It is with great pleasure that Milestone Search announces it’s exciting new partnership with Holmesglen Institute of Technology.

Milestone Search will be working closely with the Business Technology Division of Holmesglen to develop a new web enabled AI recruitment solution. This new project will  provide IT students with an opportunity to be involved in a new cutting edge recruitment concept whilst allowing Milestone Search to continue it’s dominance within Australia of providing leading quality recruitment solutions.

It is believed that this new concept will cement a 4 year undertaking to ensure that our entire business recruitment application suite is entirely web enabled thus allowing us to be fully prepared for the mobile platform revolution.

Milestone Search is very excited to partner with Holmesglen and is looking forward to fostering a mutually beneficial and highly exciting endevour.

With more than 6 years of recruitment experience in the Sales and Marketing vertical,  I’ve helped hundreds of job seekers at levels ranging from junior sales administrators right through to Global Sales Directors find that “ideal job”.  My personal strengths include a keen eye for talent and a capacity to filter through large numbers of candidates quickly.  There are however, a number of key things that job seekers can do to make themselves stand out as the more desirable candidate when compared to others searching for work in the market place.  After all, in the job market securing that ideal job is a race and the greatest and most damaging mistake that any candidate can ever make is to present a non-effective or unappealing resume. If you don’t spend the energy and time getting your resume right, your competition will, and will probably secure the better job ahead of you!

When assessing your personal CV, make sure that your details are up to date and also ensure that you are aware of ALL of its content. Borrowing experience from a revered colleague and splattering it throughout your resume like a cheap “Pro-Heart” commercial isn’t going to help you if you can’t recall what it is that you did!  Spelling mistakes are also an all too common mistake. Whilst Microsoft Word has helped poor spellers like myself hide our otherwise once crippling deficiency, not taking the time to run a spell check says awful lot. For example, you either don’t have a computer, OR, you don’t know how to run a spell check, OR, you place no importance on presentation. Thus, as a sales and marketing professional the devil in the detail and its that detail that will rule you out as a potential candidate quicker than you can say “interview at 6″ if such disparities become evident. Of course, seeing the ideal job or wanting to beat everyone else in the stampede to the ideal opportunity may mean that you rush getting your resume out to someone thus compromising content for speed. My advice is, when presented with an opportunity that requires your most urgent response, take a deep breath, a step back, and ask someone else to proof read it for you before hitting the “submit” button.  In short, you only get one shot at a first impression and simple spelling errors will see your resume placed in the waste bin, bottom of the pile, or alternatively becoming a centerpiece of entertainment as the team seek to throw it successfully through the undersized basketball ring attached just far enough away from our desks to make a score that much more enjoyable.

Having said that, very few candidates are what I would call “ideal”, meaning that there must be some involvement from the Sales and Marketing recruitment team to be able to help them achieve a highly successful placement.

In truth, most candidates fit into the mid-range mark. Ironically, this is not such an absurd statement given the the mid range mark is the result of the sum of all divided by the number of “Marks”, or “Johns” or whatever your name happens to be. As a result, any advantage that you can be provided with which will help you identify and secure that ideal job opportunity is critical to a successful outcome! The next thing that I look for when initially inspecting resumes is the overall quality of the description of your role as well as the level of detail describing current and past positions.  I suggest that you include specific dates in months as opposed to years of all engagements including both present and past.  Typically, a paragraph of at least a few lines about the current company that you are working for, which should include what duties your conduct, what the day to day responsibilities are, and how you aid the current employer in achieving your companies goals.  Frankly, if I am forced to do research on the company that you are working for because it isn’t included in the resume, two things will happen. Firstly, and more likely, you will not make the shortlist. Secondly, and more probably, I will NOT shout you a coffee when we meet. Failing to include such basic information will of course make your application less desirable because it’s easier for me to simply move onto the next candidate as opposed to “binging” your name. Contrary to the opinion of my mother, as a principal recruitment consultant, my time is critical and the message a job applicant is sending me by not putting in the effort to present a quality resume indicates a level of enthusiasm that I feel will transpire into work ethic and enthusiasm overall. In short, the longer it takes for me to respond to my clients with the right candidates, the less likely it is that you will be given the fair amount of time that you deserve to be considered for the role you are interested in! Following your duties breakdown, i’d suggest exploring your achievements which are perhaps one of the most important components of your resume. After all, the resume of a candidate really is a sales document and it is intended to “sell” your “skills” above all others to any potential employer. As a Sales Professional seeking to sell a brand, service or product, if you cannot articulate your achievements and “wins” in your resume, what are the chances that you will be able to do so in an interview or engagement for that matter?

