Thinking of changing roles or market sectors for employment? Pick one with a future that you enjoy

The down turn is bringing forward many individual’s plans to change employment sectors. Having seen many jobs disappear in their sector, they suddenly seem to be bringing forward long held plans to do something else, which they have never yet put into action.

Is this a time when you should put long term held dreams into action? Possibly, but probably not if you are in secure employment with a great employer – that would be just daft at present. Jumping in this case means a change of employer, skills and sector and resultantly higher financial insecurity. This kind of change only makes sense if you are looking on a daily basis for a new job, and everything you look at reminds you of what you unhappily previously did.

To undertake this task, start with four blank A4 sheets of paper:

• Sheet1: what I have done/this skills I have
• Sheet2: my life, my family, and where I would like to be with both
• Sheet3: where I would like to be in work in 10years

Sheet 1 tells you what you have got to work with now – this could form the basis of a CV or Resume. Sheet 2 defines your personal priorities – you and your family, and what you want. Sheet 3 fits effectively inside Sheets 1 and 2 – you have (Sheet 1), you want (Sheet 2) and you expand on part of the want in Sheet 3. Clearly there is a compromise here, for instance: you want more children, and yet travelling far away from home for your dream job means you need a very supportive partner, and need to let them have some form of support system when you are away; which probably means that the family home is located close to the mother-in-law, and that means you need to get on with her.

You can play these scenarios and go back and re-write the pieces of paper as often as you want, and I would encourage you to do so on a six-monthly basis. But eventually you will get down to a mix where by you have played out everything you can think of, and the amount of change/addition is minimal. The result should be that you have a clear plan, which you have talked through and agreed with your partner, and which as a result you are more enthused – and will resultantly be loved by any future recruiter you meet or employer who engages you.

This blog entry is focused on Sheet 3, and picking a sector of employment that means you (hopefully) won’t end up in the same situation again – ie: thinking what you were doing was useless/boring, and wanting to change sectors. It may be the case that you enjoy the sector, but just want to move roles within that sector – that’s fine, and there are former shop floor workers in the coal, ship building, motor and pottery industries who are still enjoying work in the UK, just not on the shop floor.

If you want to pick a new sector, then look for signs that include:

• Technology change – IT, or applications of are good signs
• Market liberalisation – often seen at a government level, such as the entry of the low-cost carriers into the airline market
• Legislation improvement – this often means more paperwork, such as in the case of recycling or employment law
• Social trends – such as the divorce rating is rising, so more divorce lawyers and support staff are required; more women want to return to work, so there is a shortage of child care workers

In cases where you want to stay in the sector, but can see the sector is on decline, then look towards:

• Creativity – much as though production may move, design teams most often stay and expand
• Customer orientation – sales and marketing still need to be in-country, even if a product is produced internationally
• Consultancy – new market entrants and competitors to your old employer have probably come along as a result of cost efficiencies in developed markets. All of these companies need help in launching and developing their products

But above all, in all cases – PICK A SECTOR YOU WILL ENJOY! There is no point in spotting a trend or a gap, and not having your heart go quicker and your face smile. If it will not, then recruiters and employers will pick up on that.

Changing sectors need not, if you follow some simple rules and looks at the long term trends, be such a daft or wholly risky choice – as long as you make a better choice.

Good Luck!

PS: On a personal note……. I know this system works, because I apply it every three months! This is the system I used to move from call centre design to the internet market in the late 1990’s, through joining the team in my company involved in Data Centres. I saw the long term trend was towards mobile and the internet, and hence knew I had to get a job in either one or the other sector. Five years later, I choose self employment as I could see the long term staff reduction trends in BT – there is far more staff reduction to come there. The reason I became involved in the mobile phone recycler SimuSimu (Simu is Swahili for telephone…), was because I enjoyed telecoms, and could see the legislation on reuse and recycling increasing. I got involved in the recruitment market place because of effectively a consultancy engagement – there are staff shortages in certain telecoms sectors. I had the contacts and abilities to find gaps and fulfil them. I stayed because I could see the challenge for career management for the average person would be more difficult in a more liquid employment market, and if a good recruiter existed we could help candidates long term – hence the creation of Ajiri Ltd

What is the difference between a CV/Resume and a Job Application form?

