Milestone IT (Milestone Information Technology pty, ltd) is proud to announce its membership an an RCSA  corporate member. The RCSA is the leading industry and professional body for the recruitment industry and currently represents over 3000 organizations across Australia and New Zealand.

Milestone Information Technology acknowledges how important an organization such as the RCSA is, the values it represents, and the intent to provide the highest level of quality to the recruitment industry. The RCSA provides a code of conduct and also a standard of ethics which recruitment firms abide by, ensuring that the recruitment industry remains professional and ethical at all times.

Milestone Information Technology is delighted to have been accepted and is looking forward to building a long and lasting relationship with the RCSA.

“Milestone IT has the pleasure of continuing it’s support and sponsorship of the Mazda Foundation .”

Established in 1990, the Mazda Foundation serves as a fundamental and integral asset to the community by providing assistance and aid to many social improvement and environmental based programs. For more information on the Mazda Foundation go to The Mazda Foundation

This generous sponsorship demonstrates the importance of Milestone IT’s on-going commitment to playing a key role in the support of the foundation, and endeavors to support the focus of the foundation on returning real value to the community.

Milestone IT is a highly successful Australian IT Recruitment specialist organization that focuses exclusively in the provisioning of IT contracting and consultancy staff for major organisations on a national basis.

Milestone IT continues to enjoy an ongoing strong and well established partnership with many of Australia’s leading blue chip and governmental organizations.

Milestone IT takes immense pride in its continuation of sponsorship of the Mazda Foundation and looks forward to playing a key role in the support of social causes that represent an ongoing positive return to the community.

Milestone IT continues its sponsorship of Belconnen United Football Club.

Milestone IT has the pleasure of announcing its continuation of its sponsorship of the Belconnen United Football Club.

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

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

Milestone IT 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 IT takes immense pride in its continuation 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 IT.

Having spent almost half a decade working as a specialist in the resourcing of IT professionals, in an industry where the vast majority of people my age only last 6 months, I can safely say that I’ve learnt a thing or two. You see, to be successful in my job, one must be adept in the art of conversation and understanding the objective of others and why those objectives exist. This is one of the beautiful parts of my job. It has afforded me the chance to work with people across all age groups and social demographics and given me the opportunity to assess the disparity between motive and objective over different generations.

As a Gen Y’er, I found the differences quite interesting as I often read articles and blogs that brand Gen Y as a generation that is disloyal, lazy and a little too demanding.  I’m not going to kid myself, or anyone else for that matter, into believing that this is completely untrue. The reality is that these attributes ring true to a proportion of my generation but before any generation branding is done, I think it’s important to ask the question; why?

Why.

To understand anything, it’s important to understand how it came to be. In past generations, children were raised to believe in the importance of hierarchy and loyalty. John F Kennedy once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, and this is precisely the mindset that is held by older generations. Things are a little different when it comes to Gen Y. You see, my generation is one that has been raised in a society that promotes high self esteem and confidence as a key to success and as such, Gen Y asks, “I know what I can do for my country, what will my country do for me?” What a contrast, I hear you say. Well, is it?

In my opinion, what Gen Y wants isn’t so different from what other generations have wanted. The difference is this; we don’t have the blind reverence for hierarchy that was present in older generations and as a result, we aren’t afraid to ask and we’re not afraid to say what we think.

I have grown up in a time where life without technology is almost incomprehensible. I don’t know where my phone is right now and it honestly feels like my arm is missing. You know, just thinking about it now, I don’t think I can remember a time in my life where I haven’t had a phone! I have truly been brought up in the generation of technology. I found that this dependence on technology has caused an evident change in the way we Gen Y’ers approach our work life and what we want from our careers and employers.

So, what does Gen Y want?

Learning and Development

Learning and development is high on the list of priorities for Gen Y, and for good reason. You see, previous generations expected their jobs to be long term, their employer to keep them in a job forever. Take Generation X, for example. They have a strong focus on loyalty and approach work with the “If I’m loyal to my employer, they will be loyal to me” attitude and mentality which is instilled in them.

Gen Y on the other hand, doesn’t share the same view. We have experienced at an early age that loyalty won’t generally mean job security. Nope, not in the slightest. I lived through the global financial crisis and saw firsthand how loyalty was secondary to organizational profit. Employees that had dedicated their working life to an employer, much of them middle aged with mortgages and children, were thrown on the street, so to speak. But hey, I get it, that’s business and you do what you have to do. What I and many others in my generation have learned from this is not to have an expectation of your employer to keep you in a job, that’s up to you.