Your resume should be a few pages long and heavily focused on informing the decision maker about facts which would help him/her in furthering the mission of the organisation! Content including your current and previous employment history along with anything else which may be relevant to the position you are applying for is absolutely critical to any potential interviewer and overlooking it’s relevance could be the difference between a life changing job and a disastrous interview!  At all times, when “actively” looking for employment, it is essential that you sell your strengths in relation to the position that you are interested in.  They say that plumbers have the worst plumbing and gardeners have the terrible gardens. Don’t make the mistake of being the sales professional who has the worst sales document.

Steve Gunasekera
Principal Consultant
Milestone Search Sales and Marketing

There’s been a lot of hype recently regarding Wordpress and the potential security issues relating to it as a web platform. Over the course week just through scanning the web in a totally unrelated capacity, I’ve come across several pieces of misguided information that highlight wordpress as a major security risk.

In fact, the world renowned John Mu, a google employee first broke the news here : http://www.google.com/profiles/softplus#buzz . (An incredibly insightful place to get the latest news on SEO and all things web related). How he discovered the vulnerabilities, and by that I mean the code which was incredibly well integrated to the site is beyond me. Other than to say that the code itself did cause the site to become corrupted and I guess this makes a good starting point when looking for something wrong.

Had the hackers  managed to integrate the code without it causing visual disparities, it’s less than likely that this would ever have been picked up! Part of our concern of course was that our core sites, www.mstone.com.au, www.milestonesearchsales.com.au and www.milestonesearch.com.au all run Wordpress as our primary CMS. The level of paranoia reached critical mass yesterday when we received an e-mail from Shortlist citing an article about the wordpress security vulnerabilities. What’s ironic of course is that anyone who uses wordpress will know fairly clearly that these security risks are not related to the actual software but have occurred as a result of significant security vulnerabilities of the web host itself. In fact, by logging into the wordpress console one is presented with the message from the wordpress blog itself titled – “secure file permissions matter”.

The post goes on to highlight the fact that the users that implanted the malicious code managed to do so as a result of having the web server access codes as opposed to the actual wordpress login details.If you have the capacity get that information, you have the capacity to do anything to anyones site at any time. Wordpress is, and remains to be one of the leading free OS solutions in the market.

As a business owner looking at leveraging an easy to customize solution that allows fairly complex .PHP modification when/and as needed, I doubt you’d find a better solution on the market.

Milestone Search sponsors another club

Milestone Search have the pleasure of announcing its latest sponsorship of the Belconnen United Football Club.

This generous sponsorship demonstrates the importance of Milestones Search’s well established commitment to playing a key role in the support of local community groups and organisations.

Milestone Search are a highly successful Australian Executive Recruitment Agency specialising within the IT & T industry.  Milestone Search enjoys a well established partnership with many of Australias leading blue chip and government organizations.

Milestone Search have a solid reputation in promoting a world where children of all differing backgrounds are presented with the opportunity to learn, grow and play in a safe, healthy and supportive environment.

Milestone Search takes immense pride in its sponsorship of the Belconnen Unit Football Club and will be continuing to play a key role in the support of clubs and organizations that seek to improve and promote the same values and ethics of Milestone Search.

Recently we’ve restructured much of the way our website is formed at Milestone Search. What we’ve basically done is separated all of our core businesses into their own departments and provided 1 exclusive web site for each offering.