A decision to move jobs or apply for employment takes a number of steps:

• You desire/fancy/need a new job
• Dust down old CV, realise its out of date, and create new one
• Start sending it to various online job boards
• Buy newspapers, and start responding to adverts
• Get a response – if this is less than 1 response per three applications sent, you are doing something VERY wrong. It is either your CV or what/where you are applying
• Have a telephone interview
• Have a physical interview
• Wait – and wait some more!
• Get a response, which means the whole process starts again OR you need to write a resignation letter
• Wait for notice period to expire while you are sent to work place hell for its duration OR get round to doing that long term gardening/painting honey-due that you have always promised
• Start work at new job

During this process, there will be four key pieces of paperwork you will need:

• A CV or Resume
• A Cover Letter for each application
• A completed Job Application form
• A Resignation Letter

One of these pieces of paper is not like the other three, which one is it? You probably guessed that it’s the Job Application form, and apart from the fact that it is not written by you, there is one key difference: the Job Application form can be legally sued on if your responses on it are false or lies.

The other difference is that a Job Application form can pretty much ask whatever question it likes. Yes, some of these questions may seem at first glance discriminatory – your age, or ethnicity for instance: but they can be included as both essential for candidate checking (age), and workforce balancing (ethnicity).

Let’s take this current Job Application form’s set of questions:

• If you use a nanny for child care, have they been fully legally checked and certified? What are their names?
• What clubs are you a member of, or have been in the last 10 years? List all, including dates of joining and current membership status
• Please provide the URL address of any websites that feature you in either a personal or professional capacity (e.g. Facebook, My Space, etc.)
• Have you ever been investigated, arrested for, charged with, convicted of violating any law, regulation or ordinance? How about your spouse? Your child? (You may exclude traffic offenses for which the fine was less than $50)
• Have you, your spouse, or any member of your immediate family ever worked with a financial, banking, insurance or mortgage institution currently the subject of federal government intervention as part of the financial meltdown? (This question includes but is not limited to, the following: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and Washington Mutual.)
• Other than from relatives, or from close and longstanding personal friends on occasions such as birthdays or seasonal holidays, have you or your spouse ever received a gift exceeding $50.00 in value? Please identify the donor, the value of the gift, the date received and the circumstances in which the gift was received
• Provide a copy of every book, article, column or publication you have authored, any speeches you have given, any testimony delivered, any resume you've issued

Question 13 is:

• If you have ever sent an electronic communication, including but not limited to an email, text message or instant message, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-elect if it were made public, please describe

Are these questions being asked by President-elect Barrack Obama’s transition team - and obtained by the New York Times - legal? Yes, as the key question for any judge in most jurisdictions (UK, EU or USA), if a case was brought by an applicant on the grounds of discrimination, is a test of reasonableness – ie: is the question reasonable and related to fair employment in that position, or is it discriminatory?

In example, one of the questions being asked in the same Job Application form is: "Please list all aliases or 'handles' you have used to communicate on the internet." If you were applying for a job on the checkout at a local Grocery Store, then no it would not be legal; but on the grounds of national security, or for a bank worker for instance, both areas where security checking and vetting of staff is legally required for regulatory licensing, then yes it is legal.

You can gain a view on the length of any possible Job Application form a job will require you to complete, by looking at the last paragraph of any job advert. This is where the legal counsel of any employer has won the “yes, but we want great employees, and to do that we need to sell the job” argument from the CEO and HR director, and all the legal pieces will be stuffed into as few words as possible. Here they will need to state any set criteria for candidates (must have qualifications/experiences), age or ethnic criteria (look at Government social worker adverts for jobs where legally allowed discrimination can be justified), and any checks or tests to be passed. What this paragraph should remind you is that any lies are illegal, and will be found out.

So, please never lie on your CV or Resume – but if you do, just remember that you can be sued on anything you write in a Job Application form, however long ago you wrote it: so don’t ever lie!

Good Luck!

People Competency Improvement versus People Capability Improvement

Robert asks: What is the difference between People Competency Improvement & People Capability Improvement, and how it is related?

In answer:
If you understand the difference, then as a business owner or director you can ask your HR team to build your companies HR strategy and business decisions around these two key areas:

Competency = Skills: the skills that are required for an individual to perform the job. Managers can deliver solid impact by hiring people that have demonstrated the competencies key to fulfilling the job. For instance, it is logical to assume that an artist will be less capable to work as accountant than a mathematician: an artist has different type of competency. If your organization is not capable to do something, look for misplaced talents and perform HR assessment. Ongoing coaching and performance management/evaluation can help sustain and improve those results (motivation is also a layer here).

