The Dart Maker Blog

A modern job search campaign is by nature often complicated. While the net has offered a variety of new channels, it also creates increased competition for choice jobs and possible challenges for job hunters.

Job search needs to be thought of as a personal, highly targeted marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network is your lead generating machine.

So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on Craigslist and got hundreds and hundreds applications in a calendar week. For a single position. That’s increased competition.

Had a suitable candidate contacted us before we placed the ad, they could have landed the job before having all that competition. How? By finding an employee at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew about of the job for at least 13 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be sure to check your cover letter and resume carefully! When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily eliminated with a speedy triage process. How? The same way any HR professional would. By rejecting resumes where the objective didn’t match our job description. By passing over prospects whose cover letters gave us causes not to hire them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating prospects whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by passing over job hunters who didn’t trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the good news is that job boards give you a feel of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of jobs. But once those jobs are posted, the competition is intense. You can still try, if you have a well honed resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.

Another thing to be aware of is how quickly you can be checked out on the web. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some MySpace comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing illegal, but enough to tilt our thinking about who to employ.

AA-Careers provides a all-inclusive set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.

Be careful out there, and good hunting!

IT Support Company Geeks-On-Wheels will henceforth partner BE Broadband in providing IT support to home-based and small business subscribers of the latter. This was announced in a joint statement by the two companies recently.

Geeks-On-Wheels is known for its expertise in the area of troubleshooting myriad PC problems, ranging from clearing viruses and spyware to configuring hardware and software and formatting hard drives.

Geeks-On-Wheels charges a fixed rate for home visits to repair problems, but BE Broadband subscribers are eligible for a 15 per cent discount as per the new agreement. Discussions with Geeks-On-Wheels customer support engineers are charged at ₤63.75 for the first hour and ₤31.88 for every subsequent half hour, in the case of London residents. For Sussex, Surrey and Kent residents the corresponding rates are ₤55.25 and ₤25.50 respectively.

Commenting on the collaboration, Geeks-On-Wheels Managing Director Jamie Shaw was very enthusiastic about the way forward. He said that BE Broadband was already reputed in the IT community for providing first class broadband connectivity and service, even in a highly competitive market. The tie-up with his firm ensured that the reputation received a big boost, and BE customers would benefit from it immensely - click BE Broadband for a look at all their latest offers and consumer reviews on their service and performance.

On the occasion of announcing the tie-up, BE has also declared a special offer for all of Geeks-On-Wheels’ new customers. They can now avail a free broadband subscription for 2 months, and any 12 month subscription with BE would attract no connection fee. This offer is open till the end of October and customers can avail it by entering the promotional code ‘GEEKS’ on BE’s sign-up page.

The government may not require the “three strikes and you’re out” law to penalize online pirates who pose a threat to copyright, as was about to be recommended in the final Digital Britain report scheduled for release on 16 June.

It seems, a more practical solution involving the use of technology is in the offing, as hinted by culture secretary Andy Burnham during a keynote speech at Music Week’s Make Online Music Pay conference.

Restrictions on connections to stop the rampant file sharing activity will be recommended in the report, it is now being speculated. This will be done by throttling the broadband connections that are found guilty of illegally downloading copyrighted material. Moreover, distribution of warning letters by ISPs to regular offenders will also be part of the report’s recommendations. To keep up-to-date with the latest broadband news, refer to Broadband Genie, they also have a really good section for broadband reviews for an individual insight to various ISP’s.

The comment from Burnham has generated approval largely. Mark Mulligan, vice president at Forrester Research said in an interview that service providers have been using certain technologies to regulate network traffic at peak times. These technologies are part of the infrastructure that might come to good use in imposing connection restrictions under the technical solutions strategy.

Mulligan however warned that there could be objections to this strategy both from the broadband providers, who would not want to impose restrictions on their customers and the music labels, who would see it as a lenient measure.

For long, the broadband industry has been speculating on the government’s funding plans to support the ambitious “Broadband for All” project. Alistair Darling while making the budget announcement claimed that the government will be lending its support to implementation of the Digital Britain project. However, the details of the funding plan have left several industry observers dissatisfied.

According to Charles Trotman, head of rural business development of Country Land and Business Association and a leading broadband expert, the biggest drawback of this fund allocation would be that the industry will not receive the pledged money before 2012, the year in which the project is supposed to be completed.

