What Does Big Data Mean?

Big Data is the term used for huge quantities of collected data and the methods used to analyse and make sense of it all.  The problem really arose when the Sloane Digital Sky Survey began its redshift study in 2001 and started to collect data from the whole sphere of space surrounding us.  Within a few weeks, it had acquired more information on the stars it observed than had ever been collected in the history of astronomy and the team running it were at a loss as to how to deal with the information. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland has 150 million sensors that collect data 40 million times every second in its attempts to find new and exotic sub-atomic particles and understand how matter is made up.  Both of these examples illustrate how the world of data collection and analysis has to adapt to accommodate increasingly large amounts of information, and the challenges that it represents.

With sizable chunks of information now becoming commonplace in science, medicine, Defence, and manufacturing, industries have to change how they collect and analyse data that they are collecting. This is a factor that is receiving increasing attention from the Oil & Gas industries where exploration either on land or undersea, may require the collection and sifting of huge amounts of data in order to pinpoint potential new resources.  Big Data can be characterised by a number of specific features;

Volume – Relating to the quantity of data produced, the volume is the size variable that relates to the overall size of the collected information.  It is estimated that US consumer giant Walmart deals with over a million customer transactions every hour and runs stock and consumer information databases that are in the order of two and a half petabytes, or 2560 Terabytes, of information in size, which is a pretty big volume to keep on top of.

Variety – Variety is used to catergorise the received information and may relate to database entries, chemical data, statistical information or physical aspects such as size, position, movement etc. The greater the variety, the more analysis that needs to be carried out to reconcile the information and understand it.

Velocity – This parameter dictates the speed with which the data is amassed.  While some data sets may be large they may have been gathered over many years, others may be obtained as a huge mass of data that then requires analysis.  It is expected that the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will amass 140 terabytes of information every five days, all of which will need to be sifted and catergorised.

Veracity – This refers to the quality of the obtained information.  A geological survey may capture many terabytes of information regarding the make-up of rock formations and gas analysis data, but if it is of insufficiently quality then there is little point in analysing it. Data needs to be of the best quality, which unfortunately tends to increase its size.

Added to these factors is another called “Complexity” which dictates how data management and analysis can become a very intensive process, especially when large volumes of data come from multiple sources and at high velocity. Big Data analysis is now being utilised in an increasing number of fields and experts try to understand the data coming in from many different sources.  Knowing something is one thing but actually understanding what the data is telling you is key to getting the most from it, and helping us advance in many areas.

Written exclusively for Enigma Consulting Group

Check out more of what we can do for you at www.enigma-cg.com

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GST Training Organized By Enigma CG As Covered By Mediu News!

We are finally on news! Mediu News also known as Al-Madinah International University News Center covered the GST training organized by us which were held at Corus Hotel, Kuala Lumpur. The training took place starting from 27 till 30 October 2014 and was a great success as it happened to draw many delegates that eager to learn the comprehensive detail on the GST system which will take effect starting this 2015. Among them are the delegates from Al-Madinah International University and they did a great coverage on the event which were posted on their news site recently. Below we quoted the article and to all the readers, happy reading:

Al-Madinah International University (MEDIU) participated in the HRDF training program ‘Good & Service Tax (GST)’ on Wednesday-Thursday, 29-30 October 2014 in Corus Hotel, Kuala Lumpur. The training session entitled ‘GST for Accounting Treatment & Effective Implementation Process’ was attended by MEDIU’s Finance Division; Puan Raja Roslawati Raja Ismail, Chief Finance Officer and Puan Zuraidah Othman, Head of Finance Department. 

The program was organised by ENIGMA Consulting Group and the speaker was Madam Tiffany Tang; GST Trainer for Malaysia Institute of Accountant (MIA) with vast experience more than 15 years in a wide range of roles in finance industry and GST/VAT practice across few Asian countries. Among the objectives of the 2 days training program are to understand and practice the various GST treatment for input and output tax, setup of GST ledger-sub ledger and GST coding, walkthrough the process of GST implementation as well the documentation of process flowchart for audit trail and assessment purpose. 

The training course equipped the participants on the various scope of GST namely the registration of GST, the pre implementation assignment & action plan, actual implementation observation, tax invoice & record keeping as well as the audit & assessment compliance.

Source:  http://news.mediu.edu.my/2014/10/training-good-service-tax/

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It's All About The Big Data & Analytics!

EXPLAINING WHAT BIG DATA IS ALL ABOUT

The buzz at the moment is all about Big Data. But how many of us really know what it is? In layman's terms big data is a set of valuable unstructured data collected from various sources such as surveys, research, feedback and internal sources. Most data collected are from social networks, online website analytics, and customer tracking system s to name a few The big data is later processed to reveal recognizable patterns and useful information for the benefits of businesses which is also known as customer insight. The data produced is pivotal in determining the businesses’ future decisions namely on what customer to target, how and what the eventual ROI would be.

Data scientist are usually the one that will possess this knowledge after analyzing the big data using statistical software such as SAS. SPSS or KXEN. ‎

Companies are increasingly looking for useful insights from the big data they collect to further assist them in directing the path of their businesses to grow portfolios whether it be in size, revenue which will ultimately lead to increased profits via a loyalty. Big data exists from the needs of answering the important questions related to the business needs. With the right manipulation of the insights, companies might be able to boost their sales, keeping up with the competitive landscape and derive new business strategy to meet with their business goals. This will later help in improving the operation, customer service whist reducing the risks of the businesses later. By applying big data analytics, businesses can effectively increase customer retention and add up to the new customer base after they successfully tap into their new niche market.

