES LAUNCHES DUTCH LANGUAGE WEB SITE www.next-ventures.nl TO SUPPORT ITS EXPANSION AND GROWTH THROUGHOUT THE NETHERLANDS

tony — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 14:08:54 +0000

Multi-award winning niche ‘Large Enterprise Technology’ focused recruitment business Next Ventures has added a Dutch language site to its multi-lingual next-ventures.com web site to support the expansion and ongoing growth of Next Ventures BV in the Netherlands, a subsidiary of Next Ventures Ltd, opened in Q4 FY15 to support the Group’s international revenue goals and growth strategy for FY16.

Since October 2015 Next Ventures BV has generated a number of key new clients, successfully on-boarded expert, enterprise technology focused consultants, proficient in recruitment and staffing in the Netherlands and significantly expanded its niche enterprise technology focused network of qualified professionals throughout the region.

The launch of the Group’s Dutch language site http://www.next-ventures.nl will further ensure the effective communication of the tailored, expert recruitment services and niche technology specialisation provided by Next Ventures BV to clients and candidates throughout the Netherlands.

Next Ventures Ltd international growth strategy key objectives for FY16 include the launch of new offices in New York, USA, in April 2016 as well as the continued, ongoing support of its additional subsidiaries in Germany, Switzerland and Brazil.

Next Ventures BV Country Manager Anasja Juinen explains “We are buoyed by the business and growth in the Netherlands we have generated to date and the launch of our Dutch language web site provides that additional tier of market-focused communication to our clients and candidates alike.”

Anasja continues “Next Ventures BV continues to offer tailored, niche technology focused recruitment services to key industries and clients throughout the Netherlands. Our capacity to provide expert, recruitment services around a broad range of enterprise technologies strengthens as our team does combined with our network of local, referenced technical professionals tripling since our inception. All indicating to our ability to not only exceed client and candidates technology focused staffing expectations this year but also our competency in meeting our growth goals for FY16.”

The post NEXT VENTURES LAUNCHES DUTCH LANGUAGE WEB SITE www.next-ventures.nl TO SUPPORT ITS EXPANSION AND GROWTH THROUGHOUT THE NETHERLANDS appeared first on Next Ventures.

Next Ventures’ Graduate Training Academy "The Next Step" Is Launched At UK Headquarters

tony — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 14:08:54 +0000

Multi-award winning niche ‘Large Enterprise Technology’ focused recruitment business Next Ventures has launched its graduate training academy “The Next Step” at its London headquarters. The academy has been created in support of the Group’s graduate recruitment strategy.

Next Ventures has had year on year growth since 2006 and to further accelerate growth over the next 2 years, the recruitment and induction of graduates into the academy programme are key objectives for 2016.

Since Q4 2015 Next Ventures has on-boarded 6 graduates as Graduate Recruitment Consultants who are now members of its academy “The Next Step”, with a further 10 at qualifying stage within the recruitment process. Each academy member is a recent graduate with diverse qualifications in multiple disciplines alongside cohesive attributes including determination and ambition.
“The Next Step” is to be implemented throughout Next Ventures’ international subsidiaries including Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Brazil and the Group’s latest subsidiary to be launched in New York, USA.

“The Next Step” academy’s courses are designed to enable graduates to increase and enhance their sales and business development skills whilst providing a learning platform in recruitment to support their development into 360 degree Recruitment Consultants. Training is delivered by the Group’s Head of Learning and Development who has over 8 years’ experience in the delivery of graduate-focused courses for enterprise technology recruitment businesses.

“We are delighted at the launch of our graduate academy “The Next Step” following the first phase of our recruitment drive and are excited at the calibre and ambition of our successful candidates. We are also thrilled at the high volume of prospective candidates currently in the process of becoming members.” explains Darren Rosenfeld, co-founder of Next Ventures. “This not only meets our short term objectives but provides assurance of the future growth of Next Ventures.”

“We still have a number of Graduate Recruitment Consultant roles to fill throughout the 1st half of 2016 and places to fill within “The Next Step” academy. As our proactive recruitment drive continues we look forward to speaking to graduates from around the UK who are career-minded, money-motivated individuals, mutually interested in a successful career in sales and recruitment.”

The post Next Ventures’ Graduate Training Academy "The Next Step" Is Launched At UK Headquarters appeared first on Next Ventures.

Where Are the Major Gaps in the Digital Skills Market?

tony — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 14:08:54 +0000

“Over 12 million people, and a million small businesses in the UK do not have the skills to prosper in the digital era.”

BBC

We wrote a few months ago about how to plug the front-end development skills gap, but where, we wonder, are the gaps in the digital skills market in a broader sense?

Basically, there is a gap between the skills that employers want, and the skills available in today’s candidate pool. Industries within the niche large enterprise sector are changing rapidly, and it is difficult for workers to acquire the right software skills to keep up. Requirements for roles are changing so rapidly, skills soon become out-dated and new roles cannot be created quickly enough to meet demand.

“the amount of change in this occupation [programmers] over three years is unfathomable, and can’t necessarily be planned for. If you stop your learning at any one point, you could be completely redundant within a couple of years.”

Respondent, UKCES Employer Skills Survey 2015

As a result, skills gaps have emerged in parts of the digital skills market in the UK. In 2013, Gartner predicted that:

“By 2015, 4.4 million IT jobs globally will be created to support big data. But there is a challenge. There is not enough talent in the industry… only one third of the IT jobs will be filled”

Their prophecy hasn’t proved far wrong.

Of the 364,000 organisations employing tech specialists in the UK, 52% identified a shortfall among their staff, according to The Tech Partnership’s 2015 Employer Skills Survey. We’ve already identified a skills gap in the front-end development industry, but where else is there a shortfall in digital skills?

Well, according to The Tech Partnership, businesses operating within the financial services are those most likely to experience a shortage of desired digital skills. In fact, a huge 61% of those canvassed in the 2015 Employer Skills Survey said that their current workforce were lacking in the skills they needed. High percentages of tech firms and public sector organisations also reported a skills gap in their industry sectors. In fact, the survey found that, on average, only 79% of tech specialists had the skills needed for the job. High level, technical IT skills like cybersecurity, big data analytics, mobile and cloud computing, IT management skills and tech sector knowledge were all cited as the main skills missing in today’s candidates. In some cases (like big data analytics) there was a 39% gap between skills needed, and skills available.

Geographically, too, there are major digital skills gaps in the UK. Over a third of the population in Wales for example, do not have the requisite digital skills to meet the needs of the Digital Economy, which surveys link to education, income, health and internet access.

As the UK digital economy thrives and gains ground economically over every other sector, it’s essential that organisations are able to plug skills gaps with the necessary expertise or candidates. This falls mainly to education and development of course, but you also can hire for skills gaps. Though limited and in-demand, we have access to some of the most-skilled and niche tech talent in the UK.

Want us to help you fill your skills gap?

The post Where Are the Major Gaps in the Digital Skills Market? appeared first on Next Ventures.

The Latest Oracle Developments You Should Know About

tony — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 14:09:01 +0000

Do you work with Oracle technologies? Are you up to date with the latest developments? It’s important for Oracle-certified professionals and member organisations to keep up to date with improvements, upgrades and new releases that are changing the way we work with the cloud.

So, to make your life a little easier, we thought we’d put together our guide to the Oracle developments you should know about in September 2015.

Additions to Oracle Cloud Platform

Oracle has made significant additions to their cloud platform services, opening up their lead over cloud competitors.

New platform and infrastructure services added to Oracle’s cloud platform should enable developers, IT professionals and business users to accelerate their digital transformation and drive innovation in the future.

Back in June, Oracle Executive Chairman of the Board and CTO Larry Ellison announced new additions to the Oracle Cloud Platform. It’s 24 new cloud services – including Oracle Database Cloud, Oracle Archive Storage Cloud, Oracle Big Data Cloud, Oracle Integration Cloud and Oracle Mobile Cloud – have even further extended Oracle’s lead as the world’s broadest portfolio of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS.

The latter, the eagerly anticipated Oracle Mobile Cloud, is focused on providing easy-to-use tools for business professionals using Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) to mine and analyse data about its use. It’s designed with mobile app developers, service developers, line of business stakeholders and enterprise architects and other mobile and digital professionals in mind.

Release of Oracle Service Cloud & Oracle Social Cloud

Today, more than one in three customers prefer to contact brands through social channels rather than by phone or email. New Oracle Service Cloud and Oracle Social Cloud functionality will allow business users to deliver the best possible customer service across all channels.

“The updates to the Oracle Service Cloud and Oracle Social Cloud help businesses listen, identify and track social conversations, enabling them to quickly and efficiently respond to customers looking for answers, which helps foster a loyal group of brand ambassadors.”

David Vap, Group Vice President, Product Development, Oracle

New workflow and automation capabilities will empower organisations to leverage the power of social insights and engagements, while Community Self-Service functions will allow them to deliver a seamless experience between web service and community interactions.

New Oracle Integrated Appliances Reduce IT costs

Although it’s been some six months since it was announced, it’s worth mentioning Oracle’s integration of appliances back in January, and how it is helping to significantly reduce IT costs. A new generation of engineered systems, including the new Virtual Compute Appliance X5, Oracle FS1 Series Flash Storage System and Oracle Exadata Database Machine X5 has increased value while reducing customer costs:

“Our customers want their data centers to be as simple and as automated as possible. With some of Oracle’s engineered systems and appliances, you can pay 50 percent less, BUT you have to be willing to take TWICE the performance.”

Larry Ellison, CTO & Executive Chairman of the Board, Oracle

Are you an Oracle certified professional looking for your next opportunity? Staying current with the latest Oracle developments is a sure way to set yourself apart from the pool. Equally, if you are an organisation looking to hire someone who can help you take full advantage of the latest Oracle developments, you now know what to look for!

Whichever you are, we can help. Get in touch today!

The post The Latest Oracle Developments You Should Know About appeared first on Next Ventures.

The Ever-Increasing Importance of Cloud Security

tony — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 14:09:01 +0000

Cloud security is on everyone’s mind.

Most are converted to the convenience, flexibility, business agility and savings offered by the cloud. In fact, recent research by the Cloud Industry Forum revealed that the overall Cloud adoption rate in the UK today stands at 84 percent – that’s more than 4 in 5.