Speaking to The Guardian, Trotman emphatically stated that there is growing confusion in the minds of the broadband fraternity about the amount that the government would be releasing for the ambitious project. The government is planning to divert the savings from its digital TV switchover program to the universal broadband project. However, it is not clear as to what the total value of funding through this route would be, and whether it would reach the budget estimate of £250 million.

CEO of Point Topic, a broadband analysis firm, Oliver Johnson pointed out that the £250 million offered by the UK government for the project is much smaller a sum as compared to the funds allocated for similar projects by the US ($9 billion) and Australian (A$22 billion) governments. Although he insisted that he would rather wait for the final report from Lord Carter before judging the project’s feasibility.

With all of the new technology that is out there at the moment such as mobile internet, is there a high demand for broadband internet? Does it really make life easier and it is really worth the money? Well, if you are anything like me, I am hopeless with the internet and that is why I found mobile broadband internet to be the simplest and easiest method of getting myself online.

Mobile internet normally involves a small USB device that is plugged in to a laptop very easily, it is small, and so care has to be taken so that you don’t lose it. With mobile broadband internet, once you are set up, you are set for life, and there is no need to unplug, move, alter, or tamper with anything.

Wireless broadband is an easier option for those that have more than one laptop or PC in their home or for those that just have the one, plugging the device in to receive broadband is easy and affordable. There are plenty of packages for broadband internet around at the moment and I can guarantee that if you flick through the television channels or the pages of a newspaper or magazines, you will find at least one company offering their services.

It is difficult financial times like this that make for the best deals, with companies trying to undercut each other and that is why my advice to you would be, strike while the iron is hot, and use a comparison site like Broadband Genie.co.uk to find the best deal.

The Voip telephony and the international telecommunications market is not only healthy, it is robust! The market is expected to continue its double-digit growth and reach over $2 trillion by 2008.

Spending on telecommunications equipment and services in Canada, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia/Pacific will grow at a rate of 10.6% say the experts. What’s behind this growth in telecommunications? Prosperity! With improving economic conditions throughout the world there is increasing demand for Voip, mobile devices and wireless telecommunication services.

The number of subscribers to wireless telephone services is growing faster than the number of landlines in all regions. 1.9 billion wireless subscribers are expected by 2008 and they will outnumber landline subscribers by 69.1%.

The accessibility of high-speed broadband will drive equipment revenue over the next few years. This will give a boost to Internet telephony service and that growth will continue as broadband access revenue triples in future years.

As the move to wireless, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and cable telephony continues, the landline market will increase from $391 billion in 2004 to $422 billion in 2008.

Internationally Europe is expected to be the largest region in support services spending, reaching $354 billion by 2008 as the demand for equipment increases there will be increased demand for services to support that equipment.

In the United States the broadband market is expected to reach an estimated 56.9 million subscribers by 2008. That up from 32.5 million subscribers in 2004. The broadband market has had a huge move since 2001, when there were only 5.1 million subscribers.

Broadband’s faster speeds are behind the increasing demand for cable modem and DSL providers. Telephone companies are offering more bundled DSL services and cable operators are losing subscribers to direct broadcast satellite. The gap between the number cable and DSL subscribers is narrowing and will continue to decrease.

In addition, there is plenty going on with wireless communications. The U.S. wireless market includes transport services, handsets, capital expenditures and infrastructure equipment including Wi-Fi equipment plus the emerging market for wireless broadband access. The future of VoIP technology and wireless VoIP promises to be one of the most exciting developments in telecommunications.

Not counting PC-to-PC services, the number of residential VoIP customers more than tripled to 4.2 million in 2005. That number is expected to grow by a compound annual rate of over 43% in the next few years. That will result in about 18 million VoIP users.

Growth in the residential VoIP market is being driven by a number of factors. First and foremost is that VoIP telephony provides consumers with inexpensive voice communications. VoIP escapes the burden of the many regulations and taxes governments have imposed on traditional telephone services. So far that has allowed the VoIP service providers to beat the prices charged for wired telephone services. The burst of growth in broadband subscribership is a good sign for VoIP, because it works best over a broadband connection,

In the United States and around the world, people are talking and they want to do that with speed and economy. VoIP phone services are prepared to meet that need.

If you have not yet made the switch to VoIP telephone service author Mark Walters offers a free introduction called Five Reasons for VoIP

The E61i has been a a real money spinner for Nokia having been quite popular with buyers. Considering it is an entry level handset the E61i is fairly well featured compared to other handsets. The Nokia E61i is a very well designed handset with a modern feel to it.