If you have experienced any problems accessing our site over the last 2 weeks then I need to ask you what on earth you’re doing awake at such a strange hour in the morning? Typically I’ve been writing and rewriting the site and it’s structure (content excluded) some time after 10PM and usually finishing around 4:00AM in the morning. In truth, it has not done wonders for my marriage and frankly, as I write this, the screen seems to be moving around on the bench and I find myself nudging myself just to stay awake every 5 minutes or so.

It’s been a good experience and allowed me to get my hands dirty again on writing some code. Obviously, PHP is not exactly the most complex language but unlike my previous experience programming, when you get it wrong, there is no debugger to let you know why. The number of times I pressed reload on the browser to discover that, *argggg*… nothing… Of course, most times one is working with a text editor and this does not allow source control. So, if you can’t work out where your modification went wrong, you either spend hours stepping over code or you revert to some previously saved version. Of course there is google, but, interestingly, I found many of the issues I came across had solutions buried deep in search pages so far from the home page I usually arrived at some point in time far surpassing exasperation! Oh, one quick tip I have to share for people who may be currently experiencing this issue.

PHP – RSS Feed issue….
“If you’re using RSS for PHP and keep getting a random error with feeds then I share you’re pain ! In fact, the primary source code examples provided by PHP and other developers in the know all provided the same source code example (or minor variations) when attempting to get a feed. Be it from facebook, twitter, or some other server. This is a basic example of what they consider best practice :

$rss = fetch_feed($url);
foreach ($rss->get_items() as $item) {

Now I checked and double checked my code. No problems. Then I started my google search attempting to find the solution to the problem. After all, it’s not nice when you load a web page and are presented with an error. Sure, there was lot’s of help out there from users who wanted to be helpful but their help is a bit like a 3 year old wanting to help Michaelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling. Of course, I in no capacity see my programming skills up to the standard of Michaelangelo, but by comparison, at least I’ve got a ladder. They advice they offered varied from extremes such as reinstalling apache right through to restructuring the code. Most code mods were really just a syntax change and same annoying error continued to rear its ugly head! At certain times during the night I even considered the possibility that throwing the computer out the window may well in fact help ! Possibly, with some minute chance, it could, maybe help resolve the problem. Then, each time, just as I thought I’d fixed it by making some minor .INI change or modifying some SQL Server setting it would appear again. Like some childhood taunt that you just cant escape from. Another sigh, another several hours on google searching for the answer but each time I was brought back to the above example as what is considered the tried and tested way to get a feed.

The error, which I didnt even need to search to place here, because it’s words are burned into my mind is, “Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach()” …

In hindsight, it’s actually quite obvious, but on another level, I’ve not coded in PHP before so I feel I could be forgiven for overlooking such an obvious reason as to why this was happening.

Now if you’ve stumbled upon this page through google, let me share with you the simple answer for this rather annoying problem. The answer that drove me to the edge of madness in pursuit for it’s resolution. Put simply, by using the foreach command PHP assumes you have an array. As such, it attempts to break the array apart regardless of what’s in it. So, for example, if the server you were pinging was down, the array is empty. But PHP does not know this and as a result crashes when attempting to call the first item in the array. So, the fix? Simple.

$rss = fetch_feed($url);
< — Right here place the following before the foreach command ” if ($rss){ ”

foreach ($rss->get_items() as $item) {

and at the end of the cycle place your closed bracket thingy.. }

This way, if the stream is dead or the server you are pinging is down, PHP wont attempt to execute the foreach loop. Rather it’ll just jump to the next part of your code.