So where does that leave us?

Essentially, Gen Y has replaced employment security with “employability security”. That is, the ability to be employable through a specific skill set rather than have the expectation of a job with an employer for life. Gen Y understands that employability is based on the value we bring to an organization.  Knowledge increases value and without consistent learning and development, our value could be compromised and our employability could diminish in some way, shape or form.

Riches, Responsibility, Reward and Recognition

The Four R’s. I just made that up but it has a nice ring to it! The Four R’s. I wonder if I could copyright that?  In any case, to me the four R’s identify, in essence, what Generation Y is looking for in a role and ultimately determines their loyalty to an organisation.

Let’s take a look at riches.

When you think about our recent and current economic climate, the prominence of money as a key driver for Gen Y isn’t really startling. In this day and age, where the cost of living is increasing at break neck pace and housing prices are so high, they are almost unattainable; there’s no wonder why Gen Y considers money as one of the most important factors when it comes to considering an employer.

The reality is this, if someone from my generation is good at what they do, they will more than likely know what they’re worth. If they know what they’re worth, they’ll more than likely seek that remuneration from their employer. If they don’t get it from their employer, they’ll find an employer that will give it to them, full stop. Robert Bosch once said, “I don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money, I have a lot of money because I pay good wages”. More and more employers will need to adopt the Bosch approach as Gen Y ages. This is the mindset that will make the difference between average talent and top 5 percent talent. But don’t be fooled ladies and gentlemen, as the four R’s infer, money isn’t the only thing Gen Y look at. Responsibility and the prospect of doing valuable work play heavily on Gen Y’s decision when it comes to employment.

We Gen Y’ers, we don’t want to be doing the “grunt work” all the time. We want to be challenged and consistently learning. If Gen Y is not given the challenge, the responsibility, the reward, I’m afraid the reality is that Gen Y’ers won’t be around for very long. Disloyal? I don’t think so. It’s just the apparent focus on developing skills and experience, nothing personal. It’s imperative that Gen Y is given challenging work that really matters and increased responsibility as a reward for achievement. This, along with a solid training or mentoring structure sets a firm base for Gen Y talent retention. Do remember though, every level of accomplishment requires recognition.

Here’s the tip, everyone wants to be appreciated and valued in the workplace. Yes, EVERYONE. It’s a basic human need that we all share; Gen Y is simply voicing it openly and confidently. It’s important to recognize that Gen Y workers require praise, recognition and positive reinforcement as these are key to motivation and overall job satisfaction. The way in which Gen Y requires this recognition is a tad different to past generations.

Here’s a little trivia, Forrester Research published a study that highlighted the generational differences in the use of technology. Gen Y sees technology as integral to our lives whereas Gen X sees technology as a convenience but not central to their lives. The way the different generations use technology relates directly to the way they like to be managed. Generation X is generally happy with regular feedback whereas for Generation Y feedback has to be constant and immediate. This immediacy is linked to the use of technologies and how readily available information is.

Recognize, it’s how we were brought up!

Loyalty

“The reality is that corporations cannot guarantee anyone a lifetime job anymore than corporations have a guarantee of immortality”- John Snow, former US Secretary of Treasury.

Here at Milestone IT, we recently conducted a study of the Gen Y workforce to examine the disparities between generations within the workplace. To nobody’s surprise, we found that only one in every 15 respondents agreed loyalty to their employer was important. Does this confirm that Gen Y is disloyal? Again, No. Gen Y is loyal, but it’s not the same kind of loyal that was apparent in previous generations, the loyalty to the “kingdom” so to speak, is no longer there. The loyalty is more reciprocal in nature, we really see it as a two way street.

Gen Y is very career driven, but we expect a lot in return and if an employer won’t provide it, we will look elsewhere. Like I mentioned earlier, Gen Y has seen the ups and downs of the job market. We’ve read about it and we know the job market well. Gen Y understands that skill shortages do exist and if we have a skill that’s in demand, we can use it as leverage.

This is why it’s so important to understand the motive and objective. This will help to develop an effective retention strategy which inevitably, will start “at home”.

