danielbower.com

littlebigdetails: Vouchercodes- On the unsubscribe page the...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:16:46 +0000

Vouchercodes- On the unsubscribe page the background & editor’s avatar turns from a blue (sunny day) background to a rainy day when unsubscribing from all newsletters.

/via edg

littlebigdetails: IMDb - The rating for ‘This is Spinal Tap’...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:07:21 +0000

littlebigdetails:

IMDb - The rating for ‘This is Spinal Tap’ goes up to 11

/via treitmaier

Guess who! Maris? Amazed that this is only season eight!

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:38:10 +0000

Guess who!

Maris?

Amazed that this is only season eight!

A Tale from the Recruitment Front Line

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:38:00 +0000

Have you ever been lined up to do an interview and have the candidate not show up? It’s a normal occurrence: candidates get cold feet, they renegotiate with an existing employer or take new position elsewhere. While it’s frustrating that all the preparation you’ve done has gone to waste, in the end you can forgive someone for focussing on what’s right for them. You wouldn’t be so happy if you’d discovered an altogether more devious reason behind their no show.

About a month ago we (VoucherCodes.co.uk) received a promising looking CV via a recruiter for a PHP role we have going. Now before you roll your eyes and tell me using a recruiter was my first mistake allow me to defend our position. This recruiter is good. In fact he’s placed a few people with us in the past, has always sent good candidates, and unlike many “technical” recruiters, he knows his Python from his Javascript. Anyone who has run a small company will tell you that a good recruiter is worth their weight in gold. This CV ticked loads of boxes: good work experience, strong academic background, projects that were sizeable and complex. Naturally we told the recruiter to get him in.

About two days before the interview the recruiter calls me and says he’s having trouble securing references for the candidate, indeed the HR department of his last job can’t find any record of him. When confronted about this the candidate said he was using a different name on his CV (middle not surname) and that was probably why. Alarms bells ring. The day before the interview came and the recruiter hadn’t been able to get hold of the HR person again so we agreed to proceed with the interview nevertheless. Unsurprisingly, he never turned up. Some chancer trying to get an interview on the basis of a fake CV? It’s a classic right? Wrong.

Fast forward to the present day and we’ve taken on another recruiter to help us out. The market feels really tough, but usually picks up in the new year. Get fit, get a holiday, get a new job. People are pretty predictable. The same new recruiter sends over a CV that looks good and we line the interview up. Then the day before the interview we notice something is amiss. The new CV we’re looking at and the dodgy one we had a month back have some similarities. Similar work history and career objectives, in fact there was a whole chunk of it that was exactly the same. We call the recruiter and ask if he’s confirmed the references. He’s not, and as you’ve probably guessed, when he asks HR they’d never heard of him either.

We were stumped. Something dodgy was happening and we had no idea what. It couldn’t have been just the same guy trying to chance it with a slightly different CV as his ethnicity had changed from one CV to the next. This isn’t Face/Off, you can’t do that. There’s no reason the recruiter would be sending them to us, it’s wasted his time too.

Then it dawned on us. “They” was actually one person, a recruiter, and they had never planned on turning up for the interviews in the first place. This mystery recruiter sends bogus CVs to other recruiters in the hope that they’ll be accepted for interviews. If they do they get the name and address of the business looking to recruit and that means a new lead for their own business!

I can’t begin to imagine what sort of job satisfaction someone gets from pretending to be someone else. From making up an employment history, setting up fake email addresses and probably even going as far as to do fake telephone interviews. I feel sorry for them.

It is however a remarkably devious bit of lead generation that demonstrates perfectly how fucked up that industry is. And despite claims that the Internet has liberalised the recruitment market in reality it’s done nothing of the sort. The quicker someone develops that killer recruitment business the quicker all of us will stop wasting our time.

Photo

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 19:44:29 +0000

Ian Barber is the unfortunate victim of the BBC’s strict...

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 17:09:36 +0000

Ian Barber is the unfortunate victim of the BBC’s strict captioning policies.

WhaleSharkMedia (that's us) announce a new round of financing

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:17:42 +0000

WhaleSharkMedia (that's us) announce a new round of financing

The World's Best Bars 2011

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:33:04 +0000

The World's Best Bars 2011:

Great to see Lounge Bohemia get a mention, but also surprised the Zetter Townhouse didn’t make it.

