Sifting CV's out in industry

I’ve written a couple about recruitment campaigns we've had at villagesoftware.co.uk to get in graduate programmers and we are in the middle of another one. Again bringing people in at the bottom of Software development for £15,000. This superstar starting salary attracted 55 cv’s sign of the times. Last time we did this 2 years ago the split was

50% were expats looking for first UK job.
30% bog standard graduates with relevant degree.
10% were experienced but out of work local developers.
10% Random people with no relevant capability

This time we had many less expats applying, perhaps a weaker pound or perhaps the job centre had advertised thing less widely. Aside from this group , the proportions stayed much the same.

10% were expats looking for first UK job.
50% bog standard graduates with relevant degree.
20% were experienced but out of work local developers.
20% Random people with no relevant capability

My colleagues and I having been through the CV’s and covering letters some things are apparent.

Firstly the obvious things are true. A properly written CV and personable covering letter opens up well. We had one guy who didn’t even give a surname, several who didn’t give a real address.

Very narrow interests do not excite, programming (fair enough), computer game playing, keeping up on technology developments (web surfing), not a collection that point to a rounded candidate. An amazing number led with the fact that they liked socialising with their friends as their main interest, presumably to distinguish themselves from the candidates who ‘don’t like people’. Some watched movies!

Clearly those who had done relevant work experience or a sandwich year stood out from the crowd. My Business School colleague Alistair Beere commented if only we could convince the students of this.

There was some annoyance around the table here at the number of graduates of computer science related degrees who did not have relevant skills. The big surprise was that those who went to the ‘lesser’ Universities (in Liverpool the traditional league is Liverpool, John Moores, Hope, Edge Hill) seemed to have the better skills. Perhaps their lecturers are more in touch with the commercial world than those at the higher brow outfits. It must be frustrating for the student who has paid and studied and are not being rejected by us for a lack of relevant background. I felt frustrated that Universities are sending their graduates out poorly armed to enter their chosen profession. While degrees are not only about employability I am reminded that we must work hard to teach what the students need to know not what we happen to know.
The perception of grade inflation was apparent with most students with 2:2’s being kicked into touch, where degrees were an issue it was considered that if students couldn’t get in the 63% of students now given 2:1’s they were unlikely to be fliers, despite the many fine adjectives they deployed on their C.V’s, it shows that not getting a 2:1 is a problem in the job market.

Interviews later this week, fingers crossed we find the right person, having previously published on this blog how we do interviews interviewing-graduates.html we will have to make a few changes.

I will hopefully take some of the lessons learnt back into my interactions with the various modules I teach on.

Graduation 2011: congratulations to students from the information and PR programmes

Graduation represents the formal conferment of undergraduate and postgraduate awards. This week LJMU students have been attending the graduation ceremonies at the spectacular Liverpool Anglican Cathedral to receive the ultimate reward for all their academic studies. This includes many students graduating from our information and PR related programmes based at Liverpool Business School, including students graduating from our BSc (Hons) Business Information Systems, BA (Hons) Business Management & Information, BA (Hons) Business & Public Relations, and MA/MSc Information & Library Management.

Members of the successful BA (Hons) Business Management & Information student cohort with lecturers Janet Farrow, Elaine Ansell and Chris Taylor.

Congratulations to all the students graduating from our programmes! We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours!

BSc (Hons) Business Information Systems students celebrate their success!

Andrew Prescott.

Several students achieved the highest academic status by achieving First Class undergraduate degrees, or attaining Distinction at MA/MSc level. A special "well done" goes to these students. However, a further special mention goes to Andrew Prescott, who aside from graduating with a First Class BA (Hons) degree in Business Management & Information, received an award for Outstanding Placement Student from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). Andrew's industrial placement was based at General Motors in Luton where he concentrated on Supply Chain Management for a year. Andrew was the only student who had his placement extended, spending two additional months at the Ellesmere Port branch where he spearheaded a project on line side delivery optimisation – finding ways to reduce waste and overall costs of production. Andrew has since secured a two year graduate scheme in the logistics department of Bentley. Well done, Andrew!

BA (Hons) Business & Public Relations students celebrate!

All LJMU graduation ceremonies were streamed live from the Anglican Cathedral and can be watched again at the LJMU website. Information and PR programme ceremonies took place on Wednesday 13 July (AM) and Thursday 14 July (PM). Further information is also available from the LJMU website.

Interviewing Graduates

On the interview trail. As people will know like superman I have 2 persona’s, by day the mild mannered information technology lecturer by night street wise software entrepreneur. In this later persona I have been interviewing for graduate programmers this last week. While the computer programmers I was recruiting for are more technically oriented than our students in the Information Strategy group it is perhaps informative for those of us trying to prepare our charges for the world of work.

I’ll describe what happened later but for those who don’t read so far the conclusions are that those who both showed a baseline of basic competence and a level of enthusiasm for the subject got the job. In whittling down the applicant we took some notice of degree (subject, university and class) but we certainly didn’t assume that just because someone had done a three-year course in software engineering they could write a tiny computer program. Once we had got candidates to show us a bit of their skills, it was enthusiasm for the subject that counted we don’t want people mopping around the office waiting for break time.

From this I conclude we need to help our students to develop skills that industry wants and to communicate our enthusiasm for the subject to them. If as lecturers we don’t have enthusiasm for our subject we need to go and regain that love of information systems.

For our work interviews half of all applicants applying for the job at www.villagesoftware.co.uk came from John Moores School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. Half from other regional institutions. We had trimmed down from about 30 applicants to 12 for an initial phone sort and then invited 6 to interview of which 5 attended.

We focused on skills, knowledge and enthusiasm. The candidates were given a three page test. While observed and in discussion with a senior developer.

They had to produce a small computer program in a language of their choice based on the Fizz Buzz test, a test that says ‘ok write me a tiny piece of program’. Of the five graduate programmers who showed, one walked straight through this test no problem, 3 produced passable attempts after about 30 minutes and one failed to put anything credible together (John Moores Student I’m afraid).

They then went on to tackle an entity relationship diagram, for this I gave them a simplified version of the Lancashire Chemicals Operational Stock Control case study which I am currently haunting the 4^th Year BIS students with in their Design of Enterprise IS course. None of them were great at this, 3 had a weak attempt and 2 had no concept of the technique. Interestingly we have recently come across ‘senior developers’ (those on about 30K) with similarly no real concept of database design.

Finally we presented one page of functional but poor computer program, written by my own fair hand, and asked the candidates what was wrong with it. They did better here, 4 of the 5 able to make at least some clear comment on quality failures but none left the impression that they really new the difference between industrial strength programming and hobby software development.

These ‘go on show me’ tests sorted the men out from the boys a bit (on this occasion all applicants were male). But we also interviewed them on a series of software development questions, which we had simplified from Coders at Work interview questions. One of the key differences this made was differentiating those who have an enthusiasm for the subject. Some candidates clearly came across as seeing their career as a software developer as an agreeable way to keep the wolf from the door while staying out of the rain, but showed no essential enthusiasm for the subject. As a manager I’d rather be containing peoples enthusiasm than flogging a dead horse.

It all makes me think that at the end of our courses we will offer our students a greater chance of happiness in life if we teach them skills that help them in the world of work but also inspire enthusiasm in the subject that will make working life interesting rather than a drag for wage slaves. Sometimes I feel this will involve some ‘tough love’.