Normally big data is essential in improving performance of the business while accelerating processes in it for more efficiency. The MD of EnigmaCG Abeed Rhemtulla highlights that this is the whole point of big data. It plays a functional role in optimizing the business performance to the optimum point as stated.

THE CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA

Despite the widely known benefits of the big data to business, according to Enigma CG many marketers and business owners still skeptical with the increasing popularity of big data. These data to them impose challenges that they have to deal in a daily basis which require them to tackle in a timely manner to avoid bigger troubles to arise later. Considering the sheer volume of data will contain almost every different shapes and form either unstructured or structured form. These data is collected across various departments and need variety of processes for the different types of data to be combined later to analyze and find patterns that leads later to useful information. This massive volume of data is proven difficult to process with the traditional databases and typical software.

These types of data required a high performance analysis from specific analytics tool that can help the mass volume of data to be processed in detail accurately from one vend to another. This process will need to go through various analytical process before a quality information and pattern able to be detected from the big data processed. Tools and processes such as predictive analysis, prescriptive analysis, forecasting and descriptive analytics will help to determine the use of the data later as it will release a recognizable pattern and insights that is vital to answer the business needs. These processes will help to separate which data is relevant and which is not to devise a better corporate decision further.

WHAT ARE THE VOLUMES OF BIG DATA WE ARE SEEING TODAY

Based on the current reports gathered by Enigma CG  that we are getting these days, it is estimated that Facebook itself approximately released over 30 billion pieces of contents generated from this past few months from over 600 million plus users. And Zynga processed over 1 petabytes of content for players every day. And just from yesterday alone it is counted over 2 billion videos have been watched. An average teenager is sending approximately more than 4.7K text messages from his phone per month. And finally over 32 billion searches are performed this month just on Twitter alone.

THE BIG DATA BUZZ IS GETTING LOUDER

As time goes by, the big data is creating quite a loud buzz everywhere and from the online searches itself you can see how many people has start talking and discussing about the new phenomenon of big data. If you observe carefully you can notice that over 112 million blog posts are written specifically to discuss about this big data phenomenon. And if you go to Google and type “What Is the Big Data” on the search term and hit enter, you will notice that there are over 1.35 billion search results that is specifically discussing things related to the big data. Over the Twitter itself if you see, there are over 120 accounts dedicated to the big data which formally discussed and share things about big data.

You can also notice that by this year, there are already more than 2 million pieces of PDF released all over the web that is thoroughly discussing about big data and these are gathered from the search results when you search for the terms “big data”. There are over 50 infographics illustrated the process and discussing about the whole thing of what is big data all about throughout the internet. That doesn’t count the increasing hits on the Wikipedia itself in the topics that just discussing about “big data” alone which currently reaching 70K at the moment. Starting from year 2012 and beyond over 9000 job searches on data scientists are performed on the internet showing the increasing awareness on the benefits of the big data, as from the recent research done by Enigma CG.

PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS

Predictive analytics is one of the branches from the advance analytical procedures that will be used in making future forecast of unknown circumstances. This analytical method derived from the multiple techniques that also includes data mining, statistics, modeling, machine learning and artificial intelligence in order to analyze current unstructured data and process them to enable data scientist to create forecast on the future. This method bring together multiple analytical techniques to bring together the management, information technology and modeling processes to enable them to make predictions of the future. Patterns identified will be later used to predict the historical transactional data which will be later used as a platform to predict the future risk and outcome. By successfully interpreting big data from the predictive analysis will help the company to better manage the future of their business in their benefits.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICS

Descriptive analytics will tell us what actually the data is. This process will summarize what happen and giving you an actual insights of the data. This process will later translate into trending past and future events which will be used to devise a plan on what should they do later. Descriptive analytics will drill down the data to learn the frequency of the event occurrence, the cost of the events and the root cause of the failures which will be beneficial to get a workaround plan later on to overcome the previous failure in which the strategy often can be seen in sales division especially the one that is specifically customer-oriented. Descriptive analytics often triggered alerts and indicators that will help the team to measure up the process. This type of analytics is what usually being used in order for the company to get the bigger picture of the occurrence for their future actions.

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Adapting Your Career To Tough Economy

The economy worldwide is facing a turbulent moment at this time of the year. Fretting about how to survive your career in this challenging time of disrupting changes of economical demographic and technological innovation that drives drastic evolution to the career in many industries affected. No matter how defensive is your skills in attaining trust from your employers, there will be time when the changes push your relevancy to the career away as many related works these days have been replaced gradually by machines or software. Some industries that you may see thriving earlier are now are barely surviving while there are other industries that seems to get stronger than they once were. There are also others that doesn’t even existed few years ago. Regardless few of the changes has appeared to be positive, yet most of them aren’t. Who even bring up the term of “Green Jobs” during the 90s anyway?

The changes regardless how bad or good it were, requires an action. It is essential for veterans and millennials these days to adapt their current career to this new economy. For some people, this might mean to choose a different career in a different field to achieve this. Others might suggest to think differently about or changing the way you think about your career. Nevertheless many will look for the way or strategy to make their role in the career field stay relevant as once it was.