Capability = Capacity: look at this as the process in your organization, resulting in efficiency and effectiveness. For instance, if an engineer is competent, they will find and fix a problem quickly; where as if a painter is competent they will use the right brushes to paint. If an individual is not capable of painting, you could invest a lot in brushes, but will never get a painting in return. By continually assessing and working to improve your processes a function of people, tools and approach/process), the overall capacity of work done by your teams will rise, as will the quality. You will also end up driving out unnecessary cost and waste.

Good Luck!

Why has Wales suffered so much in the credit crunch – and why it should not have

There are many pieces of news hitting the headlines over various layoffs and redundancies at present. It is unfortunately inevitable that companies will cut expenditure in light of falling revenues – because if they didn’t survive, where would the jobs come from in a revival?

However, from various pieces of government funded analysis, the Welsh economy is presently suffering more in the down turn than most economies, with redundancies around one quarter higher than the average in the UK. The excellent Jamie Owen asked a commentator last night on Wales Today why, and the answer was at best fudged: so here is a personal view.

The Welsh boom time lasted 100 years, from about the 1820’s when the first pits were sunk, to the post war 1920’s when the great depression hit. Since then it has been a slow bleed from employment to unemployment, investment to decay; with around two thirds of the pit jobs lost by the start of World War Two, and Maggie Thatcher just finishing the inevitable in the 1980’s.

At that point, Wales had a clean slate and was offered investment – according to a talk I heard from Ieuan Wyn Jones, from 1973 to 2003 it had some £930million pounds of grant investment made into it, and it’s in how that money was spent as to why Wales is now suffering.

Firstly, 60% of it was invested within 12mile radius of Cardiff Bay. Now partly that should not come as a surprise – that’s about equivalent to the amount of Welsh GDP generation – but that doesn’t reflect the distribution of the Welsh population. Merthyr Tydfil sits at a radius of 18miles from the bay, and has the highest unemployment rate of most towns and cities in the UK.

Secondly, the way the money was invested. Most of the money was given to large incoming investment projects by non-EU head quartered companies. Sony is probably the best example at Bridgend, which was held up as a world class centre by even Sony themselves; the same can be said of the GE engine facility at Caerphilly, or the BAe facility at Wharton. But some of those projects didn’t come off – the LG Philips plant at Newport being the highest profile example, and the film studio at Valleywood presently looks like a missed opportunity. Most of the money was placed in singular large profile projects, around a strategy of “hub and spoke” with the WDA investing in hubs and the companies themselves creating spokes in the local economy. They even created a series of large industrial estates for the developments of these spokes, many of which are still empty rows of large steel sheds. However, unlike the Scot’s the Welsh picked no core hubs, and so there were no world class spokes – which would have led to more hubs.

Thirdly, the local grants were handed out at a local business initiative level in an adhoc and splash the cash manner. A conversation I had 18months ago with a council based business development unit went:
• Me: how many of the following skilled people do you have? (I knew they had the answer, as they would come up with such stat’s when we were looking to place call centres in the UK)
• Council: well, we offer a grant to find out such answers in developing your business. We pay £X for such investigations and reports, and it will cost you £Y (about twice X) to buy the report from one of our approved consultants
• Me: how often do you get asked this question?
• Council: about twice a week at minimum
• Me: so to answer a common question, I have to get a grant to pay someone to answer it for me?
• Council: yes!

The problem this generated was a grant-dependent culture, in local small businesses, and also a series of weak SME businesses. Grants should be from a business level seen as a bonus guarantee, not an essential of business as they have become here. Every time I hear a new business proposal in Wales from a local person, the second issue on the table after the concept is the detailed list of grants available!

The result of the grant expenditure from 1972 to 2003 is that 97% of the jobs created have gone. They came to Wales, were created, and have now left. There were insufficient local roots placed down by the hub investors, so they could leave easily when technology changed – or a downturn came. And the spokes were not strong enough to survive alone.