“Cloud computing has come a long way in just a few short years. When we commissioned our first major research project into the UK Cloud market in 2010, just 48 percent of organisations had consciously adopted a Cloud service.”

Alex Hilton, CEO of CIF

Security, though, is perhaps the final stumbling block. High profile hacks, data breaches and cases of personal information theft have brought cloud security firmly into public discussion, and the question on everyone’s lips is, still, ‘Is it safe?’

According to the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) research published in June, a lack of trust is still inhibiting many organisations from making full use of cloud-based services. Trust and data security remain the most important factors in cloud use, and many still doubt it’s safety. At the forefront are concerns that data will be appropriately secured, that it won’t be compromised or inadvertently accessed, and that data can be moved or terminated when it’s no longer needed.

In a poll of 250 senior IT decision-makers in the UK earlier this year, 70% cited data security as the biggest concern during the decision-making process to move to the cloud, an increase of 9% on the year before. As a result, a majority of organisations are sticking with Hybrid, fearful of committing fully to the cloud. They fear losing control of IT systems, lack the budget or doubt privacy and security.

This research demonstrates clearly the ever-growing importance of cloud security, and why it will be the last stand in persuading people over to the cloud.

So what does this mean for the cloud in 2015?

Well, crucially, cloud providers need to find ways to put users’ minds at ease and prove, beyond doubt, that they can keep data secure. Disclosing cloud contracts to the public in a more open way, for example, would go some way to restoring and building on customer trust and confidence.

We are already seeing a rise in SaaS and, according to Information Week, should expect a rise in the cloud-based security services market to $4.2 billion by 2016. Small and medium businesses will look to cloud solutions that increase their security position and protect against risks.

We would hope that we’ll see further collaboration between security experts, making it easier to identify emerging threats in real time, and initiate immediate responses. Equally, more sophisticated analytics will help to identify anomalous network behaviour. There are greater calls for more sophisticated approaches to security, beyond encryption and password protection – like data-centric security, for example.

Cloud security is more important than ever. It appears that it is the only obstacle to universal adoption – so we’d expect to see a concerted effort to sure up any weaknesses in cloud security going forward.

Are you an expert in cloud security? Could you help an organisation on the verge with their security doubts? Get in touch today to find your next opportunity.

The post The Ever-Increasing Importance of Cloud Security appeared first on Next Ventures.

Why You Don’t Have to Have Millions of Users to Have Big Data Problems

tony — Sat, 28 Oct 2017 13:09:01 +0000

You don’t have to be eBay to have problems with Big Data.

By 2020 there will be 44 trillion gigabytes of information out there; about ten times today’s amount. Soon, we’ll be measuring data by zettabytes — 1 sextillion bytes. ‘Big data’ is the percentage of that data that is useful to be mined – currently sitting at around 22% of the total.

Big data is used by big organisations like Google, Amazon and Facebook to target their advertising. It’s been used to fight terrorism, work towards a cure for cancer and predict the spread of Ebola. Big organisations with millions of users leverage the masses of information stored there on a daily basis.

But the opportunities and challenges of big data aren’t restricted to those with millions of users. Industry experts agree that you don’t need have millions of concurrent users to experience problems with Big Data – the challenges of analysing big data increasing all the time in volume and complexity are the same.

In fact, a recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Big Data: Harnessing a Game-Changing Asset , revealed that almost half of those who listed big data as a major organisational issue reported revenues of $500 million or less – the small to medium organisations with far fewer users than the likes of eBay or Google.

But we don’t like to start on a negative. So we thought we’d begin this article by discussing ways that big data can help small organisations with fewer users, as well as large ones.

“In many ways, big data is suited to small business in ways that it never was for big business – even the most potent insights are valueless if your business is not agile enough to act on them in a timely fashion.”

Bernard Marr, Business Standard

For many small businesses and organisations, big data is dismissed as something only big organisations do. It sounds expensive, difficult and time-consuming and small businesses feel ill-equipped to deal with the terabytes and petabytes of data in front of them. But, as Duncan Ross, Director of Data Science at Analytics Service Provider Teradata told the BBC last year:

“Big data presents many business opportunities. But you have to be prepared to pivot and follow where the data – and the money – takes you.”

Big data is relative, and so are the problems. Whatever the size of your organisation or number of big data users, you’ll eventually reach a point where the volume, variety and speed of your data become too much. The only question is when you reach that point, which is often relative to your size. Any organisation, regardless of user numbers, can leverage big data to its advantage and to meet its individual business goals – all it takes is agility & smart analysis.

“Whether your revenues are $1 million or $100 billion, knowing how to manage and analyse data is critical to success”

SAS

The key to avoiding the problems associated with big data is analytics – allowing you to determine what to do with your data, which data is relevant and how to appropriately store your data, too. By using the right analytics to solve your big data problems, you’ll start to see big data as the opportunity it is, not just a challenge for organisations with millions of users.

Leveraging big data to your advantage depends on in-house experts who know what they are doing. Are you looking for the right candidate to help you overcome your Big Data problems? Get in touch today! We’ll be happy to help.

The post Why You Don’t Have to Have Millions of Users to Have Big Data Problems appeared first on Next Ventures.

When Can HR Get Involved in Social Responsibility?

tony — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 13:09:01 +0000

How do you give back?

Many organisations have invested heavily in corporate social responsibility programmes to give back, build trust with stakeholders, employees and customers and, in many cases, improve their corporate brand.

We’ve been involved in a few fundraising and social responsibility schemes in recent months ourselves. Given the chance to become Geared Up employees, 37% of our workforce signed up to make contributions to charity out of their monthly salary.

“As part of our social consciousness strategy combined with our teams’ personal desires to give something back, we sought a work-place scheme that allowed us to make regular contributions to chosen charities direct from pay.”

Darren Rosenfeld, Director

Seventeen of us (including our willing directors!) were due to compete in The Great River Race at the weekend, in aid of Great Ormond Street hospital, however at the last minute dragon-boats were dis-allowed to participate due to poor conditions. Not only was the training and the build-up to the race itself a great boost for our team and company culture, but we also felt part of a much larger effort to raise money for an extremely worthy cause!

But true corporate social responsibility is not just about gestures, charity fundraisers and donation initiatives (as worthy & honorable as these things are) – it’s about ethical and responsible business practices. It’s about embedding a sense of fair play and social responsibility in the very fabric of your company culture, and prioritising these things alongside financial success:

“If you define your value creation in narrow financial terms, you can develop this very far while maintaining a deep disregard for social responsibility.”

Jonny Gifford, Research Advisor to the CIPD

Placing the welfare of others and ethical behaviour at the heart of your business values, this plays a key role in employee morale and customer loyalty. But should HR take a more active role in driving corporate social responsibility programmes?

When Can HR Get Involved?

With its unique, objective view of an organisation’s workforce, HR, can get involved in promoting ethical practices, monitoring the social welfare and wellbeing of employees and examining working practices for economic, social and environmental impact. In fact, it should be leading it.

CIPD research into organisations like Capgemini, Ginsters, Pret A Manger, Siemens, Toyota GB, Veolia Environmental Services and Wates found that HR is rarely involved in corporate responsibility. In fact, of the 353 HR professional and 523 middle and senior managers surveyed, only 13% reported that HR was responsible for corporate social responsibility strategy.

“HR is not absolved from the corporate responsibility of other aspects of the business and needs to be able and willing to ask the challenging questions.”

‘The Role of HR in Corporate Responsibility’, CIPD Report

In many organisations, though, HR has historically taken a supportive role in corporate social responsibility. If people play a central role in creating and living socially responsible company values, then surely HR should take a leadership role in championing social responsibility?

“HR is ideally placed to gauge organizational culture, understand it and change it.”

Jonny Gifford, Research Advisor to the CIPD

So how can they get involved?

HR is about just that, humans. It is up to them, therefore, to make sure that people management practices within their organisation are ethical and responsible, first of all. Then, they can play a key role in embedding corporate social responsibility through training and support. Organisations can’t just expect social responsibility from their employees – it requires learning and development, and HR are well placed to deliver that.

“The HR function needs to think about leadership, recruitment and reward. Some of the best organizations have taken an interesting HR aspect to this where they look at the work-life balance of CSR.

Judi Marshall, Lancaster University Management School

Thanks for reading! If you want to know more about how we weave social responsibility into the tapestry of our company culture, please do not hesitate to get in touch!

The post When Can HR Get Involved in Social Responsibility? appeared first on Next Ventures.

NEXT VENTURES CONTINUES EUROPEAN EXPANSION WITH THE OPENING OF NEXT VENTURES BV IN AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS AND NEW OFFICES FOR NEXT VENTURES GMBH IN MUNICH, GERMANY.

tony — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 13:09:01 +0000

Multi-award winning niche ‘Large Enterprise Technology’ focused recruitment business Next Ventures continues its European expansion with the opening of Next Venture BV in new offices in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and new offices for Next Ventures GmbH in Munich, Germany.

To support the continued expansion of Next Ventures’ European operations, the Group also successfully on-boarded senior country managers for the Netherlands and Germany to capitalise on the growth generated to date in both regions.

Anasja Juinen joins as Country Manager Netherlands for Next Ventures BV and Marc Parmentier joins as Country Manager Germany for Next Ventures GmbH.

Anasja Juinen has over 16 years recruitment experience in the Dutch market with the successful provision of fully referenced permanent and temporary resources to industries including retail, telecommunications, banking and utilities. Juinen’s extensive Dutch recruitment experience means she is well versed in local employment regulations, rates and industries combined with a vast network of fully referenced, technical Dutch consultants.

The Groups’ ongoing recruitment drive for its new offices in Amsterdam has resulted in successfully on-boarding Bryan Peereboom, a specialist niche technology focused recruiter, who will support Juinen on her growth strategy for Next Ventures BV.

In Munich, the Group on-boarded Marc Parmentier as its Country Manager for Next Ventures GmbH to continue the growth in that region from its new offices in Munich. Parmentier brings 16 years’ experience in the specialist IT recruitment market with in-depth knowledge of staffing, recruitment and workforce solutions for the DACH region. The Group continues to actively engage technically focused recruitment consultants across the region to work alongside Parmentier and support the Groups’ German growth strategy.