Making a Career Change

Should you even think about changing your career path? Well if the prospect of finding great new opportunities in your current field doesn’t look very promising, then the answer was probably yes. There is always little to nothing benefits in staying with your current career that lead to no future at all. All will look for a career progress but if it always led you to a dead end, then changing your career might be the best option at the moment. Even if you see that your field is doing well, you may want an out from it. Career change also is an option for worker who feel their life has changed in some ways, or having a job burnout – as feeling no motivation to do your job again or either your job was becoming too stressful and boring that you can no longer keep up with the burden anymore.

Changing Careers in Midstream

There could also be a possibility for you to change your career direction because of every relevant reason and sometimes the common reason is because they are ready to take the risk or there are also people who consider changing the way they work for example changing their permanent position into freelance as the reason for them to explore new possibility outside of their normal office environment. Some might even consider part-time work as they want to devote their time to start something they are passionate about. Some might even want to get the job at the place of their relevant interest so it won’t be a surprise if you notice a person that involved in a volunteering work with a certain company are finally working for them.

Create a Life You Want With a Mid-Career Crisis

There could be time when you think that you already had enough of your current career and want to try on other options that can bring again the passion that you once had. You might have a growing sense that you will be a lot happier in doing something else. When you start feeling a growing uneasiness with the field you are working in, that is the earlier symptoms that you are currently dealing with mid-career crisis where you are starting to realize that what you have been doing are not what you are planning to do for next 2 – 3 years.

Protecting Your Jobs

Keeping your job and continuing to grow your current career at work is tough in this time of challenging economical changes. Don’t just bury your head in the sands and hoping that all threats and problems in your current career will just disappear. You to gradually work for it to achieve it. Keep your ears tuned in to your work scope grapevine besides observing your industry’s trends and employment opportunities. EnigmaCG also suggests that you look at your performance and your achievement as seeing how you contribute to the company’s growth might give you the idea if your job is still relevant with the company’s mission. There will be time when you find out that despite your best efforts, the job was definitely not worth keeping then it is the right time to start a new job search. Or perhaps you are one of the lucky employees that the career path is still on demand yet the industry is not being helpful, it is also advised to look out for other opportunities.

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Does Job Success Depend On Data Rather Than Your CV?

Nearly half of the new recruits turn out to be duds within 18 months while other two-third of the hiring managers admitted to have chosen the wrong people over and over again. Most of the reason of the failure is not just about that the person don’t have the requisite skills required but their personality often clash with the company’s culture. In that case most recruitment agencies are resorting to big data analytics to lower the risk of fraudulent hiring and firing process. This will help the process to be more scientific, aligned and effective. At the moment, it is suggested that the success of your hiring process lies mostly on your online data profile rather than what is written in your CV. Thus, you have to put full attention to detail on your online data trail as it is a fine reflection of your personality. Normally what you write outside for example in social media can determine your personality so beware of your personal online trail is it has a high impact to your candidacy potential.

Game for a job

While the internet has certainly make it a lot easier to search for the right candidates and match them with the right organization, many companies have been moving beyond automatic keyword research that match the vacancy with the profile. Some companies won’t even bother to look at your skills and certifications written on your CV but more to how you write it and the way you express the word and how they manage to structure their sentence. This analysis will be revealing the candidates personality through the identification of language pattern to determine and later compare this against the corporate culture of the company for suitability.

Through the thorough analysis, most are found not suitable because their lack of fit with the culture of the company and not because of their lack of skills, so to speak. There also company who use online game for their candidates to play in order to assess their potentiality and suitability for the culture of their company. While all applicants play online games that will reveal their personality, emotional maturity and problem solving skills, they are tons of other data and information being collected throughout the session to further determine the candidates’ eligibility to join the company.

Size matters

With the increasing use of innovative personality data still not good enough to replace the good old big data for efficient analysis as believed by many recruiters. Assessing historical data from millions of applicants either successful or otherwise assist the employers in predicting how the next candidates will behave and how they will be the best if they look at the comparison with the career path, personalities & qualifications from previous successful candidates. Now employers are able to use their own data in order to predict how long a candidate will stay in a particular role before he or she start seeking for new opportunities elsewhere.

This will also help them to determine what is the career goals of these candidates and based from their previous career histories, enable the recruiters to assist them efficiently in order to find them the job that they truly required and shaped up their future career ambition. Some recruitment companies might even scan through their candidates’ profile and job offers every month just to know which job that being clicked on the most and which being rejected so the search process is refined through the data they gather.

Selection bias

All these data and analytics information that we have might give a challenging perception of what skills and knowledge do a candidate possesses that will make them a good fit for the post. It is also based from research that prior work experiences and even education aren’t the key indicators that contribute to the good performance on the roles. There also some cases where a service industry worker who regularly use five social networks per week usually tends to be more productive than the other workers that are less digitally savvied.

Social profile

Besides using all these historical data to analyze, the social networks also is another good medium that can supply the recruiters with the real-time data. The blog, twitter and websites profiles do reveal as much as everything about the person rather than the properly written CV. The social media is also a perfect medium for the individual to showcase their expertise, experience and enthusiasm for their field of specialism. However candidates should be aware of their online reputation which they try to build and the data trail they would leave behind as they make would cost them to get a negative first impression. Many recruiters have turn to social media to search for potential hires as they are now equipped with the tool to spot the pattern of behavior and sentiment from their social media activity.