Have there been successes in the Welsh economy? Yes – and the thing they have in common is that they were in general created by people who are or have strong ties to Wales. Such enterprises include insurance group Admiral, the only Welsh headquartered business listed in the FTSE100 – they are about to take on 500 people into a new centre in Newport; or the Lanelli based TV production company Tinopolis, without which Dr Who could never have been attempted in Cardiff.

Wales will now suffer as a result of poor central strategy – and one which missed its greatest strength: the Welsh people. On any measure, compared to an average UK worker they are three times as loyal, and as a whole are as well educated as any part of the UK thanks to large investment in the educational sector. They are also quite creative and adaptable, in part because of this love and existence of an old Celtic language. What I am trying to say here is that the Welsh people could be horribly entrepreneurial if given the right infrastructure around them, but what appears to have happened is the creation of a grant-dependent business focus. Thankfully most of the new businesses coming through from the sub-25 year old bracket can stand on their own two feet.

I think Wales will go through some tough times, probably even longer than the rest of the UK: we might just as well be in Bejing in 2012, such is the amount of Olympic money that will at presently planned flow down here. But I am convinced by the Welsh people, and that the central government – thankfully because it won’t have the cash – will change it strategy to local entrepreneurial investment focus, over one of buying in multi-national hubs. Modern businesses need to be adaptable, and such choices even by the companies themselves will need to come with far quicker payback timescales.

When faced with that unknown choice, versus a bet on your own people, I hope it is even obvious to central government where the financial investment bet needs to be placed – your own people offer a far, far better set of long term employment odd’s.

Good Luck!

Have you fallen foul of “Denis Atlas” and his CV/Resume security scams?

In times of reducing employment, the temptation to send your CV winging off to any old online jobs board or career related website is compelling. You need a job, you are not sending them any cash, so what’s the problem?

In a controlled experiment, supported by the Metropolitan Police and the Information Assurance Advisory Council, online CV filing organisation iProfile.org placed a job advert for a fictional company in a UK national newspaper, inviting people to apply by emailing their CV. The advert was run during the National Identity Fraud Prevention week. Anyone carrying out a simple web search for the company – ‘Denis Atlas’, an anagram of ‘steal an id’ - would have found a website telling them the company was fake. In just one week, 107 CVs were received in response to the job advert. iProfile enlisted the help of reformed identity thief, Bob Turney, to analyse the CVs and discovered that the vast majority contained enough information for an identity theft to occur.

As security expert Frank Abagnale said in a recent interview: "It's all publicly available on the internet. But actually I only need three pieces of information to get credit in someone's name: their full name, date of birth and national insurance number."

But during the iProfile experiment, the average CV received contained eight pieces of information. 61 CVs (57%) included a date of birth, despite this no longer being a UK legislative requirement due to age discrimination laws, and 98 (91.5%) included a full address. A further 20 (19%) put others at risk by providing full details of references. One even included the applicant’s passport number and national insurance details.

Protecting yourself from CV ID Fraud
Think about the information a potential employer needs to find your details inserting enough to be able to contact you. You can share your full CV and details at a later stage when you are comfortable with the identity of the company or person you are sharing the information with.

Follow the following tips to ensure you are not a victim of CV/Resume ID fraud:

BEFORE you apply:
1.Ensure your contact details are focused on you and neutral. If in doubt or if you live in temporary accommodation, get a mail box – at around £20/$30 a month, it’s a security bargain
2.Your eMail address should be adult and focused around you, and not a childish online character – Jennie69 may be fun online but is a no-employment sign on a CV/Resume. If your name is Jim Smith, then Jsmith@aol.com is fine unless you happen to be a web designer, in which case get a domain and create a portfolio
3.Get yourself a nice new Pay As You Go cellphone. You won’t be making many outbound calls on it initially, so no need for anything more than the starter £10/$10 credit. Record the message greeting in your own voice – write down the salutation before recording it in a nice quiet room: “Hello, this is X. I am sorry I can’t take your call right now, but please leave your name and contact details, and I will call you back as soon as I can.”
4.Do a Google CV check, and clean-up your online profiles

Check the organisation:
5. Be wary if the email address does not contain the name of the company but just the name of an internet service provider such as @AOL.com. It’s OK for you, but not for the organisation your are sending your details to
6. All websites globally MUST legally include: the trading organisations name (ie – Mr Smith or XYZ Company Ltd), a contact address and a contact telephone number. If you can not find these details then don’t use the website, and before submitting your details online, always call them first

