Alex Marsh has recently been appointed by Alto to head up the Risk Management and Compliance department at Executive and Senior Management level within Finance and Insurance.  With over 12 years’ experience within recruitment, and a background in Search for Operational Risk Alex understands the complexities within enterprise wide risk and the challenges imposed by on-going changes in regulatory requirements.  Her proactive, consultative approach and high standards ensures the accurate delivery of highly niche skilled personnel.

To speak with Alex about any of our opportunities within Risk and Compliance, call our London office on 0207 798 1519.

Since the crash of 2007, a number of political figures and commentators have proclaimed that they can see the green shoots of economic growth. The first of these pronouncements was from Shriti Vadera, then Labour Minister for Business, Skills and Innovation, and in hindsight was woefully early. The most recent has been in the past week, and has enjoyed support from a wide range of business leaders and politicians, with the Bank of England endorsing this view by holding back on a further round of quantitative easing.

What’s our view? The past two weeks have seen an influx of new vacancies, with clients under pressure to fill these roles quickly. September holds our record for sales figures since the crash, and we anticipate that October will also be a good month. The outlook from our clients is also positive, with many of our clients increasing hiring over the coming months. This outlook is broad-based, across our technical, executive and defence divisions. Internationally, whilst our business in the Eurozone is depressed, in the wider international market we are experiencing significant growth – something reflected in the wider economy where exports are moving away from the Eurozone.

Our conclusion? Provided that there are no major shocks to the Eurozone, we expect growth to increase.

It’s always tricky to write your first CV – you’ve not got a template that you can follow, and probably haven’t had feedback on its content. Several of our clients have mentioned that many of the CVs they receive from graduates have insufficient information on their university courses, and too much irrelevant information on holiday jobs. Many also read as personal statements – which aren’t CVs.

Your CV should sell your strengths; it should be clear and easy to read. Big blocks of text are something to avoid, whilst bullet points are de rigour. Make sure that your employment and education history are in chronological order, and make sure that you include all dates and results.

As a graduate, your CV certainly shouldn’t exceed two pages, and if it only reaches to one page, that’s not something to be concerned about – as long as it is comprehensive. Make sure that you use a clean, modern font – Calibri, Tahoma, Segoe, Cambria, and Verdana are all good fonts; Courier New, Comic Sans, and Times New Roman are ones to avoid. Try to avoid excessive formatting – most recruitment agencies will import your CV into a covering letter, and this can play havoc with formatting.

It’s also important to ensure that your CV is relevant to the job you’re applying for – if you’re looking for a software development role, make sure that your CV fully details your knowledge of software development – which languages and frameworks you have used – and how and where you have used them. What’s much less important in a software development role is your experience working in a call centre or a shop – it has little relevance for the job, as the key skill employers would look for that sort of role are your programming abilities.

Many people finish their CV with their references: this is not necessary. If an employer wants your references, you will be asked for them – regardless of whether they are on your CV or not.

To help with this, we have put together a Sample Graduate CV.

“Everyone lies” – that’s the motto of Dr Gregory House, the anti-hero of hit US series ‘House’. Clearly, this isn’t true, or the world would be a much more difficult place. But recruiters regularly talk to candidates who either withhold information or outright lie – often because people think that the omission or lie will help them with the recruiter. But does it actually help, and if so, what do you gain?

Any business relationship must be founded on mutual trust. Your relationship with your recruiter is no different. Trust cannot be forged if one party feels that the other is withholding vital information, and if you withhold vital information (or tell a big whopper) it’s: a) certain to be uncovered at some point, and b) when it does, your relationship with that recruiter will be harmed.

One of the most common deceptions that recruiters hear from candidates is that the candidate has no job offers or interview with other companies, or that the job on offer is “definitely the one I want”. Many candidates like to give this impression because they feel that the recruiter will put more effort in to finding them a job if they think that the candidate has nothing else in sight. Whilst it may stop a recruiter from working with you if you’ve had a verbal offer that you are planning on accepting, in all other cases it will harm your efforts to secure a new job.

Why? If a recruiter knows that you have other potential jobs on the table, they will work with their clients to speed up the process – you’ll be interviewed sooner, or an offer will be extended faster than it might otherwise be. If you have concerns about a job, or another position seems more attractive, talk your recruiter through why that is the case – explain that it’s closer to home, is offering more money, or offering you the chance to work part-time or have flexi-time. You’d be surprised how flexible companies can be if they want to have you on board their team – but if these things are important, your recruiter can’t help you if you don’t talk them through the process.

Some people disdain talking with recruiters – they want to know the brief details of the job on offer and how much it’s paying, and nothing more – but this approach rarely pays off, as it frequently signals that people are not really looking to move jobs. Small talk can yield essential information – one software engineer that we have worked with is a keen glider. We put together a map of gliding clubs around the UK, and used it to plan with him where he would consider relocating to. If Mike had hidden this driving passion of his from us, we couldn’t have helped him find a job five minutes’ drive from one of the biggest gliding clubs in the country.

In the UK, money is perhaps one of the last taboos. People will discuss their sex lives and health far more openly than they will discuss their salary, but when you’re looking for a job, it’s vital to be open about it with your recruiter – both in terms of your current salary, and what you are looking for. Sometimes, they may tell you that you are looking for too much – they won’t be trying to con you out of any money, but will be trying to help you with your expectations. It is important though, for you to honestly convey both the salary that you would like, and the salary that you would accept, as they can be two very different things! Without knowing both, it is very difficult for a recruiter to negotiate on your behalf.