Richard Lacey, co-founder of Next Ventures explains “The Group continues to yield strong, consistent performance, with 65% of total business generated overseas whilst our Swiss and German operations consistently perform ahead of projections. Upon analysis, we identified the regions where our specialist niche technology recruitment expertise could be capitalised upon and subsequently opened new offices in the heart of both Amsterdam and Munich’s cities to provide optimum support for our expanding client bases.”

Lacey continues “We are confident our newly appointed country managers will continue our strong European growth with the continued delivery of first-class niche technology recruitment services to our existing clients, add new clients and industries to our current European portfolio and provide an up-surge in our network of referenced, technical professionals not just in respective regions but across Europe.”

The post NEXT VENTURES CONTINUES EUROPEAN EXPANSION WITH THE OPENING OF NEXT VENTURES BV IN AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS AND NEW OFFICES FOR NEXT VENTURES GMBH IN MUNICH, GERMANY. appeared first on Next Ventures.

5 Ways Technology Has Changed HR & Recruitment

tony — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 13:09:01 +0000

Technology has changed most aspects of modern life.

Everything from the way we shop and manage our money to the way we work has been influenced by new technology. The recruitment process is no different – recruitment technology has fundamentally changed the way we operate, and no more potently than in the niche large enterprise technology sectors that we recruit for.

Though it’s a lot to keep up with, for both candidate and recruiter, the latest technology gives us the edge when it comes to recruiting top talent on behalf of our clients. Whether you’re a front-end developer looking for the next opportunity or a Fortune 500 CIO looking to recruit the best talent, you should be aware of the latest trends in recruitment technology.

Remember the days of face-to-face networking and cold calling candidates? Well, they are long gone. Technology has fundamentally changed the business of recruitment and HR in the following 5 ways:

1. Mobile

72% of job seekers visited a company website from their device (whilst) 45% have even applied for a position from their device”.

Undercover Recruiter

Mobile devices are changing the pace of recruitment and the expectations of candidates. Over 85% of people access the web on a mobile device every day, while over 25% of Google searches containing the word ‘job’ come from a mobile device.

The limitless opportunities to search for, connect and engage with organisations have risen the expectations of candidates, and recruiters are forced to match them with agility, flexibility and action to secure the best candidates. Many recruiters have been slow to adapt to the shift to mobile, but it has now progressed to the point of ubiquity. All recruiting, now, is mobile recruiting, and as long as there is a signal, you can engage with candidates online.

2. Interviewing

In 2015, over 75% of job seekers are already in full-time employment, which can present difficulties when arranging interviews for new roles. The sophistication of video interviewing technology allows candidates and hiring managers the convenience of interviewing remotely, and saves on time, travelling costs and expenses.

3. Diversity

Technology has allowed business leaders and hiring managers to access to a much more diverse range of candidates. At a time when diversity is a key element in the success of a business, the ability of recruiters to access a diverse pool is a huge differentiating factor iin the hiring process.

4. Social Media

Social media has wrought some of the bigger changes in the recruitment process. Candidates use it to share job adverts and get to know the culture, values and opportunities of a prospective employer. Recruiters use it to get to know their candidates.

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are still the biggest three social platforms for job seekers, but Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat are gaining traction in 2015. Recruiters most actively use LinkedIn to find top candidates.

Candidates must be aware of the fact that recruiters and employers consider their social media presence when hiring, so it pays to maintain a professional demeanor, promote your stronger qualities and build a wide network through channels like LinkedIn. Smart recruiters should also use effective content marketing to reach out to the most talented and in-demand candidates through social media.

5. Glassdoor

New technology like Glassdoor has put new power in the hands of candidates, and demands greater transparency from employers and recruiters. Candidates can use it to vet a company, how much it pays and how happy its employees are. It offers x-ray vision into the daily workings of a company. This is one area where technology truly has forced complete cultural change in the way that organisations work and hire.

Technology has not only changed the way candidates search for new jobs and how recruiters find them, but its rise has created entirely new roles. The growth of the digital sector has shifted the focus of recruitment resources, and recruitment firms specialising in technology niches are emerging and growing at pace, working hard to find talented and adequately skilled candidates in an area where there appears to be a gap.

Do you want to know more about how we use technology to find top talent in the niche large enterprise sectors? Or perhaps you’re looking for your next role in the growing digital and tech sector? Get in touch today!

The post 5 Ways Technology Has Changed HR & Recruitment appeared first on Next Ventures.

Who Is Responsible for Data in the Cloud?

tony — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 13:09:01 +0000

“One security gamble when moving to the cloud is the data owner’s loss of control.”

Government Tech

In our complex and ever-changing digital landscape, the issue of data privacy and security has risen to the top of the agenda. It’s the last remaining hurdle to universal cloud adoption, with a 9% increase this year in those citing data security as their main cloud concern, according to Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) research published back in June.

Most of us are converted to the advantages and benefits of transferring data and processes over to the cloud, but have doubts about handing over control and responsibility to someone else. This one question that still perplexes many cloud users and skeptics is – “who is responsible for data in the cloud?”

It’s a grey area for sure. The cloud is still in its infancy and despite the speed of its growth and the urgency of user adoption, certain key issues like compliance and responsibility, have been left to chance by cloud users.

Recent high-profile data breaches, personal information thefts and large-scale hacks have proven that we can’t afford to leave the responsibility to chance. So who is responsible for protecting your personal information in the cloud? Is it you, or the cloud provider? And what does the law say in the event of a data breach or misuse of your personal data in the cloud?

Well, while you might assume that your cloud provider is responsible for the safety of your data once you entrust it to the cloud, you are, in fact still liable.

Under current legislation, the cloud provider is merely a ‘processor’ of that data, while you remain ‘controller’.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

New regulation expected in October 2015 will demand must stricter security from controllers in the way they handle cloud-based data. In the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) framework, businesses using the cloud will have to appoint an in-house data protection officer, appropriately trained in compliance, how to conduct security audits and deal with data breaches. When the EU directive comes into effect, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will be able to find companies that breach the Data Protection Act.

The stakes of ensuring the security of cloud-based data will be higher once the new regulation comes into place in October, and trusting your data to the cloud will become less of a gamble. We’d expect the demand for skilled professionals with the right niche data protection skills to soar.

We have an unmatched global network of fully referenced cloud professionals and data protection specialists on our books, so if you’re looking for a cloud security expert with the kind of specialist skills to help you comply with new regulations, we can help you find them – Get in touch today!

Read more about cloud data security and the rise of confidential computing.

The post Who Is Responsible for Data in the Cloud? appeared first on Next Ventures.

How BYOT Could Revolutionise Tech Recruitment

tony — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 14:08:47 +0000

A new approach to tech recruitment is taking shape in Silicon Valley. Stripe, who are a payments processing group, are trialling a ground-breaking initiative in their quest to fill teams of software engineers, designers and other technical vacancies in their firm. Rather than hire individuals to make up these teams, they are inviting groups of between 2-5 people to submit applications for the team-based positions. They call this strategy ‘Bring Your Own Team’ (BYOT). Whilst they acknowledge that it is an experiment at present, Stripe has attracted a large amount of positive industry reaction in its innovative approach to the hiring process. This is likely to signal the start of a new movement in tech recruitment.

There’s No I In Team

Why focus on hiring entire teams of people for tech roles, rather than going down the traditional route of identifying a vacancy that needs to be filled by a highly skilled individual?

The performance of a business is often measured by the success of its internal teams as a collective. Of course, there will always be stars that shine within an organisation, but people are largely motivated and complimented by the teams that they work with. It can be difficult to create the perfect balance and blend of skills and personalities within a team from scratch, so wouldn’t it be better to hire an existing group of individuals who have achieved that equilibrium already?

It is a common problem within companies that a skilled candidate is hired into a role after impressing with their past work experience and interview presence. Yet once they’re working at the organisation, they simply don’t fit in. Perhaps this is down to jealousy from existing employees, a difference in working styles or just a clash of personalities. Whatever the reason, a candidate who doesn’t gel with their colleagues is not likely to stick around long, which creates a recruitment issue. Hire a team and they already know what to expect about each other’s professional habits, behaviours and standards. This approach is more likely to achieve longevity with a company.

Interview Process

Tech recruitment companies will be aware that they have many candidates on their books who are highly skilled and have a great portfolio of project experience, yet they don’t come across well at an interview stage. Naturally, technical staff have a range of personalities and some will suffer from nerves and a lack of confidence. Whilst recruitment companies will do their best to coach candidates about interview technique, the problem still exists when sending individual candidates off for an interview and hearing feedback that they have failed to impress in front of a panel. BYOT can assist in eradicating this common problem from the tech recruitment industry. If there are stronger personalities that can lead the team through the interview process by presenting the strength of the entire team to a hiring panel, then this will go a long way to solving the problem for more introvert employees.

Diversity

One problem that needs to be confronted in the tech recruitment industry is that of diversity. Typically, women and several ethnic minority groups are under-represented in the technical industry. Tackling diversity was one of the key aims of Stripe’s BYOT experiment. Stripe Founder Patrick Collison told the BBC –

“Because they don’t ‘look’ the same, quote, unquote, they have more difficulty getting hired. It’s a contributing factor to the lack of diversity that we continue to observe in the technology industry.”

Their belief is that interview panels in Silicon Valley in particular are often made up of white middle-class men who are more likely to hire yet more white middle-class men into technical vacancies. However, the BYOT approach has seen an increase in female applicants within a team, with the current data recording a 50/50 split between genders and several husband and wife duos putting themselves forward for selection. This can only be a positive development in tech recruitment, as we have recently discussed the digital skills gap and how more women in the industry could be the key to solving this crisis. Companies that hire minority groups into roles will also be less likely to be red-flagged as being discriminatory.

The tech recruitment industry continues to move forward at an incredible pace with BYOT being the latest development on the horizon. If you’d like to be a part of this exciting and ground-breaking industry, then why not consider applying to join our Graduate Training Academy – ‘The Next Step’. The academy’s courses are designed to assist graduates in increasing and enhancing their sales and business development skills. The opportunity will also provide a superior learning platform in recruitment which will support their development into 360 degree recruitment consultants in the tech industry. If you’d like to find out more about how to make an excellent career move by joining the academy, then contact us today.

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5 IT Skills That Will Be In High Demand In 2016

tony — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 14:08:47 +0000

The digital industry is currently going through an incredible state of change. Innovations such as IoT, the cloud and big data are completely transforming how companies are able to do business in 2016. The pace at which companies create new technology positions is not being met with an equal supply of skilled professionals to fill these vacancies. This is creating a digital IT skills gap which poses a significant problem for the growth of the technology industry. Here are some of the roles that are in high demand in 2016.