Organisation & Culture

When you go on a first date with someone, you don’t go dressed as a homeless sailor that hasn’t had a shower for a week. Unless of course, you are in fact a homeless sailor in which case that would be acceptable but as far as not having a shower for a week goes, definitely not! That’s deviating from the point a bit but what I’m trying to get at is the fact that first impressions last. Particularly with my generation, the generation that wants everything perfect and wants it right now. The point to take note of is this; information has never been so easily and readily available to other generations. Gen Y goes to the internet and researches your company, your branding, how well recognized you are as an organisation and forms an immediate opinion on your suitability as an employer.

The impression that potential candidates might get of your company is crucial in attracting Gen Y talent. Whether that is through your website, through your communication or through your reviews, every touch point is of absolute importance because this impression may be the difference between an excellent Gen Y candidate accepting or declining an offer.

Another important part of the equation is the work culture and work/life balance. In our recent study we found that Gen Y wants the workplace to be fun, welcoming and flexible. A place that is both social and productive, and let me just say I could’ve told you that without even having conducted the study! Here’s where the distinction lies; Gen X clearly separated their work lives from their personal but when we look at Gen Y, the line between work and home is not so clearly defined. Gen Y will work outside prescribed hours to get the job done, provided the culture allows us to do so. Creating a low-key, low-stress and flexible corporate culture that focuses on work outcomes, rather than the 9-5 approach which was required for other generations, will provide the working conditions for most Gen Y’ers to thrive. Creating the environment is one thing, management style is another.

In our age of immediacy, management must take up much of a similar approach when it comes to Gen Y. Things need to be snappy and if there’s an issue that can be resolved quickly, it’s essential to do so. Gen Y wants information to be delivered swiftly, whether that is through email, SMS, Phone or face to face. We tend to use mobile communications more so than anything else because we desire the ability to access information everywhere. Remember, not all the work we do is at our desk. For example, I could be out getting a coffee when something important comes up. In most cases, I wouldn’t rush back to the office to sort it out; I’d just do it from the coffee shop! Managers need to be mindful of this and not get hung up on the amount of time we’re right in front of them but more so, what the end result will be. Manager’s who can adopt this approach and team it up with strong learning and development programs and flexibility will be the ones who retain Gen Y talent.

Don’t forget, Gen Y are the recruits of today who are the leaders of tomorrow. It’s essential to understand and foster this talent now to put your organisation in the best possible position to attract this talent in the future.

Principal Consultant – Milestone IT

Milestone Search, a specialist IT&T recruiter decided some 3 years ago to launch into other verticals including Sales and Marketing, Finance, Engineering and Construction recruitment. Whilst our core business remained IT recruitment the hope was to build a product offering in areas that were outside of our domain and area of specialty, that being, Information Technology.

Ironically, during this period, our IT recruitment division has continued to flourish and yet all the while the other departments remained barley viable. Whilst the business itself has remained extremely profitable, this is, in essence, the result of our specialist IT recruitment division and the good work of our IT consultants.

We’ve pondered why for some time and have come to the realisation that, you don’t know what you don’t know! In IT recruitment our principals all have extensive and thorough personal and professional backgrounds in IT and as such are well positioned to identify the very best IT professionals! The truth, it would seem, is that this is not the case in verticals where our consultants had limited networks and a poor understanding of the domains they were seeking to service!  It appears that the statement made by Andrew Carnegie paints the clearest picture when seeking to elaborate on our position! Andrew states, “I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master in that line. I have no faith in the policy of scattering one’s resources, and in my experience I have rarely if ever met a man who achieved pre-eminence in money making..  Who was interested in many concerns.” As specialists in the IT domain we offer our clients an unmatched technical knowledge combined with a revered network of leaders in the Information Technology domain! While hind-site remains 20/20, it does appear as though our business sought to deviate from this simple, tried and true concept!  Milestone IT  and it’s consultants are masters in IT recruitment and IT selection!

Our consultants understand the technical aspects of IT and are some of the best IT recruiters in Australia! “After all, if you are really good at something, focus on it. Don’t stray away from it, but instead just do that and become the leader in your space” Neil Patel.  For Milestone IT, providing the best IT recruitment service to the best IT Professionals is something that we are really good at! The business name change from Milestone Search to Milestone IT is our open commitment to that undertaking!

I’m reminded of an amusing quote which goes like this, “Find something you’re not good at then don’t do it! ” — ALF. Good advice ALF and we wish we had followed it when we launched into other verticals. ! We’d have saved a large amount of time, energy and cost associated with the other brands which have all proved to be extremely unsuccessful. All the while, our IT division has continued to experience steady growth with our overall contractor numbers tripling over the course of the last 12 months to more than 300 IT contractors.