Human touch

Some argue that recruitment should be all about connection and relationship between recruiters and candidates while the technology exists to simplify the whole process by assisting to make everything flowing more efficient. If you are looking for diversity in workplace for more creative environment, you need people with diversified background and experience. But however, data science can never replace the good old face to face interview. Going through the big data will never change the effective ways of identifying the suitable candidates by face to face meeting. It will be easier to impress people with the fine tuning of your portfolio and CV but what matter most was either the person really fit with the job, the environment and the responsibility that to be handle by him/her later. After you learn about the candidate in person – you will get the idea of how good he/she is in expressing their idea, exchanging point of view and handling tough scenarios through simulations that will later determine if that person is the right person for the job.

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The Challenges Of Attracting The Right Talent

Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) –- Catalpa Capital Founder, Chairman & CIO Joseph McAlinden and Execu-Search CEO & Founder Edward Fleischman discuss how they think the jobs report doesn’t reflect the underlying economy and the hiring outlook for 2014. They speak with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television’s “Taking Stock.” (Source: Bloomberg)

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How to Keep Employee Training Relevant and Interesting?

Through the eyes of some employees, training is considered to be a necessary hassle to be added into their already hectic working life. Although they know that employee development training will be critical for the success of the business and in order to keep update with the trends, innovations and further advancement in their fields of expertise. And it is also no helps that many companies organize and run their training programs but contribute to less or no changes at all in their employee improvement. This might be due to the cost and time constraint in order to revamp or incorporated new content to their outline of the program.

Training and employee development program normally contribute to higher employee retention and loyalty and it also helps to give the company a better impression to their potential employees. With an increasing demands of qualified talent each year these days, is becoming a highly relevant subject matters to have a relevant, interesting, training and development program that can cater all the employees who participate in the program regardless their working level. To reach the goal, how a training program can remain relevant and interesting to these employees without putting too much budget for the companies to invest on them?

Experience in catering & developing different training program for various business in our 5 different global locations, Enigma CG suggests you six ways on how to jump-start your training & development program and remain relevant at the same time:-

Invest in Leadership Development

In today’s time, conscious leadership that is a combination of both business and relationship skills are much needed. Over the next few decades, many baby boomers will be expected to retire from their current position so there will be a potential void for experienced leaders. This increase will later combined with the ongoing production of millennials that will make some of the current programs to be obsolete and no longer relevant. Investing in order to fine tune the current leadership development program or creating a particularly new one, a business can get ahead with this pending gap and continued to be poised in becoming the strong, well-developed leader for tomorrow.

Keep training relevant

Employees dread and despise trainings that are not related to their routine and everyday work life. So as expected, many will refuse to engage and furthermore decline to participate. Try to pick your course offering and the participants that will be participating. Decide and check if it is relevant to their work and job scope. Will the outline help these workers to overcome their current obstacles in completing their work with success? Everything should be put into account when deciding the course that fit your employees to ensure the success in the end of the program, either it will improve or break your employees. Make sure certain course materials are still relevant and help the participants now or in the immediate future to grow.

Bringing in a new trainer

In many organizations, the same people will be conducting the training over the years. There is a chance that their course content or materials might be irrelevant to the person these days. A new trainer can add a new flavor to the current topics as they can bring in different point of view and perspective besides adding up new content that can further engage the audience by expanding their knowledge further.

The new trainer doesn’t have to be expensive either because there could be an expert trainer lies within the four walls of your business and it might also be people from inside the organization. Reaching out to business peers and mentors to gain insights & expertise as well.

Create options

Make all training program to be easily accessible to all your employees. Start off by creating real-time offering, recorded offering and online offering to entice your employees further. Also you can give options for your employees to attend it either remotely or in person, considering where they are currently located. Prepare for other workers that non-traditionally work in shifts schedule. New technology has enable the program to be manage a lot easier by providing a platform for it to be accessed anyway either remotely or online and use the chance to get the full use of these technologies to allow easier and less expensive course & training to be conducted.

This kind of capability allows greater flexibility of how a course and training program can be conducted while enabling the employees to participate in the course and furthermore increase the attendance rates and in turn the likelihood of the subject matters can be retained.

Change the scenery

If the training is normally conducted in an onsite training center or a corporate conference room, you might want to consider moving to other location. Sometimes a change in scenery might be good to get these participants to be attentive at their seminars and training programs because it left all the other distractions back at their workplace and their mind will be free to accept any knowledge coming their way. It doesn’t have to be an exotic location but it can be in other corporate location, training center and even outdoor. It is essential to get the employees out of the office once in a while and take them into the neutral scenery so their mind will be freed from all the distractions that may arise in the office. This will encourage the participants to be more engage and willing to learn with the program.

Feedback, Feedback & Feedback

From before, during and after the class, do make sure you ask for feedback from your employees or participants. Ensure they are satisfied and learn quite a lot during the training so it will benefit them. Once you received the feedback, make sure to review it and later act on it if there are any issues that to be addressed. Acting from the feedback received, employees will most likely provide an open end and honest feedback that will move forward. It is also important to ask for feedback from employees that absent from the non-mandatory session because by knowing the reason behind their absence, employers will know what is the step to take that can help reduce non-attendees in the future.