Now with all the above said, I realise I have digressed from the original point of this post. That point was to let you know that we will no longer be providing support for IE6 on most of our domains moving forward. Over the next couple of weeks, we will be systematically locking out each server one by one. Now when I say no longer providing support, I don’t mean that you will be able to access our content but your browser wont be supported, what I mean to say is that you wont be able to access our content with IE6 at all. A little like the situation I found myself in several months ago when I came home from work a little late after a stop in at the pub with some old friends. No key, no access, locked out in the freezing cold ! Why? Well, other than the obvious reasons relating to the significant security flaws with IE6, the header issues and the fact that it is slow and just basically a badly written piece of software, to support IE6 one needs to almost write a second set of CSS classes and almost a totally second web site just to cope with all the errors that IE6 brings to the table in relation to its formating. So, given that IE6 users now constitutes less than 20 percent of the entire browser population, we’ve simply decided that from a business perspective, it’s more finally viable to lock out users who are still using this badly written piece of software rather than rewriting and modifying all our sites to cope with the annoyances of Microsofts browser… Of course, when I use the word annoyances, I it with clenched teeth that only one who has attempted to develop a website can share. Besides, if you want more good reasons why IE6 should be wiped off the face of the planet all together, just go to google and search for “why ie6 must die”. Of course, given that google have their own browser, one could argue that they have interest in this cause, but that’s not to say that the arguments against IE6 are any less valid.

So, moving forward, any user who is still on the IE6 platform that attempts to access our site will be presented with a window offering a link to google chrome (a FREE and totally superior browser), OR, NOTHING. Of course I say that with a grin on my face as someone who has suffered at the mercy of the big Microsoft browser bugs. As for people who throw around the argument, “what about businesses that still use IE6.” Well, all I want to point out is that most business who use IE6 are doing so against the advice of the IT guys and secondly, a free upgrade for “valid” Microsoft users has existed for several years now. Rolling out an upgrade is simple and there is no reason a business shouldn’t… Unless of course they are not validated users…

So, if you have IE6 and use any of Milestone Search’s web services, please note that within the coming days and weeks, probably at some strange time between 3 or 4 in the morning, each domain will modified with a simple header script that will be used to lock out IE6 browsers all together.

If that’s you, please don’t get all upset, get Google chrome instead… http://www.google.com/chrome

David Sparrius.

For many years, I scoffed in disgust every time I received another invitation to some new networking site like Linkedin, Reunion, Classmates, Facebook, hi5, MySpace, Ranga Yorz, Ecadamy and Entrepreneur Connect.. *gasp* and they are just the first few… However, LinkedIn is the one I really wanted to focus on here, not to say that the others arn’t as good, (or bad as the case may be), just to say that LinkedIn is possibly the most popular one within my little sub network of networks.

OK – So let me tell you what I do for a crust. I’m a head hunter, recruitment consultant, employment pimp, job shark, body pusher, commercial slave trader, whatever the title you feel appropriate to address me with wont offend me! Having a thick skin in this game is almost as important as having absolutely no regard for rejection. My current employer, Milestone Search Milestone Search Melbourne , Australia is a specialist IT&T recruitment business. Whilst I’d prefer not to get into a long drawn out discussion about my chosen profession and the merits there of, what I would like to point out is that I spend a very great amount of my time day in and day out looking for people. Rare people… People with skills and abilities that few in the country have and my clients want them NOW ! Actually, the term “want” is possibly an understatement of immense proportion, especially when one takes into consideration the old “wants vs’ needs” which is initself an interesting topic :see Maslows wants v’s needs . Let’s say my clients “NEED” these skills. The projects that they are working on depend on it. The financial position of the organisation they are working for may very well be compromised if they don’t manage to secure the right people with the rare skills required. In fact, their job and very livelihood very possibly depends on getting the skills that they NEED because if they do not get those skills, the project they are working on will very likely fail. This of course will result in some jaded C-Executive seeking revenge by orchestrating a well throughout redundancy or other such event as punishment for the unacceptable failure.

I recall many years ago when I first got into recruitment an old manager of mine telling me that when he first started out in recruitment he use to go to IT user club meetings just to find staff. As soon as the conversation of what he did for a living came up (usually around a cold worn out and over crowded wooden table at coffee time), he’d pull out his bright and shinny silver business card holder to quickly present his prospect with a perfectly pressed business card so that he could slap it into the palm of the poor unsuspecting candidate and give them a sharp and all knowing wink. “If you’re ever looking for another job paying great rates, give me a call” he use to say in a deep throaty tone, followed quickly with a cold wink.