As such, Milestone Search has changed its trading name to Milestone Information Technology and whilst our ABN, business structure and all other aspects remain the same) we will, as ALF suggests, only do that which we are good at! Which is providing the very best IT professionals to the very best companies.

The art of recruitment, if you’re so inclined to call it an art, has taught me some very valuable lessons over the 10+ years that I’ve been involved within the industry. Having recruited more than 600 IT professionals and having dealt with more than 100 businesses and organizations throughout Australia, I would like to believe that I’ve clocked up more than a little knowledge about what does and does not assist in achieving the “best possible hire”.

You see, like a car, recruitment comes in many models and colors. To clarify my analogy, just like a car, the one’s that looks the best, does not necessarily drive or handle the best! A slick recruitment model which purports to offer state of the art processes including behavioral interviewing as well as psychometric, medical and personality profiling and testing are all packaged up as the highest performing models on the market. Hence as a client or customer, it’s easy to buy into the glitzy showrooms jam packed with dynamic sales people who sell their products as the sure fire way to get the best solution. For some reason the “wow factor” of a sleek and slick showroom and nicely decorated venti latte, half decaf with skim milk seems to obfuscate the actual intention, which is to purchase a great motor vehicle that performs at the top of the market.

Sadly, just like my Porsche Boxter S, when you rip away the glitz and glamour and forget about the bells and whistles of an otherwise overrated “sales-cycle”, you might in fact be buying yourself, as is the case with my Boxter S, an overpriced and underperforming lemon! (Dear Porsche – when you said, “You’ll love this car I guarantee it, did you really mean it? If so, can I please have my money back!!!!!).

According to Sir Francis Bacon, “Knowledge is power” and this is absolutely the case when we consider how to arrive at the best possible outcome from a recruitment perspective. Information and every bit of it can assist in helping managers to make the right hiring decisions. No doubt that when looking at the recruitment model of 90% of companies in the western world, there is a real attempt to obtain as much knowledge as possible. However, my point is, the information collected during the accepted model of recruitment is actually the wrong information! From my experience, the things that are being assessed have absolutely NO correlation with a candidate’s capacity to perform well in their engagement.
Let me explain…..

Recently I had the pleasure of introducing an Analyst Programmer with a long term client here in Melbourne. The client I work with knows me very well and knows that any candidate we represent will be a good hire. However, after the interview, the client called me and explained that a) The candidate interviewed very poorly, b) he failed the behavioral questions, c) he failed the technical questions and d) Seemed very placid and unexcited about the opportunity. Fortunately for me and the candidate, due to Milestone’s long standing relationship of delivery with the client, and the clients belief in our capabilities within the IT recruitment space, he reluctantly agreed to engage the candidate anyway! Four months later the very same client called me asking for me to locate another two developers exactly like the candidate he initially didn’t want to engage! He stated, unsurprisingly to me, that this candidate was the best programmer that they had ever hired and was a gunn AP! Yet, had there been no involvement in the recruitment process from my end and had the client relied on the standard recruitment model used by most companies, this would not have occurred and the candidate would have been overlooked as a potential hire. Why ? Simple, as hirers we are focusing on all the wrong things.

To elaborate, let’s focus on the current model of recruitment. The entire idea is around assessing ones ability to “impress” in an interview. Within this context, a potential employee is forced to communicate well, sell themselves in the interview and leave the client “convinced” that they can do the job that he or she will be appointed to perform. However, what many people do not understand is that being able to perform well in an interview itself is a skill-set which in many instances has nothing to do with actual ability of that candidate to do their job well! Ironically, the ability to sell yourself in an interview is something that people will, over time, get better at doing. The more interviews a candidate attends, the better they will get at the whole interviewing process. Ironically, there is one specific kind of candidate that goes to a lot of interviews, and frankly, these are probably not the kind of candidates that you would want to hire! On the other hand, the skills associated with programming for example require an entirely different set of skills to those that would allow a candidate to come over well in an interview. As such someone who is a great programmer, may in fact, be a terrible interviewer. So the question remains, how can we as employers arrive at an outcome that will help ensure a great hire?