The most cost effective place to shop for a mobile phone at the current time is over the Internet. A convenient way to find the best deals is by try using a site to compare mobile phones to compare deals on the Nokia E61i .

The E61i weighs 150 g which is acceptable for a mobile handset of its type. This mobile phone can be bought in, Silver and Mocca. Compared to other models, the E61i is nice and compact. The Nokia E61i has support for 2G GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 and 3G UMTS 2100 . This mobile phone has a 2 MP, 1600×1200 pixels, video(CIF) camera. A WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML browser allows this phone to be used for mobile Internet access. The Nokia E61i has a battery life of 400 hrs reserve charge and talk time of 9:00. A Standard battery, Li-Po 1500 mAh (BP-4L) battery is that is supplied with the Nokia E61i. The Nokia E61i comes equipped with bluetooth, meaning compatibility with the vast majority of modern mobile phone accessories extremely convenient. The E61i has Polyphonic, Monophonic, MP3, True Tones ring tones enabled plus a vibrating alert . Moving on to the display the phone is equipped with a 2.8 inch screen, which is a nice big display taking into consideration other possibilities you could get for the price. A TFT, 16M colors display is fitted to this handset. There are also a number of additional features included with the Nokia E61i such as , Voice command/dial, PIM including calendar, to-do list and printing, Push to talk, MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player, Office applications, Blackberry connectivity, Java MIDP 2.0 and Integrated handsfree.

Unfortunately for Nokia the E61i has some really competition from rival manufacturers products making it possible to get a fantastic bargain on this phone.

Cellular technologies are predicted to dominate wireless-broadband services. A massive growth is expected, and there will be a big boom in service revenue. According to Telecoms’ analyst Analysys Mason, service revenue will no doubt increase by 2,400 percent (by 2015). This will yield about $784bn an equivalent of £401b . The analysis further claims that there will be an estimated 2.1 billion wireless broadband customers worldwide.

With a study of the current trend in cellular broadband technologies, it is logical to predict that HSDPA broadband (3.5G), and LTE (Long Term Evolution of 3G) will take the lion’s share. By the end of 2015, it is likely that they will have 20 times as many customers as competitor Wireless Broadband Technology. WBT, according to Mason, fell short of achieving any substantial market share. They will probably contribute a meager 2% of total global revenue. The importance of Wireless Broadband is on an upward trend for years to come. It is predicted that HSDPA will cover about 88% of all wireless broadband users.

HSDPA technology will play a significant role by 2015, in all scenarios which mobile communication is necessary. By 2015, these technologies will likely supports close to 54 percent of users, consistently opposing the increasing availability of other rising innovations, namely LTE and Wimax.

The N75 has been a a real boost for Nokia as it has proved surprisingly popular with buyers. Considering it is an entry level phone the N75 is quite well featured when compared to other mobile phones. The Nokia N75 is a very well designed mobile phone with a contemporary feel to it.

The N75 supports 2G GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 and 3G UMTS 850 / 1900. The N75 has an integrated 2 MP, 1600×1200 pixels, video(CIF), flash camera. If you use the Internet on the move, you will be pleased to know a WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML compatible browser is included. The N75 weighs 123.5 g which is pretty average for a phone of its type. Colour wise this mobile handset is only available in Chocolate Black. The Nokia N75 comes equipped with bluetooth, making the majority of devices compatible. The Nokia N75 is that is supplied with a Li-Ion 800mAh (BL-5BT) battery cell. The battery cell usage the N75 is 4:00 talk time and 200 hours standby time. The N75 has Polyphonic (64 channels), MP3 ring tones enabled on top of which is a vibration alert. Moving on to the display the handset is equipped with a 2.4 inch screen, which, if you look at alternatives for the money is a pretty average size display. The screen is a TFT, 16M colors. There are also a number of additional features included with the Nokia N75 such as, MP3/M4A/AAC/eAAC+/WMA player, Voice command/dial, Java MIDP 2.0, Stereo FM radio, PIM including calendar, to-do list and printing, Document viewer, Integrated handsfree and Photo/video editor.

This is now quite an old mobile phone, but still does a great job. If you see one, in a sale you can steal yourself a great buy. Thanks to the web it has never been more convenient or as cost competitive to shop for a mobile phone. Ordering online can deliver some significant cost savings, surprisingly, it is possible to get free contracts for 12 months , which do not cost a cent.