I had the pleasure once of meeting his previous manager. An old recruiter who had retired some 20 years ago who told me the story of how he use to network. “I’d spend all my days at the local watering hole” he told me. “Back then, CICS, COBOL and DB2 guys were so rare that we’d do anything to find them on behalf of our clients!” “There was one pub down the road that they use to go to every Wednesday for lunch.” “I was ALWAYS there, with a beer, and my business cards running around recruiting contractors to come and work for my clients.” “Worse thing”, he went on to say, “I hated beer but had to drink the stuff just so I could fit in…” How terrible, having to drink beer just to fit in….

As I sit here at my desk, typing into this floating browser enabled window, I wonder what it must have been like for those guys many years ago. Note pad and pen, armed with nothing more than a mind which was like a steel trap only slightly compromised by the weekly trips to the local watering hole and a cunning that would see them stop at nothing until they found the ideal resource for their desperate clients. How things have changed. Information it would seem, is much available these days to potential employers and employment consultants like myself. Thanks in part to tools like LinkedIn that make finding resources once almost impossible, today nothing more than a well thought out google search. But it’s to this end, that I see a very serious problem developing. For example, if I sit back and assess the number of candidates that our business has placed from professional networking sites versus employment and job boards, I find that the value the job boards are adding is becoming less and less relevant. For example, let’s propose that a client I am dealing with is seeking a JCAPS Java specialist. Once, I’d put an add on the internet, wait for candidates to apply and do a large amount of research to try and find where these resources may be located. Then, I’d have to network with employees of that company with the desperate intention of identifying who the people are that work with this technology. Now however, I just perform a simple google search and chances are, even if I’m not connected to the person directly, or indirectly, I can get their details and I’m ready to throw more money at them than they could ever imagine possible. Furthermore, I know straight away which companies have those skills and therefore are far more capable to go straight to the source rather than waiting for a possible stroke of luck to find the right candidates.

But what are the implications of this? Firstly, it means that the value I give to my clients is becoming ever so slightly reduced because, with all due respect, a ‘google’ search is hardly a difficult thing to do. Secondly, the turn around time from receiving a vacancy to actually delivering a resource is substantially increased. But finally, the cost to the business we are head hunting from must be astronomical. For example, they would never have even had to consider replacing that candidate one upon a time. The loss of IP, replacement costs, training costs, and social engineering costs to that business are almost unimaginable. By using LinkedIn, I’ve just managed to lure away a resource that 10 years ago, I most likely never, ever have found. Worse than this. Let’s say for example that I am given a vacancy by a client again for a JCAPS Java resource. I again do a google search on LinkedIn and discover that company A has one developer with that skill. I call that company and run the job past that resource. However, he informs me that he isnt really interested but thanks me all the same for my time. From here, I receive a phone call about half an hour later from another candidate who just so happens to work for the same company. Of course, we all know what’s happened here. But again, had the first candidate not put his profile on LinkedIn, I would never have even managed to get in touch with the candidate who all of a sudden knows about my job. My point? Well simple. At what point does the information contained this candidates profile cease been his information and start been the information of the client? Clearly, if employers wanted to reduce staff turn over, wouldn’t it make more sense for them to do everything possible to ensure that people like me, are unable to get to staff like theirs? Also, the technologies, systems and processes that their employees are working with are all freely available to anyone who happens to do a search for them. However, is this information really the candidates right to share with the entire world?

In the nature of my work, I’ve seen a large number of confidentiality agreements packaged up ever so nicely with standard employment agreements. In my opinion, the legalities of the information that many employees put into their LinkedIn profiles is very possibly in breach of these agreements. However, to date, I am unaware of any employer seeking to prohibit employees from sharing such information with the general public. I can’t help but wonder if the reason for this is because at not stage has anyone in HR ever actually sat down and sought to determine why and how their valuable staff found out about other employment opportunities?