By keeping the current training program up-to-date and relevant will help increase the utilization of the program further. Instead of having your employees dreading about the training course, now they will be looking forward to participate as they can gain more knowledge and insights that can help improve their method of work and increase their level of productivity. An additional benefit in training and development program for employees is reduction of turnover and increase in employee loyalty. Investing in corporate training will ensure their workforce to be able to serve them better in the new future.

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10 Creative Recruiting Strategies To Hire Great People

Forget Monster, Craigslist and Jobstreet.

In this millennium competitive job market, you have to start doing things differently if you want to succeed further. Also it is a requirement to start innovating the way you reach your desired candidates who might already have their job elsewhere. That’s where many recruitment agencies and companies these days embracing creative recruiting as an alternative that enable them to get away from the hassle of going through a stack of poor-fit profiles. By adding an interactive group interview during the recruitment process in order to actively seeking potential talents at unusual places. There are right now list of ways for company to innovatively change the hiring process.

This will make your business to ultimately stand out in the crowd and enable you to reach your ideal candidates.

Use self-selection to see who’s really interested.

To help you to better filter the staffing selection process, you can innovate the way of the resume submission by trying to add another layer to it and also during the one-on-one interview process. One best option is to invite all the eligible applicants to an open group event such as an open house. It is rather easy to assume all applicants will come for the event but from most open event organized worldwide there is a solid percentage of less than 50% who come to the event. Self-selection is the way to see and filter applicants because it is so easy to apply for anything but only few of them manage to take the first step ahead to succeed. This stage will help lowered the screening process.

This strategy will also help to evaluate how these people interact in groups.

Arrange for group interaction

Interaction with potential candidates in the group will be an excellent way to see their unique character, level of interest to the subject, their working knowledge and their communication skills. This will help you to observe if their overall characteristics will fit well with your organization culture. There are different ways to conduct an interactive interviews but the fundamental feature is selecting potential candidates and encourage them to interact in the group discussion where later you and your current employer can engage with them. One great example is doing something quite similar to ‘speed dating’ with each of them.

You might also take a bit more creative approach to later set up several of other activities to determine and get the better ideas of the level of knowledge and their passion for the industry as well as their personality.

Handpick dream candidates and how you wanted them

At most times, passive candidates who might not actively seeking for a job might be one of your dream hires. Usually these candidates are already employed and you might never manage to attract them without letting them aware how much you want them to join your company and work for you. Reaching out to them in a personal manner might be the thing they need to see if you are really willing to go beyond your usual to get their attention. There are actually many ways for you to creatively approach these employees and maybe by offering incentives to flatter them a bit. One of the case is by the Red 5 Studio, a video game company where they randomly select 100 candidates and get to know them personally through their social profile. Then each of them are sent a personalized iPod that exclusively equipped with a welcome message by the CEO.

The flattery usually paid off and more than what they expected actually responded to the pitch where 3 of them left their previous job to join on board. Many other potential hires found the company through the words of mouth generated by the buzz.

Look For Talent in Unlikely Places

How can you maintain a corporate culture while doing a fast hiring? Follow the step of the Quicken Loan Company, they look for talents at unexpected places. They regard as they are not finding the talents within their industry but far stretch their lookout to the point where they simply hiring people out of the job scope. To them, it is easier to teach people about finance but not to teach them about passion, urgency and the willingness to go extra miles.

Attend events that are not job fair

Often job fairs turn out to be useless as the crowd that usually flocked around are only the common people searching for quick job. Rather than that as most of our potential hires might already have their stable or permanent job at the moment, it’s assumable that they would not be gathering around some job fairs. Start off by looking at the conventions and events that aren’t traditionally job search related. One of the highest probability to find potential hires was through the Meetup where they organized group event of the same particular interest, might be the perfect spot to look out for your best talents.

For example if you are looking for a graphic designer or web editor, you can start your search at the group event focusing on the graphic design seminar or web camp where all the people from the same background interest and talent gathered to discuss passionately about the subject. Because then, you will get the feel on how passionate they are about what they are doing and get the feel of what they would be like in person.

Making yourself stand out through non-traditional media

In this year of media & technology, you can’t assume by relying on your perfect job description written on some job sites will make you stand out in the crowd. With a little magic of technology, you can make it happen through a video or podcast. Through the use of media, you can successfully convey the message to your potential hires about your company’s corporate culture and just how fun is it to work with your team.

Whether it’s a fun video on YouTube showing how much fun it was to be working in your company and how awesome the employees in your company would be. Maybe a recorded podcast discussing about the job description of the particular job might just do the trick. Hopefully this strategy will help to differentiate you from other companies and make you stand out.

Actively search profile and social networking sites

Rather than going through pile of bad fit resumes that you might be getting in the response to your job post, you might try to seek your potential hires through something else for example by searching through their social media profiles. This way you will get to see only the candidates that you see fit and suitable for the job because you done the search yourselves. These days there are several sites that enable their users to create profile where they can add their knowledge and past work experiences together so that recruiters will get a better ideas of the candidates suitability to the job they will be offering.

This way recruiters can view their resumes, conversation with others in the network, how they engage and their contribution to answering the big questions. Through this method, you are not only screening for the perfect candidates but you’ll also learn a few things about them pre-interview.