One thing I’ve always found fascinating about Orthodox Jewish circles is that dating is limited to the search for a marriage partner whereby both sides (usually involving the parents, close relatives or friends of the persons) make inquiries about the prospective partner, e.g. on his/her character, intelligence, academic background, financial status, family and health status, appearance and level of religious observance. The idea is that such information is key to finding a compatible life-long partner. Whilst an employment engagement is not strictly the same as marriage, it does have certain aspects that are very similar and choosing compatible partners remain key to the role of a good recruiter. Ironically, unlike the traditional western practice of choosing your own life-long partner, the traditional orthodox model has a much greater success rate and focuses extensively on obtaining as much background information as possible. Whilst the various reasons that such a high level of success occur remains contentious, the truth is that statistically the orthodox model does have a far greater likelihood of working out in the long term because they are intent on researching background information in order to make the best decisions and life choices.

Imagine for a moment the likelihood of success after selecting your marriage partner based on a one hour dinner date. What then would be the likelihood that the marriage would be a successful? Of course, proponents of behavioral modeling and psychometric tests like to argue that such tools in conjunction with 1 or 2 ‘dinner dates’ is all that is required to identify an appropriate or suitably qualified employee! Ironically, many of these individuals that promote such tests also advise that these tests remain only an ‘indication’ of the candidates overall personality type and need to be taken within the correct context. So really, the idea of these tests are a little like a tarot reading! They involve a lot of guess work and then hope for the best!

So what then is the key to selecting an excellent staff member for an organization? In my experience, I’ve seen many employers hold incredibly long drawn out interview processes with a any particular candidate which includes three to four separate interviews, each with different managers within the organization, then psychometric tests, technical tests, medical tests only to arrive at a bad hire. Why? The answer is actually far less complex than most people realize!

You may have heard the old commonly held belief that a leopard never changes its spots! Of course, this tears away at the very fabric of humans in that it seems to contradict with the notion that we are all the masters of our own destiny and have the ultimate say in who we are and how we act. However, experience has taught me that history repeats itself, and a poor performing candidate will usually always be a poor performing candidate and a high performing candidate, will usually always be a high performing candidate.

To elaborate, there have been over the course of my recruitment experience some candidates who, after having conducted extensive background checking allowed us to unearth various concerns and issues. There was one such candidate who I stumbled upon early in on my career was in his early twenties and had jumped from one job to another. In fact, he had never held down a job for more than 4 months at a time. After raising this issue with him he assured me that he had changed and was now looking for a long term career. Well, with no surprises, 3 months later I was contacted by the client who informed me that the candidate had just resigned from his position. This example is one of many whereby the previous actions of a candidate were repeated over and over again. Another example is of a candidate who was generally disliked by his manager in his current job and as such was looking for another opportunity. Upon further checking I discovered that the same held true in his last two previous roles as well. He assured me that there were valid reasons for each of the previous engagements failing and none of them were his fault! After having him convince me that this was actually the case I decided to represent him to my client, only to discover 6 months later that the candidate had serious interpersonal problems and had been walked off site. The lesson here? Each and every candidate had a history of failure prior to their engagement and repeated his/her behavior when I placed them with their new employer. I can happily say that I have learnt my lessons in respect to the whole notion of ‘a leopard never changing its spots’!

However, after more than 10+ years of recruitment experience, one thing that rings true all the time is that every top performer has always performed at the highest level of performance in previous engagements. They are held in the highest regard by their peers, and well revered by their previous managers and continue to repeat this throughout their employment careers! The lesson here is – vigorous background checking of a candidate is far more important than how they actually perform in an interview. After all, people lie in interviews but history cannot be rewritten (unless you’ve just won a war!) By background checking I am not referring to ‘official reference checks’, but rather, conducting intense and unofficial checks to validate a potential candidates performance and capability. How is this done? Well, we’re not one to kiss and tell, but in short, this is why Milestone continues to deliver the best “outcomes” for all our clients. We’re focused on the outcome and not the “sale”. By focusing on what matters we help our clients obtain the best possible hire, and unlike many of our competitors and the glitzy slick sales consultants that convinced me to by a Porsche Boxster S, our model is geared around delivering the best results……Unlike my Boxter, not lemons.

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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 endeavour.

With more than 6 years of recruitment experience in the recruitment vertical, I’ve helped hundreds of job seekers at levels ranging from junior graduates right through to senior executives and CEO’s 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 job hunter and professional the devil is 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 centrepiece 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 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 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 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 professional job seeker who has the worst sales document.

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 formatting. 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.