With descriptive marketing plans in conjunction with exceptionally elaborate position descriptions, a number of new employment opportunities have surfaced as companies jump on the social media band wagon. Recruitment agencies seem intent on harnessing the use of such mediums to maximise both their brand name and further grow their brand knowledge into the marketplace. But as a job seeker, the concept of social media may very well not only work against you but may also cause irreversible damage to your long term employment pursuits. Let me explain why……

As a manager of a successful recruitment agency, we are always looking to identify opportunities which will aid us in our endeavors to wave the “Milestone” brand and further grow our business. During our travels in exploring the concept of “social media” and how it can help our business and aid us in obtaining the best employment opportunities for our candidates, we have been approached by various “pseudo specialists” who are seeking to sell their service of “exploiting” the immense opportunities that “social media” represents to the recruitment industry. Our company has even been approached by apparent “social media specialists” who, after significant investigation, turn out to be nothing more than overzealous salesmen who carry with them the flag and promise of phenomenal profits using this new medium as their core business model. In reality however, most of them are wielding snake oil and these promises are nothing more than a poor extract from the latest edition of a cheap online marketing subscription. Cutting and pasting extracts from other industry authorities, what they sell is really nothing more than nicely packaged snake oil. “Don’t let your business fall behind and don’t fail your candidates” they taunt.

But in my opinion, the truth is somewhat different to the hype that the “social media specialists” would like to convince us it is. Sure, for companies seeking staff or wanting to grow their brand name, “social media” can have significant advantage to this endeavor. But just how applicable is this in relation to a job seeker looking to find work, or alternatively, looking to be found by work? Firstly, as a candidate, having a potential employer find you *one of the major purposes of utilising Social Media for employment purposes* is only part of the equation which is of course important to securing another employment opportunity. But, this is really only part of the process and left unmanaged, can quite possibly end in naught and a perception that may well work against you at a later stage. Let me elaborate on what I mean by this statement. A recruiter I once interviewed explained to me how a successful placement is like attempting to conquer a tall mountain. Sure, you can commence on your journey at the beginning and everything looks like it is going fine until you get half way to the top at which point you realise that you have forgotten to pack your tent, your food or your water. Chances are, you’re either going to die, or, you’re going to have to descend again to get the essentials required to making sure you can get to the top next time round. Unprepared is guaranteed to ensure that you fail on your endeavors and as such, can ultimately result in tragedy.

So how does this little story apply to candidates using social media? Well, firstly, understand that when you put your details out there, and are approached by a potential employer directly, you will remain totally unprepared for the interview. No one, at any stage has actually spent time and energy making sure that you are a good fit and furthermore, you are shooting blind trying to satisfy a number of key requirements without the information required to ensure that you can satisfy the interviewers expectations. “A lost opportunity is no big deal really”, you may be thinking? Well sure, it’s reasonable to think that other than your time no it isn’t. But the truth is that a failed interview can actually haunt you for many years to come. For example, I know of a manager in a large insurance company who keeps a database on file of every candidate she has ever interviewed. If you were interviewed with her 10 years ago and she decided against hiring you at that point, her opinion would remain the same 10 years on. So if at some point in the future you happened to be looking for another opportunity in the same domain and your details were represented to her once more, you’d automatically be ruled out based on your interview some 10 years ago. But that’s a just a unique scenario you may be thinking? Well, in fact, candidates forget that hirers are people too. Like all of us, chances are they have flaws and little idiosyncrasies just like everyone else and are not impervious to forming opinions that can never be changed and are in fact totally incorrect.

This is only one small part of where a quality recruitment consultant can aid you in the job process. A good consultant should seek to firstly identify that you are in fact the best candidate in the marketplace, but then secondly, seek to provide you with enough information to properly prepare yourself for the interview letting you know both what your client is seeking and what remains important to him/her. Not surprisingly, even the smallest amount of information provided to a candidate prior to interview can make all the difference between a successful employment offer, and a failed interview.