In your CV/Resume:
7.NEVER state your full name, and leave out middle names. James Robert Smith comes down to James Smith, or if you use your middle name in preference Robert Smith. Never use Jim, Rob, or J Rob – this is a formal and professional application, plus middle names are often used by banks as security checks
8.Mainly for women, but also for men, never state Miss, Ms or Mrs. Never state your marital status – an ongoing messy divorce is a no-employment warning, a former marriage best left in the past
9.In your CV/Resume, state the contact details you have already lined up before. If using your home address, then just include district and city, nothing more: Manhattan, New York or Hammersmith, London is legally sufficient. No need for street, and certainly no need for apartment/house number
10.There is no legal requirement to state your Date of Birth, but NEVER state your full date of birth. “Aged 32” at maximum
11.There is a lot of debate in the CV/Resume writing community about stating certain employment dates: if you do you could look old, if you don’t it is difficult to show the level of experience. The area to pay attention to are your educational dates, often used as security checks. If you are past 20, then no need for school (I can age you from that), and probably leave out your base degree graduation date – again often a security check used by banks
12.NEVER included any government issued numbers or related personal information. This covers everything from National Insurance/Social Security numbers, Passport numbers, and Tax code references. Even if you are a migrant worker, just state “Fully able and certified to be able to work in X country, full documentation available on request at interview stage.”
13.NEVER provide personal financial details, such as bank and credit card details. Avoid any employer who asks for a process fee or application deposit – it’s a sure sign it’s a scam
14.NEVER include the names and contact details of your references, even if asked for – the same goes for them as much as you

When applying:
15. Take extra care when accessing and sending personal information when using public computers, such as those in internet cafes, or when using a laptop in a WiFi hotspot.


Please, think about what information you include on your CV/Resume. Often when candidates ask how they get their four page leviathans down to two pages, just applying the above rules would reduce it by at least a page.

If you think you may be a victim then send off for your credit-reference files from a recognised organisation like Experian or Equifax - it only costs £2/$5. They will show any fraudulent applications for credit. Inform CIFAS, the Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System, which will put your name on an alert file.

For more information on this subject, you may like to read the following websites and articles:

- UK Government online ID website identitytheft.org.uk
- CIFAS
- Wikipedia article on Identity Theft
- Daily Mirror article on ID theft

The 100 day old CV or Resume is out of date

As a recruitment professional, it is always satisfying to find great candidates. However, often when you find these great candidates, the answer to “and when can I have your CV/Resume?” is most often always met with: “Well, I have an old one somewhere…”

As a professional recruiter, you also know that if you find great candidates via networking and outside the IT orientated/aware professions, that "old" will mean at least as long as they have been with their current employer; and the time scale for producing it will be never. It is hence why we accept in-house that we will write it for them from initial telephone interview notes, which when sent out to the candidate via eMail is met with a relieved eMail message, and an CV/Resume attachment with some old text insertions - because they were trying to convert the only paper copy they had into a nice MSWord version, let alone an online option!

Well, here’s a credit crunch career planning thought. The Financial Director of the company you work for probably plans his budget on quarter cycles – ie: 90days. Large publicly listed companies have to announce major changes at their quarterly reporting dates that effect balance sheets and earnings, and that includes staff issues. The FD knows the company can survive the next 90days, but beyond that could be another call. Now, if your FD and company board are making decisions on your job every 90days, shouldn’t you be?

Let us say that the FD gets to the end of the quarter, and like the good FD that he is he has some reserves. But unfortunately, there is only enough of a reserve for the company to last 180 days. If he calls in the HR director and they agree with the MD to reduce staff, that whole discussion will probably take 30days; the results of the HR directors project will be delivered in another 30days; and the planning for the announcement will take another 30days. The results can be implemented pretty quickly after that.

Good career planning is about looking forward, and writing a CV is about showing applied competencies. To make sure you note down all of your competencies, the applications of them and their and successes, keep at least a weekly diary. Note down what you did, the skills you used and the results/outcomes. What you can then do every quarter is apply these to your CV/Resume. Yes, it may look long and wordy, but chopping back and focusing is far easier and quicker that creating.

Never, ever again let your CV/Resume become more than 100days old.

Good Luck!