Black Lilli

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:19:00 +0100

Black Lilli

Photo

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:30:00 +0100

Dennis and the Rosedale Chimney

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:18:00 +0100

A few weekends ago some friends and I decided to tackle the the North Yorkshire Moors during a two day trip from York to Robin Hood’s Bay and back. For those of you who have ever done been to the Moors you’ll know that it’s pretty up and down, and for those who have ever cycled it you’ll know it’s a gruelling as they come.

Of all the ascents we tackled none were more difficult than the infamous Rosedale Chimney which is 1 in 3 in parts as it snakes up the hill. Not wanting to be outdone we decided to have a crack at it and despite falling off my bike once as a car came a little too close to me I actually managed to make it to the top.

Problem: there was no one to take my picture. Some of the gang had already whizzed back down past me, and some didn’t make it up. Enter Dennis Marshall who was kind enough to take a photo of me and note down my address in London.

When it arrived in the post a few days ago it brought a huge smile to my face. Not only did I now have proof that I’d managed to ascend the Chimney, but it reaffirmed my belief that there are people out there who are willing to go out of their way to help a complete strangers.

Thank you Dennis, your photo is now sitting proudly on my sideboard and the certificate you wrote out alongside it.

We’re live in the app store and climbing the charts fast!

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 18:20:24 +0100

We’re live in the app store and climbing the charts fast!

At a friends house this weekend I came across this wonderful...

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:02:32 +0100

At a friends house this weekend I came across this wonderful photo from the Tour.

It’s from a series called ‘An Intimate Portrait of the Tour De France: Masters and Slaves of the Road’

"The memory of bad quality lasts longer than the shock of high prices."

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 10:17:14 +0100

“The memory of bad quality lasts longer than the shock of high prices.”

- Put This On

poohugh**: It's a blogpost about QR Codes FOR A CHANGE

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:12:28 +0100

poohugh**: It's a blogpost about QR Codes FOR A CHANGE:

poohughstars:

I’ve been thinking (ooh careful! I HATE THAT JOKE SO MUCH) about QR Codes: the most unelegant thing since Die Another Day.

Walking past a new restaurant this morning, with a new menu on the window. wouldn’t it be good to see that menu on my phone? Ooh IMPULSIVE CONSUMER. The menu didn’t have the…

A QR reader would need to be bundled with the camera app in order to gain traction THEN (maybe) they would find a use.

That said Hugh’s idea of some multi-purpose reading device is probably much better.

QR codes remind me of AOL keywords. For a short while they were on everything too.

A small thing Twitter could learn from Google+

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:30:25 +0100

I think it’s pretty clear now that Google+ isn’t going to set the social world on fire. The reasons for this are plentiful and not the purpose of my post, however a central theme will be the lack of differentiation between it and it’s major competitors. That said Google+ put some lovely user experience around it’s largely borrowed features, and in my opinion Twitter in particular should take note.

I’m talking about ‘Circles’ which were in fact ‘Lists’ done time before by both Twitter and Facebook - I’m not sure who came first. Lists allow the user to quickly filter the content they are looking at, which when you are following thousands upon thousands of people is extremely handy. What’s more lists allow you to segment what you read. Only interested in ‘Cyclists’ then just read that for a while.

What Google did was make Circles front-and-centre of it’s UE, and in beautiful way too. Every time I add someone I’m pushed into adding them to a Circle too.

Twitter should do this too, and save me, and many other users, from the flood of coming tweets. If they don’t, I fear people may drastically reduce the number of people they follow, or move away from Twitter entirely - neither are in the bird’s best interests.

Google+ won’t become the social player they want it to be. But if they’re sensible both Twitter and Facebook could take note of some logical improvements they’ve made.

Thoughts @danielbower.

putthison: Vintage uniform posters from the Royal Mail. via...

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 08:51:58 +0100

putthison:

Vintage uniform posters from the Royal Mail.

via Retronaut (thanks Greg & Kyle)

Hats aren’t great with a uniform.

Spotify is wonderful but it could take a few tips from iTunes....

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 08:17:00 +0100

Spotify is wonderful but it could take a few tips from iTunes. Here’s one for free.

The proximity of the search bar to the extremities of the app means that double clicking just a few pixels north of it can result in the app minimising itself.

Why is this a problem? Because double clicking on the search bar is a quick way to select all the text in the field ready to delete it.

iTunes gets around this by giving the search bar that little bit more breathing room.

UPDATE: The latest version of Spotify has rectified this. I’d like to think they read my blog, but it’s probably another victory for common sense.

"I am after the maximum communication with minimum elements."

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 22:52:23 +0100

“I am after the maximum communication with minimum elements.”

- Noma Bar

Photo

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:15:37 +0100