Verkom’s 2010 Salary Guide launched today!
May/100
We are delighted to announce the launch of our 2010 Salary Guide! As part of the Premier Group, we continuously monitor market trends.
Since our 2009 Salary Guide the Irish employment market has clearly undergone significant changes and continues to experience very challenging economic conditions. In the midst of such uncertainty we have commissioned an “up to the minute” salary guide which we feel will be of significant benefit to both employers and job seekers alike.
The Premier Group guide is the best and definitive guide to salaries in the Finance, IT, Technical and Office Support sectors.
Find out the latest salaries and hiring trends for 2010 on http://www.verkom.ie/salary-guide-2010
Social Media: Return On Investment
May/100
Social Media ROI (Return on Investment)
- Social Media = Positive ROI
- Over 300,000 businesses have a presence on facebook.
Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family business from $4 million to $50 million using social media.
Vaynerchuk found:
- $15,000 in Direct Mail = 200 new customers.
- $7,500 in Billboards = 300 new customers.
- $0 on Twitter = 1,800 new customers.
Wetpaint/Altimeter found companies widely engaged in social media surpass their peers in both revenues and profits.
- Company sales with highest levels of social media = +18%
- Company sales with least social activity = -6%
Lenovo = 20% reduction in call centre activity as customers go to community website.
BK Whopper Sacrifice facebook application:
- Estimated Investment < $50,000.
- Estimated Return: > $400,000 in press/media value.
- 32 million free media impressions.
- That’s like reaching the combined population of 19 US States.
Blendtec quintupled sales with “Will It Blend?” YouTube Videos.
Dell sold $3 million worth of computers on Twitter.
- Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive POI.
25% of Ford’s marketing spend is on Digital/Social Media.
- “You can’t just say it. You have to get the people to say it to each other.” – James Farley, CMO Ford
- 37% of Generation Y was aware of the Ford Fiesta via social media before its launch in the US.
- They are the only US auto company that didn’t take a government loan.
Naked Pizza set a one day sales record using social media.
- 68% of sales from Twitter.
- 85% of new customers from Twitter.
VW goes 100% Mobile for launch of GTI
Social media is only for B2C = false.
- Tweets for a Cause sent out a tweet from Atlanta to encourage support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
- Retweets from @marshable, @G_Man, @zaibatsu and others caused Atlanta Chapter site to receive 11,000 visitors in 24 hours.
InTUIT introduced “Live Community” into their TurboTax products 2 years ago.
- Unit sales up by over 30% each year.
Software company Genius.com reports 24% of social media leads convert to sales opportunities.
President Barack Obama
- 5 million fans on social media.
- 5.4 million clicked on an “I voted for Obama Facebook button”.
- 3 million online donors = $500 million.
- 92% of donations were in increments of less than $100.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre
- 9.5% increase in registrations using social media.
Web host provider Moon Fruit:
- $15K social media investment
- Website Traffic up over 300%
- Sales up 20%
eBay found participants in online communities spend 54% more money.
Customer support cost = $12 via the contact centre vs. 25 cents via self service.
“Why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel anyway?
- Social media touches every facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics – Erik Qualman”
- “You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media …
- The old media paradigm was PAY to PLAY.
- Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to PLAY to PLAY.” – Alex Bogusky, C–Chairman, CP&B.
- Think of Twitter as the canary in the coal mine – Morgan Johnston (JetBlue Airways)
71% plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40%, because:
- Low Cost Marketing
- Getting Traction
- We HAVE to do it.
MacDonalds:
- “Our head of social media is the customer”.
What is the cost of doing nothing?
Find Out More: http://www.enoov.com/ytplinternet.html
The Rise of the Android!
May/100
The new Android based mobiles are fast becoming the must-have gadget of the year. The battle for control of the global mobile phone market is a tug of war between Apple’s much loved iPhone and the new Google Nexus One.
Android-based mobile phones overtook the iPhone to become the second highest selling US mobile phone type after Blackberry in Q1 2010, according to market research firm NPD Group. NPD reports that, based on unit sales to consumers last quarter, Android phones had a market share of 28%, ahead of the iPhone at 21%.