The pound and employment – why a falling currency should be good

In light of poor and fast declining economic data, and media comments by both the Bank of England and the Prime Minister that the UK was in a recession, the pound has dropped to low levels against the US dollar. Since July, it has fallen by 25% in value, from $2.00 to $1.50 to the UK pound.

If you look at this further, it gets to be a consistent pattern of the pound dropping in value against numerous currencies:
- 220 to 160 against the Japanese Yen (27%)
- 86 to 74 against the Indian Rupee (14%)
- 1.40 to 1.25 against the Euro, although in the past three months it has been quite stable (10%)

However, all this bad currency data could be good for UK employment: that holiday in Florida, the most popular location for Brit’s abroad, is now 25% more expensive. It makes Margate look a lot more attractive, and a lesser drop against the Eurozone makes the Mediterranean interesting for guaranteed sunshine

But that’s consumer spending – what has it got to down with your job?

When I ran a large UK Call Centre design team – we turnover £127million in the last year I ran the team – we were faced with the onslaught on the overseas location. The main reason was, it was cheaper to run. We were at a disadvantage any way, as we worked for the most expensive telecoms company in the market by around 15% to 25% - so just selling in the UK was a chore, let alone against Phuket or Mumbai!

One of the most powerful statement’s I have ever been taught was as an engineer in Bournemouth, being taught how to sell modems. The trainer taught us that learning lists of features was fine, but what was the business benefit? To find them, he taught us the statement “Which means that…..” So for instance, a dual processor design meant better up time, which means that you don’t need to design in as much redundancy to ensure critical delivery – that actual line won us a £15million contract with Chase Manhattan, and meant we also won a contract into just post communist Russia!

So, for UK businesses exporting, what does a quickly falling pound mean? Take Jaguar cars for instance – the £35,000 XJ top line saloon is now 25% cheaper at the dock in New York. That is also true of the 50mpg BMW Mini, and in a country which is running scared of their beloved SUV’s and not having enough for a deposit for one anyway, a cheap and economical branded car should sell well.

What about call centres? I always felt the flight to India was short termed in sight. The way we overcame selling at a premium UK price was to train engineers who designed whole customer service solutions, over just the flashing light telephone bit in the middle. We hence thought about market position, registration, time to answer, environment (yes, we had colour awareness training!), and follow-up. It meant when you engaged us, you engaged a whole solution over an engineer – hence why we did £127million, or 53% of then BT Solutions group turnover. Hence from my point of view as a whole solution, the mass flight of call centres to India was illogical and daft, when the majority of the customers were over 50, and couldn’t understand many UK call centre operators, let alone someone who had never been to the UK apart from watching an episode of Eastenders. The clear result would be greater market switching, which those who either choose to stay in the UK or were to slow to react would suddenly find the results of – Nationwide made a conscious decision to leave their call centres in the UK, and took a 20% boost in business.

We have in the past two years seen a flight back to the UK as annual market switching rates in financial services rose from 10% to 35% , but the back offices – rightly – have stayed in the cheaper economies of India. However, many organisations which don’t benefit from scale economies are finding the communication lines stretched, and hence projects delivered late: its why there is a boom in need for qualified project managers, but the problem is communication.

So, what will be the effect of a falling currency? We are in a recession in the UK, and reduced consumer spending (probably agitated further by higher high street prices) will result in increased unemployment: but to stay employed, you just have to get focused, there are many opportunities. However, with a quickly falling currency, the rates of UK export will quickly rise – plus financial services will recover, as UK law is open, stable and friendly: thank you Sarbanes Oxley! I expect to see the result in the UK balance of payments by mid-2009, and it’s why BMW are choosing to lay-off over redundancy until Easter: because they know what the reaction could be, and there is still a skills shortage in the UK labour market of engineers. Any decision announced to outsource offshore in the past 12months that has not yet been implemented I am sure is being looked at by every Finance Director right now – it not only requires an often capital sum to achieve, it also now is looking around 20% less cost effective.

Clearly there will be redundancies, as UK companies can’t bleed to death through lack of cash when they can’t borrow. But the depth of the redundancies may not be as high as suspected – such a sharp fall in the UK sterling is like installing a rubber floor as a safety precaution, and make FD’s listen to HR directors about long term skills shortages as there is a tightening of the pull of export sales.

Good Luck!