Data Scientists

Big data is an essential commodity in 2016. Businesses are reliant on data to keep them informed about the digital progress of their organisation. Data can help organisations to discover in-depth information regarding marketing efforts, sales achievements, customer behaviour and the success rates of their internal operations. However, pure data is not useful without the ability to interpret, analyse and convert it into actionable information. Data scientists are required by many types of industries to build systems that have the ability to capture data and make it readable by team members in various key areas. Data scientists will also need to provide methods for employees to easily share and present information to other teams, senior management or customers.

Cloud Architects

CompTIA’s 5th Annual Trends in Cloud Computing report states that more than 90% of companies have adopted the cloud on some level. Whether a business utilises SaaS, IaaS or PaaS technology there will often be a requirement for an individual with cloud architecture IT skills to oversee the cloud infrastructure in the organisation. The role involves managing app architecture and deployment in public, private or even hybrid cloud environments. Often cloud architects are hired into a role before the company has moved their systems to the cloud. This is important as a cloud architect can design the layout and implementation of the cloud solution. The technical aspects of the role will require specialist cloud IT skills. However, architects may also need to get involved in the legal implications of a move to the cloud, which will include understanding regulatory considerations and service-level agreements. Cloud architects must also be able and willing to keep abreast of current industry trends and issues.

Cybersecurity Professionals

The increasing threat of cyber security breaches and hacking scandals have seen high-profile companies lose millions in terms of both finances and reputation. Unfortunately cyber threats are notoriously difficult to keep up with, as hackers will continuously find new ways to expose the weak areas of a particular application, platform or environment. Therefore companies are recognising the importance in hiring professionals with IT skills in cybersecurity to help them secure their systems and protect them from ruin. Unfortunately there is an enormous cybersecurity skills gap at the moment, so those with security qualifications are in extremely high demand. Employees with existing experience in other areas of niche technology with the willingness to train in current cybersecurity trends are also likely to be considered for these vacancies.

UI/UX Designers

As consumers in 2016 become ever more impatient, they require ease of use for each type of platform they utilise for their communication and leisure needs. Whether they’re online for shopping, messaging, business or gaming, users will respond well to interfaces that boast a clean design which is seamless and intuitive. Companies that have invested in a design with these qualities will find that they have the edge over their competitors. User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) vacancies are created by organisations who want to improve the design and usability of their software interfaces.

Mobile Engineers

Mobile platforms have now surpassed desktop technology in terms of usage. Consumers regularly browse their mobiles to check messages or access applications whilst working remotely or even within the workplace. Insights from ComScore suggest that smartphone usage is up 394% and a staggering 21% of millennials no longer use desktops to go online at all. Unsurprising then is the recognised need for mobile engineers to keep up with market trends and be able to supply consumers with a robust platform to perform their daily activities on. In particular cross-platform mobile development professionals with the ability to support development stacks across multiple devices are in demand this year.

If you have IT skills in niche technology and would like to utilise your talents in one of these exciting roles, then get in touch with us. Our highly trained recruitment experts with specialist industry experience are able to understand your past roles and work out which current positions offer you the best prospects for your niche enterprise technology career. We will assist you in every aspect of the recruitment process from giving you CV tips, to holding interview walk-throughs and negotiating contracts for you. Want to know more? Get in touch today.

The post 5 IT Skills That Will Be In High Demand In 2016 appeared first on Next Ventures.

Cloud Trends To Expect In 2016

tony — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 14:08:47 +0000

Cloud computing has evolved through many different stages of progression since it arrived in 1999. Since then, cloud technology has become increasingly sophisticated each year, and 2016 will be no exception. Here are some major cloud trends to look out for in the next few months.

Cloudops

This term refers to the operations that are required to maintain and oversee the process of managing activity within a cloud-based environment. Areas of operation include security, management, performance and the extensive use of analytics.

Cloudops is an essential service that is becoming increasingly important as more businesses make the move to the cloud. Cloudop specialists need to utilise the trend data that is produced from cloudop analytics. An example of how this data can be utilised is by highlighting read-write errors that are an indication that a hard disk in the cloud is about to fail and needs to be swapped out. The data can also deliver information regarding disk capacity and will alert a cloud services provider that they need to purchase more servers or hardware in order to manage the cloud needs of their existing or future customers.

As enterprises are demanding more from clouds, the ops data can also assist in deciding thresholds for server policies which will ensure that cloud customers can be allocated what they need without it impacting on the overall service of your cloud servers.

Cloud data, which is also referred to as cloud metrics can provide critical information about uptime and service disruptions as well as the performance of your cloud servers.

Cloudops is one of the cloud trends that is likely to explode in 2016. Predictive analytics will become more user-friendly and an essential part of any cloud-based business.

Cloud Containers

Cloud containers are a cost-effective and efficient way of accessing a business application in the cloud. Essentially, containers-as-a-service work by cutting down on the amount of resources that are wasted by running one application from one operating system. Instead an o/s launches several applications to ensure that memory and disk space are not wasted. However, the container approach allows an app to run as if it is isolated with a guarantee of no conflicts between apps running from the same platform.

Docker and CoreOS already have containers that are popular in industry. However, in general the container-as-a-service technology still has some maturing to do in terms of security and networking. It is predicted that these issues will be addressed and corrected in 2016, allowing containers to continue being one of the biggest cloud trends of this year.

Cloud Training And Certification

Cloud technology is big business in the digital sector at the moment. Those who can prove that they have the necessary skills and experience to work in a cloud-based role will stand head and shoulders above other candidates who are applying for the same job. Organisations also need to invest in the skill-sets of their existing employees to ensure that their training is current and informed about recent developments in cloud technology.

Amazon and Google already have their own cloud training certification paths in place, but you can also find generalist cloud training from smaller training providers.

Large Company Cloud Adoption

One of the cloud trends likely to gather pace this year is the migration of large companies to the cloud. Startup companies and SMEs have had no difficulty in shifting their small operations to the cloud. Yet large companies with more complicated infrastructures have held back from migrating to the cloud. However, the benefits such as cost-effectiveness and the ability to dramatically reduce IT overheads are impossible for large companies to ignore, especially as they forecast their future profits. Therefore it is likely that 2016 will be the year that large enterprises from a wide range of industries migrate their entire infrastructure to the cloud.

If you’re a digital technology professional with cloud experience who is looking for your next exciting opportunity in the digital sector, then don’t hesitate to get in touch. Alternatively, is your organisation considering an infrastructure migration to the cloud? If so then we can assist you by providing you with talented digital applicants who are equipped with essential cloud skills to facilitate this move. Want to know more? Contact us today to gain access to our pool of highly experienced candidates who we can place with you.

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Are Women Key To Closing The Cybersecurity Skills Gap?

tony — Fri, 25 Nov 2016 14:08:47 +0000

The world is experiencing an enormous shortage in IT professionals who possess cybersecurity skills. There have been many high-profile stories of companies having personally identifiable information (PII) stolen due to IT breaches. This coverage in the media has encouraged businesses to crack down on their own cybersecurity measures. However, as the threats of malware and hacking increase on a daily basis, the industry is expanding at a rate that is far greater than the ability to fill cybersecurity roles. Some companies are so desperate that they are even choosing to recruit ‘reformed’ black hatters. These are individuals that have previously been involved in hacking. They may be specialists in their field but are a risky employment option due to their past activities. ISACA’s 2015 APT study estimates that the financial implications associated with an individual cyberattack will cost businesses an average of £107 million by 2020. Therefore it is essential that the cybersecurity skills gap is closed.

What is the role of women in closing the cybersecurity skills gap?

The lack of females in the world of technology is a well-known problem. Although women make up 46% of the UK workforce, there is a serious imbalance of gender in the digital sector as only 15% of females work in the industry. Many see this untapped potential as being a solution to the cybersecurity skills shortage. Employers are currently only able to access a limited talent pool when recruiting for their cyber specialist roles. Yet if a surge of talented women were given the opportunity to train in cybersecurity, then recruiters would have a much larger quantity of tech professionals to choose from.

Education

There needs to be a cultural shift in society’s attitude towards women in tech. The root of the problem lies at the school education level. Many girls are not interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects at school and don’t pursue it as a career. However, when it comes to cybersecurity the problem is even worse – 77% of girls state that no teacher or careers advisor mentioned cybersecurity as a career – for men it’s 67%. If children are not even aware of the niche of cybersecurity, then it will of course be harder to attract either gender but especially women to train in these jobs. Tech UK in collaboration with WISE have created a resource pack designed for schoolgirls to assist them in learning about jobs within the tech industry.

Flexible Working

However, the focus should not just be on getting school children into technology, but also on women who are returning to work. Many talented businesswomen take career breaks perhaps due to starting a family. The B2W programme is the initiative of Tech UK and everywoman.com . It aims to:

‘connect forward-thinking organisations who are committed to gender diversity and talented female professionals who want to restart their careers in technology after taking a break of over a year.’

The two-day course will include stories from women returners in the technology industry as well as a panel session with recruiters.

The growth of the technology industry would also benefit from a shift in office culture to accommodate women who require a more flexible working role. Cybersecurity is the perfect niche for remote workers who can log on from a home environment. This would allow women the opportunity to participate in the cybersecurity industry whilst achieving a work-life balance that would be acceptable to them.

Role Models

Women should also be given access to existing mentors and role models in the technology industry, preferably within the cybersecurity sector. It can be difficult for women to realise that there is a place for them in cybersecurity when there is a visible lack of females to follow into the industry. Confidence training can also be offered as a way to overcome anxiety associated with joining a male-dominated sector.

Accessible Training

The recruitment of women isn’t the only way to fix the cybersecurity skills gap. Training for such a niche area of the technology industry is notoriously expensive. Entry-level courses can cost over £1000 but unfortunately, due to the nature of security threats, the training becomes quickly outdated. If you already work for a technology company then your employer may be willing to regularly invest in your cybersecurity skills training. However, entry-level candidates will rarely be able to afford to self-invest in qualifications without the promise of an impressive salary as a reward. Therefore it is necessary to create more apprenticeships for employees of both genders to gain experience in the industry whilst having their security tuition paid for.