When the iPhone was launched in 2007 by Apple, it was a huge selling success world wide. Within months there was a high demand for iPhone Developers, and specialized iPhone software companies. This ripple affect created new opportunities for both developers and software firms. The Android based mobiles can provide a similar story line, and already there is a high demand for Android developers, particularly evident in America. Key skills such as core Java, J2ME and JQuery are top of the list across many jobs sites in America,
The Android based mobile phones could provide the Irish market with a new innovate area to develop, and could provide a niche profitable market for both developers and specialized software companies.
Is Social Media a fad or the biggest shift since the industrial revolution?
May/100
- In 2010 Gen Y outnumbers Baby Boomers, 96% of them have joined a social network.
- Social Media is the #1 activity on the Web.
- 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media.
Years to reach million users:
- Radio (38 years)
- TV (13yrs)
- Internet (4 years)
- iPod (3 years)
- Facebook (100 million users in less than 9 months)
- iPod Application Downloads (1 billion in 9 months)
Some Interesting Facts:
- If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest country after China, India & the USA.
- Over 300 million use China’s QZone (QZONE.QQ.COM)
- 2009 US Dept. of Education study in 2009 revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.
- 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum.
- 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees.
- The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females.
- Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway & Panama.
- 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
- Generation Y & Z consider e-mail passé.
- In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen.
- What happens in Vegas, stays on facebook, twitter, orkut, bebo, flickr, digg, myspace, YouTube, etc.
- YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.
- YouTube hosts over 100 million videos.
- Wikipedia has over 13 million articles. Studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopaedia Britannica. 78% of these articles are non-English.
- If you were paid $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia, you would earn $156.23 per hour.
- There are over 200 million blogs. 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily.
- 25% search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
- 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands. Do you like what they are saying about your brand?
- People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them.
- 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. Only 14% trust advertisements.
- Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI.
- 90% of people that can TiVo ads do.
- Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams to 373 million in April 2009.
- 70% of 18-34 year olds have watched TV on the web. Only 33% have ever viewed a show on DVR/TiVo.
- 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video on their phone.
- 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle.
- 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.
- We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
- In the near future, we will no longer search for products and services; they will find us via social media.
- Social Media isn’t a fad; it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.
- More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook daily. It’s a people-driven economy.
- Successful companies in social media listen first and sell second.
- Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators and content providers than traditional advertisers.
- Welcome to the world of socialnomics.
You can find out more at http://www.enoov.com/ytplinternet.html
Is Google going to dominate Cloud Computing?
Apr/100
With Google dominating the top spot in Internet search, which recent research says, to the point of actually impacting overall Internet traffic, they look to cement their ad placement dominance though mobile phone and cloud computing based applications and platforms.
They are also building massive datacenters to ensure their place in the dynamic, maturing cloud computing paradigm.
Google wont settle for anything less than market leader status which raises the question, who is going to compete, Microsoft seem to have been slower to announce their Cloud based Products and as a result have missed that initial “we are the 1st” claim and all the marketing buzz that go’s with it.
Microsoft’s best chance would appear to be to offer an improved version based on the same technology by focusing on usability, if they can focus on the “customer/user” in the way they have always done so successfully before they might stand a chance of competing with Google and who knows, a chance of becoming market leader in the Cloud arena.
IT Certifications: Are they held in high regard?
Apr/100
SearchDataCenter.com have conducted a survey on IT certifications which is quite an interesting read!
According to this survey, regard for IT certifications has taken a nosedive with 80% of respondents saying that IT certifications had no impact on their hiring, promotion or salary. According to research from Foote Partners LLC, and IT job research firm, the pay for noncertified IT skills now averages more than pay for IT certifications.
According to David Foote, CEO of Foote partners, exceptions have been a selection of security, networking, systems and database certifications, plus a few in the architecture and project management areas that are showing solid pay growth numbers.
One of the main exceptions is in the area of Virtualization. “People that were smart in 2004 saw virtualization coming. Today everybody wants employees with three to four years of virtualization experience,” Foote said. “Certifications can be valuable, but you’ve got to combine them with a judgment of the market. What’s going to be important in three to five years?”. To read this article in more detail go to www.searchdatacenter.com
Here at Verkom we still see a demand for IT certifications in roles coming in. Certifications that continue to be in demand are CCNA, MCSE, ISEB, ITIL, CISSP, Prince 2 and one that is becoming more and more popular is VCP. These certifications are still held in high regard by clients we work with across Ireland.