Ultimately, a relationship with a recruiter can be one lasting the lifetime of a career. At AltoVenus, we have relationships with people that we’ve been helping since the early 1980s. Those relationships have one thing in common – we are trusted by those people to help them with their careers. Google may put a price on information – we don’t: we know it’s priceless.

As recruiters, we have a number of bug-bears when it comes to CV formatting – columns, tables, spaces instead of tabs – all of these can cause problems when importing a CV into a cover sheet. But by far the most frustrating trend is the increasing use of LaTeX to write CVs, with the subsequent document then exported to a PDF.

This trend is most common amongst graduates, no doubt encouraged by university computer science departments encouraging their students to use LaTeX internally. This may be fine when the finished document will not be edited, but all recruiters inevitably edit CVs – if only to import them into a cover sheet.

The problem occurs when exporting a PDF into Microsoft Word – LaTeX is designed to use ligatures and other typesetting features not normally used in standard word processing programmes. Microsoft Word itself can cope with ligatures, but the import process consistently fails to recognise these, and so a beautifully formatted CV can easily be transformed into a hideous mass of twisted formatting. Most commonly, this results in text being expanded or condensed, changed into a different font size, or even a completely different font. Returning a CV’s formatting to its former glory is a time-consuming task, and has one effect – we have less time to identify people for our vacancies.

So please, use Microsoft Word to write your CV – it’s in your interest.

Getting security clearance for the first time can be a complex and daunting process, but can lead to a world of new opportunities. In this post, we shed some light on the process.

Why do I need clearance?

Clearance is needed for anybody who will have access to sensitive information or artefacts, and is carried out to ensure that there are no circumstances in your personal life that may make you susceptible to pressure to reveal classified information.

What level of clearance?

There are several different levels of security clearance, and which you need will depend on the level of access to classified information that you need to do your job, your employer, and the site you are working on. The lowest levels of clearance, CTC and BPSS comprise of basic identity checks, whilst the more advanced levels of clearance (SC, SC Enhanced, and DV) are significantly more detailed.

SC Clearance

SC clearance is needed for frequent and unsupervised access to Secret material. SC clearance typically takes 6-8 weeks to be processed. You must have lived in the UK for the past five years.

DV Clearance

DV clearance is needed for frequent and unsupervised access to Top Secret Material. DV clearance is a much more involved process involving interviews with you, your family members, friends, and co-workers. Your personal finances will be reviewed, and they may look at your medical history. DV clearance typically takes 6-8 months to be processed. Different agencies have different requirements for DV clearance, and so transferring between companies may still take some time. You must have lived in the UK for at least the previous ten years and must have British nationality.

More information about the process can be found here.

AltoVenus have just launched a new graduate campaign for 2012 on behalf of four of our clients. Working in conjunction with Britain’s best universities, we are looking for final year students with knowledge of one or more of the following:
• Software development
• Database administration & development
• Systems administration
• Penetration testing / ethical hacking
• Information security
• Wireless telecoms
If successful, you will be working on some the most exciting technology on the planet, with glittering career prospects.

Click here to see our Graduate Recruitment brochure.

To apply, please send your CV to henry.watson@altovenus.com, or for more information call Henry on 01242 223946.

Looking out of our office in Cheltenham this morning, we’ve seen a steady increase in traffic as we build up to the first race of the Cheltenham Festival. Just as Cheltenham is getting busier, so is business. We’ve noticed a steady but significant increase in meetings, interviews, and job vacancies over the past month, and have taken on a number of high profile clients. This increase in market activity doesn’t seem to be restricted to AltoVenus – recent employment figures show that the private sector employment has been hiring substantially in the weeks since Christmas – and all the indications are that this trend will increase over the next quarter. Particular drivers of growth in Q1 have been the advent of Solvency II, with increased demand for project and change management consultants, and increased concerns about information security driving demand for software engineers with expertise in secure systems. We anticipate this demand growing through April and May.

For our current vacancies, please visit our jobs pages.

After much agonising about the format and content, we have finally launched our new website! Please have a look around – at the moment not all our jobs are advertised on here, but they are steadily being added – it’s definitely worth coming back to check if you can’t find your ideal job on here now.

We have also started a new blog, where we’ll be keeping you updated with industry news. Our first post – “Interim or Consultancy?” is already up.

You sometimes hear the phrase ‘interim management consultants’, but in fact these are two very different ways of helping organisations to move forward. Whether you choose interim or management consultants may depend on the specifics of your challenge, but more and more organisations are beginning to see the value of the interim approach over traditional management consultancy.

An interim manager recommends an approach, agrees this and then implements changes and solutions whilst on assignment. An interim manager is chosen for his or her practical experience and skillset and works with the existing management to add value and bring new direction. Interim managers typically work on one assignment at a time on a five day a week basis. The interim appointment is usually for a pre-determined term within a clear budget.

Unlike interim, management consultants tend to recommend a number of alternatives and then leave it to the client to implement them. They are often trained in theoretical techniques and don’t have as much hands on experience as an interim manager. They are more expensive and often work on a number of projects at the same time. Advisors are more senior and are there to hold discussions and to guide an executive team but not to implement the outcomes. They generally work for a client for only a few days per month.

Our principal area of work is in helping our clients to find skilled interim managers who can add value and deliver clear outcomes.

For more information on our Interim service, please contact Jeremy Drew on 01242 242121.