The technology industry needs to catch up with other sectors in motivating females into niche areas such as cybersecurity. However, due to the threat of hacking and security breaches, the entire cybersecurity division needs an overhaul in attracting and retaining talent in order to stop companies from losing millions. If you have skills in cybersecurity then we would love to hear from you. Get in touch today to hear about the top cybersecurity vacancies that we are currently recruiting for.

The post Are Women Key To Closing The Cybersecurity Skills Gap? appeared first on Next Ventures.

What Does the Shift to HTML 5 Mean for Digital Ads

tony — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

It’s finally happened.

Steve Jobs’ 2010 premonition that “New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too)” has come true – Adobe Flash, the mainstay of digital advertising for so long, is retiring from active service. It’s time to say goodbye and for HTML5 to take centre stage.

The shift from using Adobe Flash to HTML5 in digital ads has become a reality. Google Chrome devices no longer support it and iOS never has. The likes of Amazon and Facebook are switching to exclusively using HTML5 for promotional content, too. Many major mobile devices can’t support Flash, which is encouraging a major downward turn, and the other major browsers are expected to follow suit very soon – the final nails in Flash’s coffin.

It was actually Apple’s refusal to support Flash that led to the spread of HTML5, and many developers learning how to use it. It also assures Apple as ‘before their time’, as the rest of the industry makes the shift from Flash to HTML5 five years after Jobs’ prediction. Though in its infancy then, it’s now fully formed and ready to take its place as a plugin-free, graphically-rich digital ad platform in Flash’s stead.

But what will the shift from Flash to HTML5 mean for digital ads? In this article, we’ll try to answer that question in more detail, but for an overarching answer, let’s look to the guys at IAB:

“It will usher in a new era of media rich and responsive ad units that will be seamlessly served across devices, platforms and browsers.”

IAB

In an upgrade to their ‘HTML5 for Digital Advertising’ guide, IAB assert that the move to HTML5 is a necessity. Their Senior Vice President, Scott Cunnigham, said that: “The transition to HTML5 is paramount for improving user-experience online.”

“There is a reason that HTML5 has rapidly become the industry standard: It enables deeply immersive and responsive consumer marketing experiences that render gorgeously and easily across screens”

Business Wire

The first, and probably most significant, advantage of the move to using HTML5 for digital ads is security. HTML5 are working hard to respond to mal-advertising attacks on Yahoo and MSN, to avoid the infiltration of legitimate digital ad networks by malicious promos.

Another major advantage of HTML5 over Flash is its mobile performance. As browsing behaviour shifts dramatically in favour of mobile devices, it’s important that digital ads are designed to be mobile-friendly and capable of running on any machine. HTML5 renders multimedia content on any device – iPhone, Android, iPad, Microsoft, Surface – while Flash is not supported on all gadgets.

HTML5 is designed to create an ad-supported digital landscape, with faster ad load time and less clutter. Experts see this shift as digital ad technology coming of age, and adapting to meet the challenges of 2015. Are you looking for a developer with the skills to help you make the most of that shift? Let us help you find the niche large enterprise tech expertise you need.

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Why People Will Be Your Biggest Obstacle To Implementing A CRM

tony — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

Customer Relationship Management systems bring a whole host of benefits to the sales and customer service industry. As CRMs maintain a repository of customer profiles, they enable a company to personalise the customer experience that they offer. This means that CRMs provide the ability to treat customers as individuals and can tailor the type of services and promotions that they are offered. The enhanced treatment of customers leads to better consumer retention and loyalty. CRMs also simplify marketing and sales techniques. The CRM stores information on how a customer would prefer to be approached for promotional offers. This ensures that the lead time on closing a deal is much shorter for teams who use CRMs.

Many companies utilise CRM systems with excellent results. They help to nurture excellent customer relationships by providing better reporting which leads to increased sales figures. Yet CRMs also have a reputation of being challenging to implement and not providing the exceptional results that were expected from such investment. CRM technology improves each year and there are some incredibly sophisticated CRM models on the market. So the biggest obstacle to successfully implementing a CRM in a company will not be the lack of technology, but rather the people within an organisation.

Invest Time

CRMs such as Salesforce are not plug and play systems. They’re not user-ready. They’re about people and processes and change. Therefore it stands to reason that users from all levels of your organisation will need to invest their time and interest into getting the most out of the CRM model. This means deciding what the primary goals and objectives are and creating a company strategy to work out how the output data will be utilised. If users from your organisation are not involved in the initial strategic planning of implementing a CRM, then the operation will be doomed to failure. Gather as many minds as possible so that your workforce is committed to the implementation of the CRM in your business. Everyone needs to buy into the system, in order to boost morale. If only a selection of your staff are committed to the CRM, then a negative vibe will be introduced to your company. However, if you bring enough people into the process from the outset, then they will care more about the success of the product.

It is not good enough to only include end-users in the implementation of your CRM. If you get senior management from the CEO, COO and CFO levels to show their passion for this innovation in your business, then the enthusiasm will filter down through the ranks. Members of staff from all levels of the organisation should be interviewed about their CRM goals. It might even be necessary to bring in an outside expert who can help to tie your vision and strategy together to ensure that your CRM implementation is a success.

User Training

It is essential that all users are given training on your CRM. Frontline staff in particular will suffer poor performances if they do not understand or utilise the new system that they are required to use daily. They might even regress to using ‘old methods’ of doing things, just to get their work done. This is not progress, so it is critical that a business factors in training costs when implementing a CRM. The training might be in the form of onsite demos, videos, courses or certification paths and can be carried out by either trainers or specialist consultants. Training topics should go beyond the initial implementation and also cover CRM challenges that your organisation can expect to experience in the future.

CRMs are not just for sales and marketing teams. Rather, CRM usage crosses over many departmental lines, so those people from teams outside the sales environment may be hesitant to get involved and be trained on the new system. It is up to management to persuade users from all areas that they need to get on-board with the CRM in order to improve business processes across the entire company. This may mean providing training that is tailored to each department’s needs rather than a generalist approach.

Data Cleansing

The process of data entry is tedious but it is an incredibly critical step in implementing a CRM. Your employees must trust in the quality of the data that has been imported into the CRM. They will simply stop using the system from the moment that trust is broken by the presence of inaccurate data. This means it is essential that the data that is input into your new CRM is clean without the possibility of duplicate or incorrect records. Part of your ongoing CRM strategy could be to have regular checks of the data with monthly meetings to check that your teams are still committed to the utilisation of this sophisticated system.

Stage By Stage Approach

Users can be afraid of too much change in their jobs or in the organisation as a whole. If you try to introduce too much to the people in your organisation from the outset, then they may deem the CRM as being too complicated a system to use. In an attempt not to overwhelm your staff, it is best to introduce the CRM in small steps. Present the CRM in a series of stages, which will reduce the stress on the users within a department. Once everyone is comfortable with how the standard CRM model operates, it will always be possible to add complex enhancements to it at a later date. If you try too much too soon, then you may have employees running for the hills and the implementation of your CRM will have been a failure.

One of the key tricks to successfully implementing a CRM in your organisation is to ensure that you fully plan for it to become part of your business processes, rather than an optional tool that can be utilised. Once it is integrated into your business culture and you have the commitment of the people in your organisation, you will reap the rewards of having invested in a CRM.

Salesforce is the world-leading CRM enterprise application, which enables the full management of company interactions with clients and customers. Our dedicated Salesforce CRM team regularly places candidates into roles such as Salesforce Consultant, Champion, Technical Architect or CRM Manager. If you would like to be appointed into such a position, or if you need assistance with your CRM staffing requirements, then get in touch with us today.

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Why Customer Engagement Is A Digital Priority

tony — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

According to new research conducted by Frost & Sullivan in collaboration with Avaya, ‘80% of companies in any stage of digital transformation cite improving customer engagement as a priority’.

What Is Customer Engagement?

Engaging with customers is something that companies should view as a long term goal. Those who are looking for a quick sale in order to boost the next quarter’s profit sheets are probably more focussed on maximising digital conversions rather than establishing excellent customer engagement. However, this pushy sales approach can dissuade customers from making repeat purchases from a company. Instead, brands who have engaged with their consumers and understand the repeated interactions that strengthen the emotional, psychological or physical investment that customers have placed in a brand, are more likely to benefit in the long run. It is these companies that will enjoy better long-term growth and increased profitability.

Customer Engagement Activities

There are many ways for a company to successfully engage with its customers. Digital loyalty programs allow companies to personalise the experience of their customers which will ultimately lead to better sales conversions. In a recent report from Boston Retailers, which surveyed over five hundred retailers about the mind-set related to customer loyalty, it was discovered that 62% of those businesses plan to increase the allocation of funds towards their customer loyalty programs this year, whilst 76% included customer experience and engagement as a brand priority.

Communication is another indispensable tool which can be used to engage customers with online. Social media channels which provide your customers with offers, news and company developments allow your followers to stay connected to you. Social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram also provide excellent ways in which a customer can recommend your brand on to their own connections, particularly if you supply them with voucher codes, promotions or interesting viral content. Digital newsletters and personalised email offers that introduce the customer to the right product, at the right time, at a price which is acceptable to them, are another excellent way to engage with your digital customers and retain their business.

Successful customer engagement often uses a multi-channel approach, where a blend of digital media is used in conjunction with traditional media such as TV commercials or billboards to attract an interested customer.

Customer Lifetime Value

Avaya and Frost & Sullivan’s new calculator tool is able to measure Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). It is known that companies who are able to track CLV significantly outperform those who choose not to, in terms of profitability and growth.

CLV is a complex set of calculations that involve the current value of all future cash flows which are associated with a customer relationship. These include variables such as the projected amount of money that the customer will spend, savings made from customer retention, the likelihood that a customer will refer the company on to others and the cost of the customer’s loyalty. It can, of course be extremely challenging to accurately measure the true value of your long-term customers due to difficulties that arise with incomplete data and disjointed systems as well as knowing which elements to track and the best ways of obtaining the data.

This is what makes the CLV tool so invaluable, as it assists brands in highlighting the areas of customer engagement that are most important to them and how they would like to monitor them going forward.

One of the most common areas for successful CLV businesses to focus on is the customer service centre. This is seen as a hub for managing and monitoring the customer-level experience and relationship. Customer service staff and the digital technology that support them are an essential cog in the customer engagement process. The management of customer experience at this level improves the chances of longevity of the customer relationship, in addition to better revenue and brand advocacy.