But then what about your LinkedIn profile or other such information that is freely posted on the internet? Surly this can only help you? In truth, and for some people, I’m absolutely does. But for others, it can not only limit the number of options available, but also work against them in relation to biases associated with the company you may be working for or alternatively your on-line profile may not mention areas of expertise that you are more than proficient in. To elaborate further, on a number of occasions now we have qualified a candidate, technically tested them and then reworked their resume prior to sending it to the client. The response from the client after which is one of concern as they have found the candidates details on LinkedIn and it does not seem to mention the same proficiencies. This concern rarely goes away and even after explaining to the would be hirer that the on-line profile is both limited and has missed certain components of ones skills, the client more often than not will have already decided that the potential candidate is not right for the opportunity even before they have the opportunity to attend interview. Another great example is a recent client of ours who refused to interview a candidate because he/she was currently working for Telstra. The client was convinced that no one who worked for Telstra would be suitable for his company however after interviewing the candidate we felt that he was extremely suitable and more than capable of satisfying the expectations. We managed to organize an interview with the client and then confirmed it with the client. Shortly after, we received a call back from the client informing us that he had just perused the candidates details on-line and as such decided he didn’t want to progress to interview. Had this occurred if the candidates details had not been available online? Possibly not…..

But then again, there are absolutely many candidates and job seekers who use their own networks wisely and manage to secure employment by branding their own resumes, skills and capabilities and then secure employment on their own accord. This is not the rule, but it does happen and works well for some people.

All in all, it would appear that the primary “social media” tool that most “specialists” are currently branding for job seeks or at least those who want to be made aware of employment opportunities, is a well detailed LinkedIn profile in conjunction with a pretty picture and some indication of your highly developed interpersonal skills. For some, this will work great. For others, the value that a good recruitment partner brings to the table will never be replaced by “social media” or intelligent candidate attraction systems. It is also unable to jump out at a client and say, “Hey, I just came across this candidate who you have to meet!” After all, “Social Media” which is based on logic, rules, process and systems defies all those wonderful things, such emotion, illogic, irrationality and unpredictability that tend to make humans, human…..

photo credit: amoebaphobic

“Fire, fire – There’s a fire”. One of the staff members ran into the back room screaming at the top of his voice. Of course, it was another case of, “The boy who cried wolf” and no one took him seriously. Everyone it would seem, was more intent doing their job rather than paying any attention to fire cry. However, when then the black smoke which hugged the ceiling traveled into the office, the suggestion of fire seemed slightly more believable.

It would appear, given the heat and smoke which was exiting the server room that there was in fact some truth to the initially dismissed crys for attention from the staff member who initially discovered the fire. As we stood outside the server room door, a massive explosion occurred followed by the loud overwhelming crackling sound of equipment as it disintegrated into mounds of plastic. The smell of the fumes where over whelming and the fear of what would occur next was clearly visible on everyones face. Most of the consultants knew what was important and ran to the stairs. The two directors quickly opened the door to the server room to discover that most of what was there previously was no longer visible. It was at this point that the lights went out and the directors were left in a haze of black smoke and could only make out the brief shapes of the office which were highlighted by the reflection of the flames.

A neighboring office worked brought in a fire extinguisher and the director quickly started to put out the fire. But, it’s strength was overwhelming and after the last of the extinguisher had been used the flames were still travelling into the ceiling. As soon as possible, one of the directors grabbed the most important servers, pulled it from the server rack, and sought to leave the rest to the fire brigade, who arrived around the same time.

After almost 40 minutes, the Fire Brigade had managed to put out the flames and instructed the managers of floor 6 that we could return to commence the inspection. 4 hours and 12 minutes later Milestone Search was back online using our ghost servers and backup data. However, most of our systems including phones and servers require placing as well as a substantial amount of work required to replace ceilings, walls and doors. As such, you may experience some strange and abnormal service glitches over the coming weeks. We apologise for this and ask that you bear with us while we replace our systems and recuild our office.