Consider past candidates

Some of your former rejects might be your potential hires now. There are times in the past where you passed on some good candidates due to some unexpected reason or another. Perhaps you might have disagreed with their expected salary package which is just a bit too high or they are previously aren’t the ideal candidates for the job in discussion. For whatever reason it was, if you think that the current job offer would definitely fit with your previous candidates, it won’t hurt for you to contact them and get in touch with them now just to see if they are still interested.

Publicize referral incentives

Sometimes referrals just might do the trick as the source for great hires. All you have to do was let the people know that you are currently in the look out or even send out an offer or incentive to send them your way. A financial reward might be ideal if you would be hiring the referral in the end, but if your referrer is your employee, non-monetary perks can be good too for example a day off or exclusive parking spot.

However in order to publicize outside of the company, some great ways to get the word out is by including the note in your email signature telling that you are currently looking, indicating what are you looking for as suggested by many experts. 

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13 Things Not To Say During Your Job Interview

Aside from submitting a resume full of typos, there will be a chance you get turned down for a job offer when you accidentally say things that was not acceptable during your interview session. These so-called sayings are the easiest way to get you quickly eliminated from a job offer consideration. Basically it feels like putting your foot into your mouth technically. You might have aced your resume validation check and gave your hiring managers a great impression for the first time just by reading through your impressive resume but what happened when they meet you? Can you impress them the same way as what they saw in your resume previously? Some people may not get this but what do you say during your interview session matters as it is generally like your first audition. Hiring managers interview candidates to check whether you really fit for the job scope and the ability you have in handling the task required. Most of the qualities that they will put into consideration are the ability to think on your feet, creativity, emotional intelligence and your attitude. It’s not only what you say that counts but how do you say it. Furthermore, your tone of voice and body language will be watched closely during the interview to determine if you are the right man for the job. Here’s a few things that EnigmaCG suggests you should have avoided saying during your job interviews, regardless it was your first:-

“I’m really nervous”

Even if you are nervous because it is your first job interview, you must never show it to your interviewers. Remember as no company wants to hire people with an absolute lack of confidence so you must avoid from showing it during your interview session. At this moment, honesty is not the best policy so you’ll be better fake it until you definitely make it.

“Let’s talk money”

You should never discuss about salary at thee early stage of your interview process. Discussing about salary can raise a red flag to some potentially great employers that you are in it just for the sake of the paycheck and not for any deeper reason. Today, more employers are looking for employees that can align to their mission and their values. All the negotiation process on the salary should be done at the end of the interview process.

“My weakness is that I care too much/ work so hard”

Another important thing that you should never say during your work interview is voluntarily talk about your weaknesses. Unless they ask you a standard question of “What is your biggest weakness?” then you should never talk about it.

Even if you are asked this question, just stay away from these answers because everybody will know it is a masked strength that will be a turn off for every interviewers who have been around the block all these years and you should focus on telling them your true strength and spend time thinking of what is your true weaknesses and professionally admit to them.

“I really need this job”

You should never show the sign of desperation when you are in the job interview. And you must never say that you need this job due to your current circumstance. Most employers may view your desperation as a sign of weakness and again, they want their employees to have a long term relationship and career goal with them and which is not merely just a job.

“My current boss/employer is horrible”

Never try to criticize your former boss or company ever during your job interview. Be careful if the interviewers drag you into talking about your previous company because you shouldn’t badmouth about your earlier company even how bad your experience with them. It will not be classy and it will often make you sound bitter, negative and petty. It also indicates that there will be a chance for you to badmouth and talk negatively about other companies in the future. It will also be a test to see if you would say something reproachful.

“I need…..”

Don’t ever make the conversation all about your own need. You should listen and acknowledge the company’s need and what you can do to help them in achieving it. Besides, talking about your need will indicates that you will be someone that will potentially be a high-maintenance and quite challenging to work with. Every people has their own need so let’s not make your own be too obvious then what it seems. EnigmaCG encourages candidates to start thinking of what they can do to help the company they are having interview with on how they can contribute to the company instead of what the company could give you.

“Do you know when we’ll be finished here?”

Don’t ever show the sign that you are in a hurry to be somewhere else during your job interview. A 30-minutes job interview could drag into 90-minutes if all goes well and if the interview feels that you have to be somewhere else that is more important it might and definitely be a turn off. EnigmaCG advised candidates to be respectful to the interviewer by showing them how much you appreciate being in the interview session. Giving a word of gratitude once in a while won’t hurt your pride at all. Besides, showing them that you are in a hurry to be at other place might showing them the sign that you are not appreciative towards the opportunity they are about to give.

“I love the perks you offer”

Don’t bring up on anything about how much you love the perks being offered by the company. This will show signs that you are more interested with the benefits you will be getting from the company rather than contributing to the employer’s success. At least don’t try to show how excited you are about the benefits you will be getting and care more about how you can help the company in achieving their goal.

“I rather not say…”

Unless the interviewer asks you a highly inappropriate and illegal questions or something that makes you uncomfortable, you have every right to answer all the queries from them. A job interview is never the best time to play with the ‘no comment’ remarks as it will show just how unprepared you are on the job interview and much worse, they will think that you might have something serious to hide from.

“How much paid time off do I get in the first year?”

You shouldn’t give them the impression that you determine to take all your available sick leave and miss as much of your work while still getting paid for it. You can just leave such question during the follow up interview or during your meeting with the human resources for further discussion on the benefits.

“S—, d—, f—, etc.”