Big Data For Customer Engagement

The analysis of big data or data insights is another way to define customer engagement on a digital level. It allows brands to use data in order to find out who their consumers are, what they want out of the customer experience and how they can adapt to match their needs. In order to use big data to discover customers’ motivations and preferences, companies must keep a clean and current database of customer information, monitor their marketing opportunities, or ‘touch points’, and maintain a unified view of their customers across all digital marketing channels that they might visit.

If you’re looking for a big data specialist who is able to radically improve your business processes and increase your digital customer engagement, then get in touch. We have a strong pool of talented data technicians who are experts in data mining, sentiment analysis and user behaviour. If you’d like us to assist you in hand-picking the perfect data specialist for your customer engagement process, then get in touch today.

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SAP Enhancements: How Does SAP Simplify the Management of Information?

tony — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

SAP has launched a new set of enterprise information management (EIM) tools to support the digital transformation of information governance and business integration needs. The primary goal of the EIM tool set is to simplify the management of information in business processes and how it is shared across an organisation or a network. Other improvements include innovative methods for providing instant insights, employee engagement and supplier collaboration which all serve to improve the customer experience.

Self-Service Data Preparation

“In the digital economy, companies that are capable of delivering the most current and accurate data in the most easily consumable way possible are the ones that will survive and thrive”, according to Philip On, the Vice President of Enterprise Information Management Solutions for SAP.

As SAP have recognised this thirst for data, they have created the 1.3 version of their SAP Agile Data Preparation application. This is essentially self-service data preparation which is created with the business end-user in mind but it can also be utilised effectively by data stewards. The incredibly interactive tool allows the simple and rapid preparation of data by the user. New features include improved data aggregation and filtering capabilities, which radically speed up the amount of time that it takes users to combine large or multiple sets of data. It is now possible to view only the data which has significantly changed.

The prepared data sets are then able to be shared across an organisation or network, or else fed into an analytical application such as SAP Lumira software. The management of information on a self-service basis allows users to transform data into visual, easily consumable and actionable material. Employees are able to bypass IT teams by importing multiple data sets from cloud or onsite data sources by themselves. They will use SAP software to guide them through the cleansing and combining of data and will subsequently be presented with an attractive visual interface which is easy to use and offers one-click fixes for data that appears to be incorrect. Users are able to spend significantly more time analysing and sharing data than preparing it and are able to affect positive change across their organisation with their data insights.

In On’s words, “We make the data beautiful and ready for consumption”.

Bidirectional Extract-Transform-Load Capabilities

SAP have also enhanced their support of Hadoop, NoSQL, JSON and spatial data in their new 4.2 SP6 version of the SAP Data Services software. They have listened to feedback from their customers and noted that there is a real demand for utilising Big Data sources to improve analytical contexts and business insights. With this in mind, they have also collaborated with the search engine Google to create bidirectional extract-transform-load (ETL) capabilities to Google BigQuery. This adjustment means that data can now be moved from BigQuery as well as being written to it. This simplifies the way in which their customers deal with complex nested data like JSON in BigQuery when they need to transfer it to other targets such as Hadoop.

Philip On stated “No other ETL vendor can offer bi-directional support moving data to and from BigQuery. We’re the first to offer this and we’re happy to partner with Google to make this happen.”

Policy Management

When it comes to the management of information, senior business employees recognise that data is a business asset that needs to be treated with care. The 4.2 SP6 version of the SAP Information Steward software introduces data policy management abilities which allow policies to be created at a centralised level. These policies can easily be linked to across all levels of an organisation and collaboration is easily governed.

Management Of Information Across Network

The latest SAP enhancements encourage data to be shared across networks with improved security levels. All teams and departments within your organisation can create simplified and unified data records with the use of the SAP HANA platform. This allows the consolidation of data from heterogeneous SAP and non-SAP sources to create clean, organised data which can be shared across your company.

On concludes, “With all of these recent advancements, we hope to help our customers support the digital economy by simplifying our customers’ ability to improve and maintain data quality to gain greater insights from more data sources such as big data, cloud, and spatial.”

Our highly experienced team of SAP recruitment consultants have been meeting the needs of our customers in this large enterprise technology niche for more than ten years. If you have an SAP- focussed role that you need to talk to us about, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today.

The post SAP Enhancements: How Does SAP Simplify the Management of Information? appeared first on Next Ventures.

How Will AI Affect Tech Recruitment In The Next Five Years?

tony — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

A recent survey jointly produced by Deloitte and Oxford University shows that within the next two decades, 35% of our current job tasks will be replaced entirely by machines. Such a statement has understandably concerned many workers about the rise of AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning and what the impact will be on various areas of industry.

But how will AI shape the tech recruitment industry? We take a look at what the next five years will bring in terms of tech recruitment advancements.

How Can AI Perform Our Work For Us?

Artificial intelligence is an umbrella term which includes machine learning and natural language processing. Machine learning in particular is excellent at recognising patterns of data and generating output about such data based on algorithms that have been applied to it. This means that potentially any repetitive, mechanistic type of admin work that is performed by humans could be taught to machines over the next few years. In recruitment AI might be of use if it is taught to sift through CVs looking for skill matches or read contracts looking for specific clauses.

However, it is important to realise that as sophisticated as AI is, intelligent data interpreting is something that has not yet been achieved on a reliable scale by machine learning.

Big Data Analytics

The recruitment industry is excited by the launch of a new start-up in the States. Two ex-Google engineers recognised the problem in looking for tech talent to join their teams whilst working for the search engine. They have therefore secured $6m in investments in order to launch their AI answer to tech recruitment. Their advanced innovation is called Connectifier and is a clever combination of AI and search software. It works by crawling the web to discover information and then creates accurate and useful profiles of candidates, based on every single piece of relevant data it can find on a person. This includes employees who are not actively searching for a new role, which makes Connectifier an extremely effective piece of head-hunting software. It has already amassed tens of thousands of recruiters across a range of industries including tech recruitment, sales, healthcare and finance.

Developments such as Connectifier are a much more advanced approach to recruitment than popular sites such as Monster or LinkedIn have been able to provide. Although social networking and job network platforms have had enormous success, the problem with these recruitment models is that although millions of people list their profiles on them, they don’t keep them updated. Connectifier works by crawling all other social media and business sites to harness masses of data in order to create a more sophisticated recruitment product.

AI Educates Recruiters

Big data can also be used by AI to educate recruiters on their techniques. In a recent study by a group of linguists, thousands of job ads were input into an AI system to find out how well the ads converted into potential candidates. The wording of the ads was crunched to find out which phrases were attractive and those which put various types of people off. For instance, wording which included ‘works well under pressure’ or ‘extraordinary’ attracted less female candidates. The AI system is useful to tech recruitment processes, as it allows recruiters to check the likely performance of their ad and to highlight areas that could be altered in order to convert better interest.

Internal Recruiter Performance

Machine learning will also provide evidence of performance rates on an internal basis within tech recruitment firms. Designing a set of simple AI rules for a machine and then applying data will result in the standards of recruiters being assessed. Employers in a tech recruitment company will be able to monitor all digital activities and work out which of its staff are engaged, based on real time job performance.

So what does AI bring to the future of tech recruitment companies?

Recruiters who are willing to embrace the exciting innovations in recruitment technology that are provided by AI and startups such as Connectifier will continue to be market leaders in their industry.

Companies who require tech candidates for their vacancies should choose recruitment companies who utilise new digital technology to make their hiring processes more efficient. Whilst machines are able to improve recruitment processes through data analysis, there will always be a need for humans to evaluate and action the output of such data. Therefore the role of recruiters will certainly evolve over the next five years, but it will be more important than ever for employers to trust a quality tech recruitment company to fill their digital vacancies.

If you require top tech candidates for your firm, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today.

The post How Will AI Affect Tech Recruitment In The Next Five Years? appeared first on Next Ventures.

The Job Market In 2016: What Does It Mean For The Digital Sector?

tony — Sun, 13 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

The job market in 2016 is set to be incredibly fast-paced, particularly in the digital sector. Companies have recovered well from the global economic crash and are now choosing to expand their teams and invest in digital technology once again. This allows them to keep up with the ever-increasing innovations in the modern workplace.

8 Million Brits Want To Move Jobs

According to a recent report, approximately one quarter of the UK’s workforce of 31.2 million want to move jobs this year. This equates to around 8 million people who are dissatisfied with their current role and are actively looking to move onwards and upwards. Over 54% of those surveyed made themselves a work-related promise as their New Year’s resolution, which replaces the usual post-Christmas vow to join a gym.

Perhaps also fuelled by the festivities, almost a third of workers who were surveyed admitted to feeling unhappy about their current employment once they returned to their desks in January.

Motivated Candidates In 2016

From a candidates point-of-view, the rapidity with which the job market in 2016 is moving, means that the best candidates are not content to sit back and be ‘comfortable’ at work. Top talent in the digital sector knows that the best way to remain an attractive prospect for potential employers is to arm themselves with as many skills and project experience as possible. Unless they’re lucky enough to work for a firm that will invest in their personal development, the easiest way to acquire a rich portfolio of expertise is to change jobs every couple of years, picking up new tools and skills along the way. This of course has the consequence of moving the job market in 2016 along at an incredible rate. Those that don’t keep their skills current and stay stagnant in the same position will find that they get left behind and may face the threat of redundancy or miss out on internal promotions.

Competitive Companies

So what does this mean for employers?

Companies in this fluid job market should take care to hold on to the talent that they’ve already acquired. They might need to provide a better level of one-to-one communication with their employees and offer team members the opportunity of a voice to share their work dissatisfactions. Employers should also invest in digital training for their team members, allowing them to update their skills at a crucial stage in the technology revolution. If employees feel that they are given the opportunity for personal growth within an organisation, then they will be less inclined to move companies in order to find appreciation and fulfilment elsewhere.

The job market in 2016 also requires employers to work hard to gain fresh new talent onto their teams. Companies may find themselves in a bidding war with another business in order to try and win the commitment of a candidate. Employers will need to be competitive with salary and offer a decent benefits package with flexible working options. It is also paramount that companies use innovative modern technology at the heart of their company in order to impress prospective talent in 2016. Candidates in the digital sector, need the assurance that they are joining a forward-thinking company which is not afraid to adapt to change and invest in the future.