What do you think?
Positive growth trend continues in Ireland’s professional jobs market
Mar/100
The latest Premier Group Irish Employment Monitor covering February 10 figures was published this morning.
This month’s highlights include:
- In February 10, new professional job vacancies increased by 34% compared to February 09
- Month on month, the number of new job vacancies rose by 7%
- This is the fourth consecutive month of increase in the number of new jobs available for professionals
- In February compared to January, the number of new professionals beginning a new job search increased by 19%
- There were 58% more professionals beginning a job search in February 10 compared to the same month last year
The full release can be viewed on our website:http://www.verkom.ie/Irish-employment-monitor-February-2010
In addition, the Morgan McKinley London Employment Monitor covering February 10 has also been published.
- New financial services job vacancies in February 10 rose by 13% month-on-month
- Compared to the same month last year, job numbers were up 67% in February 10, a similar uplift to that seen in January 10 vs. January 09
- The number of professionals entering the jobs market in February 10 increased by 29% on January 10 and also rose by 29% compared to February 09
- The average City salary stood at ₤51,560 – a 2% month-on-month increase
- For those considering changing jobs in 2010, career development rather than remuneration was identified as the key reason (57%)
The full release can be viewed on
http://www.morganmckinley.co.uk/Employment-Monitor-February-2010
IT Contractors can help companies to meet targets, reduce costs and go greener!
Mar/100
Hiring IT Contractors from Specialist Agents is a cost-effective, hassle free way for companies to meet deadlines and complete projects with the right expertise on time and within budget.
Recent market trends and tougher economic times have resulted in headcount freezes and longer lead times to take on permanent staff. Many companies have reduced staff numbers but that doesn’t necessarily mean that business is not on, or coming in. If there is an increase in work and new projects starting up, or staff absent at a time when service levels need to remain at a high standard, the ideal solution to fill these areas is with a contractor.
In the past contractors were always in demand in the IT Sector and now we are seeing the trend move out to other sectors such as Finance, HR, Engineering and Pharmaceutical. More recently with the high rate of redundancies and downsizing a great number of candidates have set themselves up as independent contractors and are marketing themselves to specialists agents, and in some cases directly back to their previous employers.
Benefits include increased autonomy and flexibility with your schedule. You can make excellent money and good tax savings, and can go greener working from home and/or remotely for your client!
CRM Is On The Up!
Mar/100
Historically Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions were associated with large corporations with aggressive sales teams. Today the use of CRM is becoming more and more frequent as companies of all sizes are availing of this software-as-a-service. This increased presence is beneficial to companies as it leads to a higher level of customer service which enables companies to maintain their customers in these tough times.
This rise of CRM usage is due to the evolution of the “customer” in a client’s eyes. A customer no longer refers to someone who buys a product, but simply someone who makes contact with a company – whether they are buying something from them, making an enquiry or logging a complaint. Thus a relationship exists and therefore needs to be managed. With the rise of virtualisation and cloud computing, hosted CRM solutions are allowing smaller firms to avail of CRM solutions and thus opening up a bigger market for CRM providers to sell into.
Business Process Management: Simply a buzz phrase?
Feb/100
Business process management (BPM) is a management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It is a Holistic Management approach that promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. Business process management attempts to improve processes continuously. It could therefore be described as a “process optimization process.” It is argued that BPM enables organizations to be more efficient, more effective and more capable of change than a functionally focused, traditional hierarchical management approach. (wikipedia)
By definition it would appear to be an essential part of the future of any business. However, last month’s announcement that Progress Software acquired Savvion for $49million on the back of the previous month’s acquisition of Lombardi by IBM would appear to mark a turning point for BMP.
Savvion and Lombardi were 2 of the 4 vendors at the forefront of BPM.
IBM and Progress have obviously identified the potential in this market and have taken advantage of the slower economy to take a large chuck of it for what will be considered at some point in the future, not a lot of money.
BPM is regarded by most to be a key driver in the future of Business & Technology and as Business & Technology continues to merge closer and closer it will only become more and more important. It is far from just a buzz phrase!