Freelancentral column: Hamlet, brown paper bags and existential crises
Here you go, my second article for the Freelancentral newsletter, looking at whether or not it’s a good idea to charge (or pay for) referral fees.
Enjoy!
2010 May
Press release: JobCrystal Happiness Indicator shows nearly half of IT staff unhappy
Almost half of IT, systems administration and networking professionals are “miserable” or “frustrated” in their current role, with 51% saying they are “happy” or “comfortable”, according to the first JobCrystal Happiness Indicator. IT fares better than many other sectors tracked by the indicator, and is also higher than the overall happiness level amongst South African employees.
But JobCrystal warns that IT companies should not become complacent. IT is well known to be a very competitive job market with a scarcity of both skills and candidates, and this is borne out by the fact that even the happy IT workers are advertising their skills on JobCrystal, the only interactive talent management portal in South Africa.
Looking at the indicator overall, only 47% of employees say they are “comfortable” or “happy” in their current position. The remainder are “miserable” or “frustrated”. One has to wonder how productive these miserable employees are in their roles. And, additional cause for concern for employers is that even these happy employees have listed their details on JobCrystal.
Taking a closer look at who the happy and unhappy candidates are: men and women fare almost equally, with 48% of men and 46% of women happy in their current position. From an ethnicity point of view, 55% of Asian and 54% of Black candidates are happy, with only 47% of Coloured candidates and 40% of White candidates happy.
In terms of job function, more than half the staff in accountancy, education, HR/training and research and development roles are happy. On the flipside, people in creative/design, legal/paralegal, manufacturing, retail/FMCG, sales/new business and transportation/logistics rank the lowest in terms of happiness.
“Employers need to be thinking very hard about how to recruit candidates, not only with the right skills and experience for the role, but with the best fit for their organization, resulting in happier, productive, retained and valuable employees,” said Kevin Laithwaite, Managing Director of JobCrystal. “Today, top candidates consider not only the role and salary on offer, but also the organisation’s culture, ethos and values when selecting their next position. We’re seeing this play out in the IT industry at the moment, as recruitment trends often emerge in ‘new’ industries first.”
JobCrystal compiles the Happiness Indicator from the data it collects when candidates enter their details on the talent management portal. One of the ways in which JobCrystal improves the recruitment process and success rate for companies is by using this and other data to make the best matches between candidates and vacancies.
JobCrystal focusses on candidates looking to earn R150,000 per year and more. It charges a flat fee per successful placement, with no upfront charges. Companies including Allan Gray, Protea Hotels, Santam and Foschini are using JobCrystal to source candidates.
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About JobCrystal
JobCrystal turns traditional hiring on its head by placing employers directly in touch with a pool of 80,000 passive jobseekers. The online service is highly automated and cleverly matches candidates with employers, making using the interactive talent management portal faster, cheaper and more effective than any other way of recruiting. Founded by Kevin Laithwaite and Karl Westvig and launched in August 2009, JobCrystal is already being used by companies including Allan Gray, Santam, Foschini. Mr Price, Protea Hotels and Standard Bank.
For more information please visit: www.jobcrystal.co.za (for jobseekers) or www.jobcrystal.co.za/talent (for employers)
Press release: eNetworks polishes ArcelorMittal South Africa’s Saldanha Works enterprise network
eNetworks, the enterprise network services provider, has vastly improved the performance of local area network (LAN) for Saldanha Works, one of the plants of leading steel company, ArcelorMittal South Africa.
eNetworks diagnosed and optimised the company’s existing LAN topology in order to increase performance and uptime. The LAN is used for both the network monitoring system of the steel plant as well as general administration functions. Poor LAN performance and downtime can mean a direct cost to the company from a production point of view and by preventing staff working at maximum capacity, along with the associated frustration of a slow system.
“It’s not enough to set up a network and sit back. You have to constantly fine-tune it to receive the best performance and efficiency. After all, a LAN is the lifeblood of a company,” said Jonathan Maliepaard, Managing Director of eNetworks.
The 10 Gbps fibre optic LAN stretches between four data centres on the ArcelorMittal South Africa’s campus, includes 52 managed switches and is used by more than 500 users. The network is built using HP Procurve equipment.
“eNetworks takes the expertise normally reserved for external networks and applied it to our internal network,” said Hennie Mey, Manager of Information Management at Saldanha Works. “We’ve seen the results in terms of increased uptime and productivity amongst our teams. In addition, they trained our staff at the same time to help us become more self-sufficient.
“We appreciated the fact that Jon and his team didn’t come along with an off-the-shelf remedy, but rather that they got a thorough understanding of the situation and our requirements, and then designed a solution for our specific circumstances.”
eNetworks has built and optimised some of the country’s largest high-end business networks. Its focus is on security, high uptime, redundancy and cost-effectiveness.
About eNetworks
eNetworks, the enterprise network services provider, prides itself on remembering what service is about. It offers managed ISP and enterprise network services to companies looking for a solution to suit their needs, rather than a generic offering.
eNetworks has optimised one of South Africa’s largest HP Procurve enterprise networks for ArcelorMittal, and provides business Internet and networking services for, amongst others, Ackermans, Protea Hotels, Habari Media, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Jeffares and Green Consulting Engineers and Edge Investments.
Entrepreneur, Jonathan Maliepaard founded the company in 1999. eNetworks is a Hewlett Packard preferred partner and an HP Procurve Specialist, and also has offerings in the server and storage space. It is also the African distributor for GTA firewalls. It has a level 3 BBBEE status.
For more information please visit: www.enetworks.co.za