UK Companies Lose Out To America

One concern that UK companies in the digital sector should have, is the realisation that the best technology talent is leaving the UK in favour of finding jobs in America.

Our home-grown technology experts are being seduced by the promise of much larger salaries across the pond. In San Francisco for instance, a software developer could earn an annual salary of £86,000. The same role in the UK would earn around £54,000, 37% less than the offer in the States. Unsurprisingly then, technology talent is ditching the UK in droves which exacerbates the problem of the digital skills gap that already exists in the British technology industry.

Employees in the digital sector hold all the cards. They are smart and motivated professionals who are fully aware that their sought-after skills can help to secure them a top position with great benefits.

Whether you’re an experienced digital professional or an entry-level worker with a technology education who is motivated by the fast-pace of this industry, then we’re excited to talk to you. We can assist you in finding your next role with a top company. Want to know more? Get in touch today.

The post The Job Market In 2016: What Does It Mean For The Digital Sector? appeared first on Next Ventures.

Is London’s Broadband Adequate For Our ‘Digital Future’?

tony — Sat, 12 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

When Tech City UK was launched by David Cameron in Shoreditch in 2010, its aim was to create the ‘optimum conditions for digital technology businesses and entrepreneurs to thrive across the UK’. Their focus was on the growth of digital businesses in London and other major cities across the country.

Since its launch, Tech City has been a huge success and has seen technology firms in London alone grow from 250 to 5,000 in the space of just six years. Yet digital experts have identified a huge problem that is holding London back from becoming one of the digital capitals of the world: the speed of London’s broadband.

London Lags Behind

London has yet to reach the top ten cities in the world for its average broadband speed.

The latest ‘State of the Internet’ report by Akamai which includes data from Q3 of 2015, places the UK at ninth in the EMEA region. The UK manages 13.0 Mbps as an average and 54.2 as a peak connection speed. Countries including Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland, Czech Republic, Denmark and Romania all boast faster speeds in both categories and it is Sweden that tops the list with a superior average of 17.4Mbps and a peak Mbps of 69.0.

This is a humiliating result for London’s broadband and it certainly poses some problems for the future of our digital sector. We have previously talked about the digital skills gap and how companies have never faced stronger competition in attracting the best technology talent to their digital roles.

Digital talent is attracted to forward-thinking innovative companies that have super-fast and hi-tech systems. A lagging broadband speed will slow down the growth of digital teams and companies across the capital.

Outdated Copper Wire Infrastructure

Why is London’s broadband so slow in comparison to other countries when Britons regularly generate more money online than any other G20 country?

The poor connectivity is a problem which lies in our outdated copper wire infrastructure. Many of our companies, and homes, are being provided with broadband via a mixture of copper and fibre. Fibre is delivered to cabinets in the streets and then copper carries the signal the remainder of the way into the property. This significantly limits the average speed in comparison to all-fibre networks. This compromise of a broadband delivery system means that it is simply not adequate for the growth potential of the digital sector.

Boris Ivanovic, who is the Chairman of Hyperoptic comments,

“If the UK wants to maintain its digital leadership there must be a fundamental shift in its urban broadband strategy. The government must incentivise the private sector to fast track the implementation of future-proofed Fibre-to-the-Building and Fibre-to-the Home infrastructure across all UK cities and towns”.

Government Lobbying

The Economy Committee has challenged the future Mayor to highlight the requirements for London to become a leading digital economy. Businesses in the capital need access to ultrafast 100Mbps download and upload speeds provided by a high-speed broadband infrastructure. The Economy Committee also requests that the Mayor lobbies the government to introduce super-fast connections as one of the conditions for planning consent in new developments.

Is Super-Fast Broadband Too Expensive?

Some critics of the average broadband speed tests claim that the findings are deceiving as they display the speeds that consumers and SMEs have chosen to use rather than those that they have access to. Put simply, London’s broadband is not necessarily the issue. Instead the blame lies with London businesses who are choosing not to pay for the fastest type of broadband as it is too expensive, even though better speeds are available as an option. Consumers are being charged four times as much for super-fast broadband in London as they are in Bucharest, Romania. If this is the case, then London businesses need to consider their IT budgets with care and realise that they are causing their own digital stagnation by not investing in the best broadband services that are available.

It is thought that value to the UK businesses who further develop their digital presence is worth as much as £90 billion. As a collective, London businesses, the Mayor and the Government all need to work together to invest in our digital future and achieve that target. If we do not, then the best digital talent and global technology firms will choose another capital city to invest in, which will widen our digital skills gap even further and leave us behind .

If you need top tech talent to help your company reach its digital potential, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today.

The post Is London’s Broadband Adequate For Our ‘Digital Future’? appeared first on Next Ventures.

Why Half of SAP Customers Use Simple Finance

tony — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

“Considering that SAP Simple Finance has only been available since the start of the year, it is interesting to see that many organisations are already looking to implement it.”

Philip Adams, Chairman, UK & Ireland SAP User Group

SAP Simple Finance has only been available for 9 months, and yet almost half of SAP customers are already using it.

That’s how important streamlining financial processes is to SAP customers.

SAP has revealed that, since the launch of its Simple Finance product at the beginning of the year, 42% of the company’s existing clients have expressed an interest in moving over to the new platform. The streamlined simplicity and real-time insights offered by Simple Finance allow businesses to operate more efficiently and make more informed business decisions for their organisation. The most agile half of SAP customers have recognised that, and are mobilising they’re business to take advantage.

Why is Simple Finance so Popular?

Simple Finance is superior over products that have gone before in a number of critical ways.

As we wrote a few months ago on our blog, Simple Finance preserves the functional strength of SAP HANA, while offering additional functionality for financial planning, accounting, risk management and analysis. Simple Finance offers a single view of financial accounting data and enables ‘real-time’ analysis in a clean, HTML5 based user interface.

30% of SAP customers say that Simple Finance will allow them to make better business decisions. 86% of those surveyed see value in Simple Finance’s automation functions, and said that they’ll use it to make their invoicing more efficient, according to IT Pro.

It’s a strong start for Simple Finance, an asset to companies that recognise its value.

The Value of Simple Finance in a Digital World

“there is still work to be done to help customers overcome obstacles and take advantage of the latest product innovation from SAP.”

Philip Adams, Chairman, UK & Ireland SAP User Group

Simple Finance is a pioneering tool that will give businesses a distinct advantage in today’s digital world. The challenge for SAP is to convince users of that. 19% of those surveyed, for example, said that they were unable to move to Simple Finance because they would need to update their entire landscape, while for others the benefits still couldn’t outweigh the costs. Some, too, wanted to see more hard evidence of its benefits, with 14% holding out for more real-life examples of businesses where Simple Finance had been successfully implemented.

We don’t think it will be long before a majority of SAP users are converted to the benefits of Simple Finance.

It’s essential that businesses have the right tools to help them thrive in the digital world, like Simple Finance, but it’s equally important to have the right talent. We have access to a large pool of the most talented niche large tech professionals out there. Get in touch with us today, and compile the tools to thrive in today’s digital landscape.

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What You Need Before You Migrate to the Cloud

tony — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

What do you need before you migrate to the cloud? Skills!

The advantages of the cloud are clear, and most businesses are convinced about its benefits. But migrating your on-premises environment to the cloud is not as straightforward as you might think.

Alongside new technology, you’ll need to hire for a range of new niche large technology skills to ensure a secure and successful transition. The right talent can help smooth the transition and make full use of your cloud provider’s services. Cloud services evolve quickly, so it pays to recruit candidates with up-to-date knowledge and skills, but who are also willing to learn at pace.

While most cloud providers provide the support, training and management services you need for the migration to run smoothly, you should never discount the human element. Make sure you have in-house experts for that day that things go wrong.

Here are three key skills that you should hire for (if you don’t have them already) to maximize the impact of your cloud migration:

1. Financial

“The bottom line is cloud saves companies money and increases their profits.”

John Engates, CTO, Rackspace Hosting

To measure and maximise the cost savings you will make by migrating to the cloud, you’ll need someone in your organisation with the right financial skills. The ROI of cloud hosting can be difficult to quantify, but the right financial talent will be able to assess to overall savings made with the increased productivity, performance, agility and availability that the cloud offers.

2. Security

“We don’t have enough expertise in the right places now. We often frame cybersecurity as a technology problem. It is a human problem.”

Peter W. Singer, Co-Author “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar

Migrating to the cloud will bring a new set of security threats and vulnerabilities that you wouldn’t have had to contend with in your in-premises environement. We recently reported an urgent need for cybersecurity talent in the UK, as companies scramble to implement a security plan for their cloud migration. The larger cloud providers will provide a team of security experts to ensure a level of safety for your data, but it pays to be clear where the responsibilities lie, and hire accordingly.

3. Technical

As you make the transition to the cloud, it is extremely useful to have someone on your team (if not a group of cloud professionals) who understands the ins and outs of virtualisation. It also helps if you have someone in-house who has knowledge of your cloud provider’s offering, and how you can make full use of its main components – which apply to your business and which don’t.

For each bold step in to a digital future there are new skills, experience and knowledge that you need to have on your team. We specialise in niche large enterprise technology recruitment, and can put you in touch with come of the best cloud computing talent the UK has to offer.

Migrating to the cloud? Talk to one of our consultants today about finding the skills and talent you need on your team.

The post What You Need Before You Migrate to the Cloud appeared first on Next Ventures.

The Urgent Need for Cyber Security Talent in the UK

tony — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

There is a new threat to cybersecurity in the UK….recruitment.

We wrote recently about how cybersecurity is one of the greatest threats to business, and the right talent is vital to preparing your workplace for a digital future. But studies have revealed that there is an urgent shortage of talented cybersecurity professionals in the UK, those needed to address current threats and protect organsations as they progress into the digital future.

According to a government Security Breaches Survey released in 2014, a staggering 81% of large companies had reported some form of a security breach. These breaches reportedly cost each organisation between £600,000 and £1.5 million on average. This number is rising, too, and the attacks are becoming more costly and complex.

