Archive for May, 2009

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More Languages in Demand as Organisations Try to Beat Recession

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

The following article posted on ResponseSource.com explains that companies all over the world are recruiting employees with the ability to speak multiple languages. In today’s economy, being multilingual is an important skill now more than ever especially for a career in finance, sales, IT, engineering, or as a certified global business professional.

As UK companies look to overseas markets to maximise on business during the downturn, there has been a boost in demand for more exotic language skills, especially within the finance and sales sectors. That’s according to a new hiring trends report from multilingual recruitment consultancy Euro London Appointments

Dutch, German, Japanese and Russian remain popular languages within finance, but more generally there has been increased demand for Arabic, Gujerati, Polish, Czech, Cantonese and Korean as companies look to develop in new and alternative markets.

Although finance and banking recruitment, particularly within hedge funds and trading, has been badly affected by the economic problems, the report shows that demand in areas such as risk and compliance and relationship management has grown as these aspects of finance become increasingly important.

Demand for experienced candidates in digital media has also increased, as has requests for multilingual sales staff, as organisations look for ways to boost sales both at home and abroad. The online gaming sector continues to boom and is seeing continuing demand for linguists too. In the North West of the UK particularly, companies are facing a lack of IT and engineering professionals with language ability, mostly driven by a drop in the number of foreign nationals coming here.

“With the economic picture and the recruitment market varying so much across the globe, organisations in the UK are realising the importance of maximising on relationships with their customers overseas” comments Steve Shacklock from Euro London. “This is not only in Europe but increasingly across Asia too, making language ability an even more valuable skill than ever. It’s reassuring to see that despite the doom and gloom that we hear about the jobs market, that there is still demand out there for skilled and experienced candidates.”

The report highlighted similar market trends across Europe, with France seeing an increased demand for sales professionals and the online sector also expanding in Germany. Although their financial markets have been substantially affected, Luxembourg and Switzerland are still seeing demand for finance professionals, with Luxembourg seeing growth in accountancy and Switzerland experiencing a continued demand for risk and tax specialists.

Euro London’s Spring 2009 hiring trends report covers the job markets in the UK, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland and France.

A Whole New World of Studying

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Technology is transforming the way online students learn. This article from The Guardian explains how educators use Second Life’s virtual reality scenarios to give students a “hands-on” look into many careers like architect and certified emergency manager.

There’s not a red pen in sight when Russell Stannard marks his master’s students’ essays – but it’s not because the students never make mistakes. Stannard doesn’t use a pen, or even paper, to give his students feedback. Instead – and in keeping with his role as principal lecturer in multimedia and ICT – he turns on his computer, records himself marking the work on-screen, then emails his students the video.

When students open the video, they can hear Stannard’s voice commentary as well as watch him going through the process of marking. The resulting feedback is more comprehensive than the more conventional notes scrawled in the margin, and Stannard, who works at the University of Westminster, now believes it has the potential to revolutionise distance learning.

“It started when I began to realise how useful technology can be for teaching,” he says. “I wanted to help other teachers, as well as general computer-users, to learn how to use tools like podcasting, PowerPoint and BlackBoard, software that a lot of schools and universities use to allow teachers to provide course material and communicate with students online.”

Follow the mouse

So he set up a site to teach people how to use the technology, providing simple, video tutorials where users watch Stannard’s mouse pointing out how to use the software, with his voice providing constant commentary. He used the screen-videoing software Camtasia, and the site rapidly took off: it now receives more than 10,000 hits a month.

Then he started considering integrating the teaching style into his own university work. “I was mainly teaching students on master’s courses in media and technology, and I realised that while I was talking about the benefits of new technology, I should be making the most of the opportunity to use it,” says Stannard. “That’s when I had the idea of video marking. It was immediately well received. Students receive both aural and visual feedback – and while we always talk about different learning styles, there are also benefits to receiving feedback in different ways.”

Stannard says the technology is particularly useful for dyslexic students, who appreciate the spoken commentary, and students learning English as a foreign language. “I started my teaching career in language learning, so I quickly realised that students learning English would benefit from video marking. They can replay the videos as many times as they like and learn more about reasons for their mistakes.”

Stannard also believes video marking is “perfect” for distance-learning students. “It brings them much closer to the teacher,” he says. “They can listen, see and understand how the teacher is marking their piece, why specific comments have been made, and so on.”

The technology is already being used for informal distance learning, as Stannard uploads the videos he makes for his lectures at Westminster to multimedia trainingvideos.com. Now 60,000 people a month view the videos.

Second Life

Online marking is part of a package of new technology that is transforming the face of distance education, from Royal Mail-reliant correspondence courses to online, interactive learning. This is clearly evident on Second Life, the virtual world where users create personalised avatars (characters) to interact, which is home to scores of UK universities, with some teaching entire distance-learning modules through the site. Kingston University has developed a virtual courtroom for law students to practise on the site, while e-learning specialists at St George’s, University of London, have come up with a program code enabling Second Life users to create training scenarios.

One sees paramedic students enter Second Life to attend emergency scenarios. The characters have to assess and treat patients by speaking to them, checking their pulse, dressing wounds and administering drugs. They have to transport the patient into the ambulance and to the hospital, and then write handover notes, which are emailed to their real-life tutor for feedback.

While the technology is currently being used in-house at St George’s, the developers have made the code available for other universities or individuals. The code, Pivote, can be freely downloaded from Google Code, where techy types can then use it to create virtual worlds to run other courses.