Under any circumstance, never use the swear words or slang terms during your conversation in the interview session just to come across as ‘authentic’. This will only give people the impression how poor is your communication skill.

EnigmaCG agrees that swearing will indicate just how unprepared you are during the interview. Even if your interview is done after the work hours where everyone else around you are swearing, please finds a PG-rated words that you can use and use inflections or body language to make your points.

“I’m getting divorced/pregnant/going through a tough time.”

EnigmaCG advises against bringing up other personal related matters or issues. This can be viewed as the major turn off to any employers just for the whole host of reasons and not because it is about whether your personal challenges might get in the way of your performance at work or effecting your daily job activities.

“I don’t have any questions for you.”

When you were asked if you have questions for them, don’t say no. This will give them the impression that you aren’t interested with the job nor the company itself. EnigmaCG encourages candidates to ask if they have any enquiries on anything regarding their job responsibility and also the company procedures because it will indicate just how much you have researched about the company and how prepare you are in accepting your future responsibility.

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Please Don't Do These 9 Things During An Interview

As far as all concern, searching for job can sometimes be dreadful and a bit demoralizing. EnigmaCG would like you to succeed because it would be good for you, the company that hire you and for the overall economy. In fact EnigmaCG would really like you to get the job which you can enjoy doing it, challenges you and make best use of your overall strength. In the service of that, there are some actions which we want you to steer away from during your job interview. These actions as accordance to our expert won’t give you the impression which you would like to make. While some of the interviewers might have a different perspective in which attitude they prefer while some of them are very particular when it comes to the candidates’ behavior that they are interviewing.

Unfortunately some of the interviewees get counseled to do some version of these things. Having experience in recruitment consultancies over the years and having spoken to many great hiring managers talking about what they like and what they don’t during the interview given us some ideas on what are the things that you should have avoided when attending an interview session. If you eagerly want the interview session to go well, follow these instruction – don’t:-

Freeze Up

No matter how impressive you are in talents or how excellent and appropriate your resume is written, it will be a big turn off if you act articulate and silent during the interviews. As daunting as it get, interview involved everything from your clear and confidence answer to your body language, all will be put into account before the further selection process continues. If you couldn't get through the whole interview without crumbling, people will unlikely to believe that you will be capable to withstand the stress of the real work. Most important thing to do beforehand is to practice self-talk as a practice before the actual interview.

Dominate

It’s good when you already done your homework about the company you are going for interview. It is also not a crime if you look like that you are well prepared for the job but it surely annoying if you swept over the room as if it was your friend dorm. This kind of attitude is exhaustive as it leave the interviewer with no space to interrupt and later will be something that they don’t want to experience every day. A good interview according to EnigmaCG should be a dialogue session between the hiring manager and the candidate and not a monologue that will eventually turn off the interviewer. If you tend to talk a lot you might take into consideration to coach yourself to be curious about the interviewer; what she or he might want to hear from you and what they don’t.

Be sloppy

Although some companies practice casual dress code, others might still sticking with the same official dress code as other major established companies do. Try to find out before the interview what the standard dress code at the particular company is. No matter how casual is the dress code, please don’t try to be sloppy. Having a good personal hygiene will give the company a first good impression on yourself during the interview. It is more important whether you are overdressed or underdressed. If you come for an interview looking like you just rolled out of your bed, it gives the indication that you have lack of respect for the interviewer, the job and the company you are going for interview with.

Self-aggrandize

Often people are advised to market themselves and show confidence during their interview, but it is easy to cross the thin line from confidence to cocky. Answering questions as of you having no sign of weaknesses other than your impatience for those who aren’t fabulous as you are might come across as offensive and furthermore annoying. Balancing your strength and weakness together and telling them how you manage to get them to complement each other to achieve your earlier goal is better and come across as far more mature through their eyes.

Throw anybody under any bus

Even if your previous company feels like Date’s Seven Circles of Hell, under any circumstance never try to share it with your interviewer. Sometimes, people say bad things about their previous job because they don’t know how it will be perceived as later by the interviewer. You might actually think like it was a compliment to your current company but the reality is far different. EnigmaCG believes that saying negative things about your previous work life might give others the impression that you are both a complainer and indiscreet, which two qualities that they don’t want their future employees to have because later you might have the tendency to say negative things about them too.

Focus more on perks than on the job

Although many jobseekers are advised to ask about the benefits they would get from the company they have interview with rather than blindly taking it up for nothing, timing is necessarily critical. It is truly annoying if you start discussing about them during your first interview and it will give you the impression that you are only after the benefits offered and not for the sake of the job itself. Although these are important things to know, these should be discussed during the end or second round of interview that will involve the human resource. This attitude will not inspire the company to hire you now or later.

Be opinion-free

It will be a struggling moment for a candidate to come across as flexible and accommodating and it seems as they agree with everything the interviewer says and suggests. While many companies are looking for candidates that aren’t combative and rigid, they also need employees who know what they are and understand what they are capable of and what is important for them. Be expressive and speak yourself out as it shows your true potential and whether you are the right candidate with an outstanding demeanor among others that have been interviewed so far.

Stretch the truth

As critical as it seems, in this era of massive information availability, whatever you say and write either your past work experience, performance or your education will most likely be checked beforehand by the interviewer. It is better to be frank and upfront with anything less than stellar by offering a simple explanation to avoid confusion and distrust at the end. Believe us as trustworthiness is a priority and a quite critical quality they would look for before hiring you for their company.