In ISACA’s 2015 Global Cybersecurity Status Report, a global survey of 3,439 business and IT professionals released in January, it was revealed that a huge 86% of those surveyed said that there was a shortage of cybersecurity professionals to deal with the new threats. 34% said that while they plan to hire cybersecurity professionals this year and next, they expect it to be difficult to find the right talent. The demand for cybersecurity talent is clearly far outreaching the talent pool:

“We don’t have enough expertise in the right places now. We often frame cybersecurity as a technology problem. It is a human problem.”

Peter W. Singer, Co-Author “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar

The ISACA report cited a lack of awareness as a leading reason for the lack of people upskilling or pursuing a career in cybersecurity. It’s difficult for young people to see a career path into cybersecurity due to an absence of industry-appropriate education in universities. Government has recognised the gap, and is making steps to recognise and encourage cybersecurity talent at a young age, but the effects on the industry won’t be felt in time to feal with the threat we face today.

“Universities are failing to bridge the gap between computer science and cybersecurity and there are many difficulties when it comes to training people in the field”

IT Pro Portal

We need to see university programmes and apprenticeships that equip our young people with the specific specialist skills required to deal with the cyber threats of our time and the future. Courses should be offered in partnership with a cybersecurity firm, to give students real-life, hand-on experience. They should also foster agility and independent thinking to produce candidates with the skills to adapt to ever-changing threats.

“it can take as long as six months to find the right person for a role in the cybersecurity sector.”

IT Pro Portal

In the meantime, though, we can help.

The cybersecurity talent pool is limited, but luckily we have privileged access to the best talent in the UK. We can help you cut straight to the most experienced niche large tech professionals and recruit those with the proven skills you need to keep safe. Talk to one of our consultants today!

The post The Urgent Need for Cyber Security Talent in the UK appeared first on Next Ventures.

How Design Has Become a Huge Part of the User Experience

tony — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

Have you thought about users’ emotional experience of your platform? It’s hard to quantify, but to build empathy with users, it’s important to consider what users want and need, and design your platform customer experience accordingly.

In a recent article entitled “Design Thinking Comes of Age”, the Harvard Business Review brought attention a shift that puts design firmly at the centre of enterprise. Quite simple, they wrote, “people need their interactions with technologies and other complex systems to be simple, intuitive, and pleasurable,” and user experience needs to be carefully designed to ensure that.

“A set of principles collectively known as design thinking is the best tool we have for creating those kinds of interactions and developing a responsive, flexible organisational culture.”

HBR

They’re calling it ‘design thinking’ and industry giants like IBM and GE, for whom software is a fundamental part of their business have already adopted it’s sentiment as a means to ‘humanise’ and modernise their product.

“There’s no longer any real distinction between business strategy and the design of the user experience”

Bridget van Kralingen, Senior Vice President, IBM Global Business Services

That’s why IBM intends to hire 1,000 UX designers in the near future.

“Every established company that has moved from products to services, from hardware to software, or from physical to digital products needs to focus anew on user experience.”

HBR

The success and effectiveness of an online platform, software interface or application depends on one thing…user experience. Itsnavigation, operability and other advantages to the user dictate whether it succeeds or fails. This puts an enormous responsibility on the UX designer or architect. It is their responsibility to come up with ideas to increase usability, to make sure that all available content is relevant and valuable.

If ‘UX Design’ is considered to refer to the approaches and methods employed to make sure that a website is entirely tailored and customised for a target market, then design is integral, a massive part of user experience. If an online or application platform does not appeal to the audience that it is designed for, it will be quickly forgotten. The user makes the decision to accept or reject an app, online platform or resource with seconds – once you have their attention, you need to hold onto it with an seamless, functional and aesthetically pleasing user experience.

So how exactly has design become a part of customer experience?

Well, simply put, customer experience became the tipping point for the success of a product or service. So design, and specialist professionals able to deliver it, became extremely valuable. UX designers have started to consider how users feel when they interact with certain types of software or platforms, and whether that is the rightemotion according to the design. IS the experience universal? Is it right for growth and development?

If you want to guarantee a superb user experience, then you need design. We have access to a pool of some of the most talented and knowledgeable UX designers in the UK and Europe. Want us to help you find you the perfect candidate? Get in touch.

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Why Digital Firms Should Focus On Millennials

tony — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 14:08:54 +0000

Millennials will make up 75% of the workforce by 2025 and are the oxygen that companies need to survive in this digitally-driven economy. However, so many digital firms are still missing out on hiring millennial talent as they are choosing more mature employees who can bring years of work experience to the role.

The problem with valuing work experience over talent is that much of it originates in the past when technology played significantly less of a role. Older employees from the baby boomer generation aren’t always able (or inclined) to keep up with the latest digital technologies. As a result, they often choose to move horizontally within the same sector and role in order not to appear stagnant. This gives them the opportunity to appear as if they’re gaining experience but lacks any real progression.

There are several problems that this approach can cause to the future of an organisation in the digital era. Millennials are the solution that digital firms are looking for to solve this issue.

Social Media

Millennials have been brought up alongside all manner of social media platforms and technological innovations. Their ability to switch between devices such as smartphones, tablets, TV screens, social media platforms and their iPods means that they have been born to multi-task. Older generations simply have not had as much exposure to technology multi-tasking as millennials, so they provide a disadvantage in the workplace.

The obsessive nature with which millennials use social media can actually increase the digital reach of the company that they work for. Millennials are natural web marketers, so employers need to realise that they can spread the word of their brand through the friends, family and Facebook contacts that their younger employees have.

Millennial Ambassadors

Millennials, as a generation, are better educated than any that have gone before. Many younger employees now enter the workplace with a degree, as opposed to the older generations who were encouraged to start work after completing their school education. The millennial age bracket is also the most ethnically diverse and they demonstrate a passionate care about ethics and charitable projects. Millennials want the world to be a better place and would like to make positive contributions on a global scale. These factors make millennials excellent ambassadors for your company who are able to connect with the entire scope of your customer demographic.

Cost-Effective Employees

A study by UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School found that 1 in 3 millennials would prioritise social media freedom, device flexibility and work mobility over salary in accepting a job offer. This makes them more cost-effective than more mature employees who have achieved many annual pay increases to create their current generous salary. Millennials are cheaper, as 70% of them are planning to change jobs as the economy improves.

Millennials can also help you reduce your IT overheads. Their ability to get to grips with new systems and software in your digital firm means that they are likely to call support teams on a less frequent basis than the older members of your workforce.

Motivated By Personal Growth

Millennials are intrinsically motivated to succeed. Their natural desire for a fast pace of life means that they want to complete their work quickly and to a high standard. Digital firms who want to get the most of their millennial employees should find a way to provide real-time feedback and positive criticism about their work.

Millennials are also looking for job opportunities that allow for personal growth such as self-development and cross-training to pick up new skills. Hiring employers will need to demonstrate that a clear path of career progression is available to millennials, so that they feel encouraged that they’ll be able to move upwards on a timescale that they are excited by.

It is also important to give millennials a voice and the opportunity to affect change in a digital firm. In terms of managing millennials, they are most likely to prosper when an inclusive leadership style is applied. This will allow them the freedom to make honest contributions about the organisation without being criticised for them.

If you’re a millennial who is looking for a forward-thinking company to join in 2016, or a digital firm who is in need of some fresh talent to improve your productivity rates and help move your company into the future, then please, get in touch with us today.

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Challenges to Data Protection in the Cloud

tony — Sat, 22 Oct 2016 13:09:01 +0000

Just how safe is cloud data in 2015?

It’s been a transformative year so far in the data and cloud environment. The high profile security breaches of 2014 and proliferation of cloud usage and data storage has prompted new approaches in 2015. New technology and business trends, new legislation, fresh demand and fresh threats have all give up their own challenges to data protection in the cloud.

On each new innovation piggybacks new challenges to data protection, so it’s difficult to predict how the landscape might change in the future. As we see it, though, these are the three main challenges to data protection in the cloud at this moment:

1. Data Breaches

Following several high-profile data breaches in 2014 for the likes of Barclays, the NHS and Apple, in which customer data, patient records and personal user files were leaked into the public domain, data breaches have risen to the top of the hit-list when it comes to data protection in the cloud.

In a cloud scenario, some control over your data is given up to the provider. That’s why it is so essential to choose the right one. Still, 80% of data breaches are estimated to stem from human error, so the real challenge here is to regulate and protect against mistakes made by cloud users. They must be made aware of the implications of failing to protect sensitive data, and educated on the importance of encryption and password changes.

The main focus must be how businesses dispose of their data. Fines are already being levied against organisations that fail to comply, but the release of new EU Data Protection Regulations back in June set higher punishments, and higher stakes for a significant data breach.

“The Council of the European Union has agreed new fines for breaches of EU privacy and data protection law could be up to €1m or 2% of the company’s global annual turnover.”

The Guardian

2. Data Loss

The next challenge to data protection in 2015 is the loss of data, both accidental and deliberate. The minute critical or sensitive information is moved into the cloud, it’s vulnerable – it can be deleted accidently, tampered with maliciously or the cloud provider could be affected by what could be termed as an ‘Act of God.’ Any of these scenarios would be spell disaster for a business.

Thankfully, there are workable solutions to this challenge, provided you are diligent. An integrated system to protect against malicious attacks is a good preventative measure, while a fool-proof disaster recovery strategy will prevent a terminal disaster. Additionally, though, you should integrate a security system to every network layer, to reduce the possible size of a data loss event.

3. Insecure Access Points, Mobile Working & BYOD

One of the biggest challenges to data protection in the cloud is controlling what gets through the gates. Access points, and the devices that have access to the cloud through them can be vehicles for hackers and security breaches.

Of course, one of the great joys of the cloud is that it can be accessed from anywhere, by multiple devices. The question is, are the interfaces and APIs that interact with it secure? Equally, the number of mobile users and owners that ‘BYOD’ (‘Bring Your Own Device’ to work) has grown, compromising and diluting cloud network security. Any organisation using the cloud should implement a clear BYOD strategy to protect against external threats.

The challenges to data protection in the cloud are considerable, yes, but not insurmountable. Sound working practices, secure and established providers of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS cloud services like Citrix, Google, Azure and Oracle and highly-trained cloud professionals that know how to use them will all help you to adapt to new challenges to data protection in the cloud.

Are you a cloud professional looking to lend your expertise to a new role? Maybe your organisation could benefit from a highly-trained candidate to help you meet the challenges ahead? Get in touch to discuss opportunities for cloud professionals today!

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