Dr Terry Poulton, head of the Second Life-academia link-up at the university, says the code has potential applications beyond single disciplines. “The technology could enhance any course with a focus on solving real-life problems, such as architecture, law, or engineering,” he says. “It could also be useful for professional development, particularly when preparing staff for crisis situations that they do not often face.”

Other academics are already using new technology to make university courses more accessible to working professionals. At Bournemouth University, a part-time master’s in creative media practice, launched in 2005, is run entirely online. Recruits are all working people who want to undertake further study but cannot commit to a face-to-face course. The students – over a third of whom are international, living in South Africa, Mexico, New York and Finland – use blogs, podcasts and Skype, the internet telephone service, to study. The first time the students and their tutors meet is normally at graduation.

Jon Wardle, associate dean of the media school at Bournemouth, says the course represents a changing mood in academia. “Higher education has recognised the need to provide opportunities for lifelong learning for a long time, but the early work in the area was poor. Now, because of sites like YouTube, Facebook and Skype, these courses are really able to hit the spot and meet learner needs.

“Lecturers and students are both starting to understand that online learning doesn’t have to be a poor alternative to traditional campus-based courses. The days of the very bad, old-school correspondence courses are over. Now the future is about trying to discover new pedagogies which might not work face-to-face, but work wonderfully online.”

Some are Retooling Careers

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

This article from the Traverse City Record-Eagle says that the slumping auto industry has put many people out of work, and some are going back to school to upgrade their skills. To be successful in the manufacturing industry, plant operator training can help improve the expertise you need to qualify for highly-sought positions.

The large field south of M-72 appeared to be a typical work site as a bulldozer, backhoe, loader and other heavy equipment dug trenches and moved mounds of dirt.

But it wasn’t a new road or housing project under construction. This job site is all about rebuilding careers.

“A lot of these guys worked in factories for 20 years and then they closed the plants on them,” said Jim Peake. He runs an eight-man crew through a series of training exercises and classroom instruction on heavy equipment operation at AIS Construction Equipment in Williamsburg.

Michigan continues to shed thousands of manufacturing jobs each month, much of them tied to the state’s slumping automobile industry. The state lost approximately 42,800 manufacturing jobs in 2008, according to the Michigan Manufacturers Directory, after shedding more than 43,000 jobs in 2007.

Nearly half of those losses can be traced to the auto industry. Cuts rippled into northern Michigan at regional auto plants, including Tower Automotive in Traverse City and Dura Automotive in Mancelona.

One of those lost jobs belonged to Chuck Peters, 43, a Kalkaska resident who went to work at Dura soon after his high school graduation. He was laid off in September after 24 years at the plant, and signed up for Peake’s heavy equipment class in hopes of landing a construction job.

“I wanted to get away from automotive, because there’s not much happening there,” Peters said. “I figured I’d try something different.”

Peters said he was interested in heavy equipment operation because he has friends in the business and enjoys working outside. He acknowledged the slim pickings in the local construction sector, but hopes conditions will improve with millions in federal stimulus dollars targeted for roads, bridges and other infrastructure work.

Kingsley resident Joe Sladek is another pupil. He spent more than 20 years on the white-collar side of automotive manufacturing, including the last 13 as a quality engineer at Dura before his layoff last fall.

“Manufacturing’s been my life blood for 23 years,” Sladek said. Sitting in front of a bulldozer dashboard instead of a computer “took some getting used to,” he said, but he’s excited about learning new skills and enhancing his employment options.

“All I’ve wanted to do since I’ve been laid off, I wanted to go back to work,” Sladek said. “I’ve learned a lot in the four weeks we’ve been here … it’s something I can add to my resume.”

Some trainees’ tuition costs were picked up through the No Worker Left Behind program through Michigan Works. Jan Warren, the Northern Michigan Works program director for the 10-county region, said the employment agency enrolled more than 700 residents in some type of job training program, more than three times above last year’s total.

The loss of a long-held job can be emotionally devastating, akin to losing a close friend or family member to death, Warren said.

“To all of a sudden be removed from that environment, it creates grief,” she said. “It’s a given in your life; it’s your routine. It’s not only the work, it’s the relationships there that you’re losing.”

It’s critical for job seekers to expand their skill and knowledge base in today’s economy, Warren said, even if they struggled through school years ago.

“People who’ve worked somewhere 15 to 20 years, they don’t see themselves going back to school,” she said. “But life-long learning is the name of the game now.”

Matt Sherman drives from his home in LeRoy, south of Cadillac, to attend the training. He’s glad to bolster his resume.

“I figured I might as well go out and learn something different,” said Sherman, laid off from a manufacturing plant in Evart in December. “It’s a plus … it’s schooling. After this, I might go out and get more schooling.”

Peake can relate to his students’ challenges. He was laid off from a manufacturing plant in Lansing after 31 years before he started teaching others to run heavy equipment.

“I totally feel for them,” he said.

Training is hard work, and totals 200 hours over five weeks, rain or shine, and students said Peake is a stickler. He harps on operator safety, and measurements on field tests like trench digging and road grades must be within a fraction of an inch for a passing mark. Attention to detail is important, since Peake wants the course to earn a solid reputation among prospective employers.

“If they need an operator, hopefully they’ll call me,” he said.

Not every student is trying to kick-start a career. David Hose, of Lansing, retired in April after 30 years at General Motors, and said he’s learning new skills out of a sense of adventure. He wants to travel across the country and help communities clean up after major catastrophes like tornados or hurricanes.

“I’m not looking to go out and get a steady job. I’m more interested in chasing the storms and doing cleanup work,” Hose said. “If it’s building, tearing down or cleaning up, you’re going to need people to do that.”

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