Be clueless about the hiring company

Under any circumstance, please do an extensive research on the company beforehand. In the age of digital and information gateway, information can be available at any time and it will be difficult to understand if you come for an interview without any knowledge on the company you are interviewing with. It shows just how you are unprepared for the interview and it will come across as insulting and incurious. If you don’t know anything much about the company it will be easy for the interviewer to assume you wouldn't be of much interest with knowing how to do the job well either.

If you do the opposite thing of what we discuss here, you will ace the interview and eventually get into the ‘hired list’ in just a matter of time.

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Why Choose An Employment Agency?

Employment agencies can inevitably secure you an employment opportunity in no time as they plays an important part in marketing your talent to potential companies. There are a lot of possibilities you can consider either you are temporarily securing a job for a short gap of time or looking for a long term employment. If you are looking for your dream job, then using these agencies will help you quite a lot in term of time & money. Whatever work that you desire, staffing agencies can help assisting you to find what exactly you have been looking for. EnigmaCG encourages you to use recruitment agency to help fulfill your requirement in job search as you will receive assistance and support to live up to the expectation and standard set by organizations these days.

Securing a job can be a tough task for people with minimum years of experience as competition gets tougher from year to year with more students graduated from universities and colleges and the industry however is looking for the best candidate around. With these challenges arise, it will leave you with a hard time in securing even for a job offer. Thus, recruitment agencies are here to help you in overcoming these challenges by innovatively market you to the potential companies through so many methods which also includes improvising the resume and career development counseling. Here are the top reasons why you should be using the recruitment agencies to secure your employment opportunities.

Access to wide range of job positions

Recruitment agencies normally have an access to wide range of job positions and because they have quite an enormous list of contacts with potential clients and companies, there will be a big possibilities that they can match your profile with the right employer which still looking for a candidate to fill up an important position. So, how do you think you can go through all these talented people out there just by sending up your resume and pray for them to check into it later? By any case, that normally do not happen as they will go through a pile of resumes that sometimes may get the employers into an ultimate boredom due to the way how the resume is written. There will be a slight chance that they will come across with your profile in the end. With recruitment agencies, you can skip through all these procedures and jump directly to the front for the job you want. These recruitment agencies deal with the companies on daily basis and for many cases, they have the strong connection that will benefit you later.

Saving your time

Another factor was saving your time when going through all the insignificant job interviews the whole day. Have you ever experience the time when you have gone through interviews for jobs that sometimes have nothing to do with your work experience? Recruitment agencies match the perfect candidate according to their talent with the right company so you won’t have to go through all these exhaustive experience and go directly for the interview with the right company for the right job you want. Some agencies have certain roles which they will be pushing off to their clients and it is slightly preferable as it will assist you in getting the right kind of role in the right company for your long term success.

Expert in their fields

Recruitment agencies have access to the wide information and details on their clients and it helps you to decide on which role from which company that will suit you. In short, they know their way around better than you and they can offer tips and advise on how to select a career path properly. As expert in their own field, they have a great deal of experience in managing the employment process which will benefit you in long term run. They can offer you vital information and resources when dealing with potential clients for example, the salary expectation. Many candidates are unsure what to submit to their employers during the first stage of their interviews and often undersell themselves. These agencies will help you to get what you are truly worth.

Perfect for temporary recruitment

There are times when you will be looking for temporary and immediate work due to any circumstance. Employment agencies can assist you in finding such opportunities at the right time. You will be given the role immediately once you fit into all the required criteria. There are cases when people in need of money for quite a short term basis and don’t know which role that suit them well to start looking for it, recruitment agencies come across as a guardian angels for these people to secure a short term basis role that will later lead to possible long term employment opportunity.

Great people skills

Reference are always important practically in any industry. Your past work experiences are vital to all your upcoming employers and by using the recruitment agencies, it will eventually limiting the amount of time of your listed referees are contacted. Recruitment agencies can also offer advice on which referee that you can share their contact with as some might have quite a negative feedback from their previous employment. These people often possesses great people skills which will help to better mediate between you and your employer to show the bigger picture.

Wealth of knowledge

It is also essential for candidates to use staffing agencies because with the wealth of knowledge they have in hand, they will be able to place you in a better position and environment. A recruitment agency can decide either you are in a perfect fit for the job in the company or if the workplace culture and environment is right for you. Often they will offer you advice on which company is the right place for you and if the job scope is suitable for you to handle. There are times when there are roles that sounds suitable but right through the responsibilities are slightly nothing like what the candidates thought off so the recruitment agencies are trying their best to minimize these problems.

Strict confidentiality rules

Through recruitment agencies you will be able to maintain strict confidentiality with your potential new employer without your current employer knowing that you are actively seeking for a job. Plus, they won’t release your detail to anybody without your prior authorization. This will give you a piece of mind that no random calls from unwanted company coming in to bother and to further assist people who already having their full time job that their current boss won’t aware that they are currently looking out for opportunities.

Free of charge

And finally it is the one thing that you should be considering, that it is free of charge. Being free means you have nothing to worry about having an upfront payment in any case. All the payment will be done by the employer once you are officially on board. There you have nothing to fuss about when you choose to go with a recruitment agencies, all your matters will be well taken care of. 

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