The mining industry has come a long way in recent years, leaving far behind images of pit ponies and gas-detecting canaries. Modern mining is highly automated, employs lean principles, highly professional, makes full use of computer-aided technologies and very much focussed on health, safety and socially responsible and economical business.

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or (coal) seam. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock salt and potash. Any material that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or created artificially in a laboratory or factory, is usually mined. Mining in a wider sense comprises extraction of any non-renewable resource (e.g., petroleum, natural gas, or even water).

Engineering careers to the technical, supervisory and professional managerial roles typically start with a solid bachelors degree such as BSc in Mining, underpinned with mining and mineral industrial experience in the relevant discipline.

Technical Roles: CAD Draftsperson * Data / Information Officer * Electronics / ICT Technician * Environmental Officer * Geoscience Technician * GIS Technician * Laboratory Technician * Maintenance Technician * Metallurgical Technician * Mine Deputy * Mine Planner * Mine Surveyor * Open Cut Examiner * Project / Program Manager * Health & Safety Advisor * Surveyor * Technical Officer * Ventilation Technician

Supervisory Roles: Maintenance Foreman * Production Foreman * Plant Foreman * Shift Manager

Engineering Roles: Chemical / Metallurgical * Civil * Electrical / Electronics * Environmental

Geological / Geotechnical / Geoscience Roles: Materials * Mechanical * Mining * Environmental Scientist * Exploration Geologist * Geophysicist * Hydro Geologist * Mine Geologist * Resource Geologist * Metallurgist

Managerial Roles: Exploration * Mine * Operations / Production * Plant * Health & Safety

Starting salaries in the mining industry are very competitive with respect to other engineering disciplines. The possibility of rapid career advancement in the mining industry is high, due to the small scale of many mining operations. Many engineers move into supervisory or management positions at a relatively early stage in their careers.

Purple Squirrel is working with a number of global Clients having ongoing requirements for mining and mineral processing personnel in UK, Africa, South America, Canada and in the Middle East. To see and apply for our current job vacancies click here.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Purple Squirrel is today pleased to announce, that we have been awarded a major supply contract to promote UK Engineers for Saudi Arabia Expat contracts. This is exciting news for Job seekers in the UK Industrial, Construction and Energy sectors looking for long-term, good quality contracts abroad.

In total we have over 200 Vacancies to fill, all working for a major Corporation. The list of requirements is extensive covering disciplines at 4 career grade levels from Manager (in charge of a site) to Hands-on. Majority of roles require graduate level engineering degree qualifications ranging from minimum 5 years work experience to 20+ years.

Materials – Architects – Civil Engineers – Electrical Engineers – Mechanical Engineers – Piping – Construction – E&I – Instrumentation – Superintendants – Process – Turbines – DCS – Safety – Communications – Schedulers – Contracts Adviser – Welding – NDT – Technicians – Photogrammetry – Project Management – Turbine PM – IT – Planning – Cartograper – Surveyors – Cost Engineers – HR/Training

The packages on offer will be specific to each position and career grade. Will include allowances for accommodation, flights, life assurance, medical cover and car.

To view the complete list of engineering job openings, please see the Purple Squirrel website or JustEngineers or email with covering letter to jobs@purple-squirrel.co.uk stating the reference number.

Closing Date for Applications: 8th July 2011

Purple Squirrel Limited acts as an Employment Agency with regard to permanent vacancies and an Employment Business with regard to temporary assignments.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Engineer at Rest

Sunshine, time away from the workplace and rest. These would appear to be motivating ingredients for our UK Labour Market. Purple Squirrel has noticed a four-fold increase in  active engineering and technical Job Seekers this week. Everyone has returned fresh and re-motivated for job hunting since the May Bank Holiday weekend. This can only be good news for the Employers who are hiring now and seeking to choose the best talent available for their project teams.

Whilst UK unemployment is holding at a relatively unchanged level since pre-recession days, future prospects are still relatively difficult to read. A report out today by The Work Foundation shows continued importance to the UK economy of the Services sector. Engineering and technical services play a central role along with IT, providing the professional and technological support that businesses depend on for innovation and growth.

Purple Squirrel’s advice to active job hunters is therefore to pay particular attention to your main sales tool – your CV and cover letter. Hiring Managers want to hire people who are achievers and for the most part having evidence that you can already do their job.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Companies that outsource their recruitment process, experience a handful of advantages which I’ll discuss in detail in this article. The term for this process is Recruitment Process Outsourcing which in turn is a type of business process outsourcing.

Before I dig any deeper into the advantages of outsourcing your company’s recruitment process, let’s get a better understanding of what business process outsourcing or BPO really means.  According to Wikipedia BPO is where an employer outsources or transfers all or part of its recruitment activities to an external service provider.

In other words Business Process Outsourcing is the purchase of labour or services from an outside source, i.e. subcontracting a process to a third party company.

The RPO Alliance, a group of the Human Resources Outsourcing Association (HROA), approved this definition in February 2009. “Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is a form of business process outsourcing (BPO) where an employer transfers all or part of its recruitment processes to an external service provider. An RPO provider can provide its own or may assume the company’s staff, technology, methodologies and reporting. In all cases, RPO differs greatly from providers such as staffing companies and contingent/retained search providers in that it assumes ownership of the design and management of the recruitment process and the responsibility of results.” – Wikipedia

Now that we have a better understanding of what BPO is, lets get back to the main theme of this article which is recruitment process outsourcing and its advantages to your company.

Time/Speed

Hiring a recruitment company to do the recruitment process for a new project will save your company precious time. A recruitment agency already has a database of prospects classified by their skills, knowledge and experience, all you have to do is send in your requirements and they should get back to you with a list of candidates that will be ready to be interviewed.

Money/Costs

If it saves you time it sure saves you money. Imagine allocating employees to do the recruitment process of your company, first these employees will have to stop doing what they are doing to focus the recruitment process which can be a long winded process. This could be a problem for small to middle sized companies, big corporations have their own recruitment departments. But even so we are seeing that even the big guns are outsourcing their recruitment processes to reduce costs.

Quality

Some might say that who better to know the needs of a company than the owner or someone working for it. This saying is right to a certain extent but when it comes to recruiting new personnel for a specific job or project this can be very challenging. So better leave it to the professionals. Specialised recruitment agencies have an extensive database of resumes and the networking required to source the right type of candidate.

Nowadays these agencies have evolved so much that if you need recruits for a construction project you go to a construction recruitment agency, a new engineering project you look for engineering recruitment agencies and so on.

Now that you now the benefits of hiring a recruitment agency do you still want to do the process in-house?

Popularity: 20% [?]

UK employers remain cautious about their hiring plans in the last months of the year with more than eight out of 10 intending to keep staffing levels the same. The growing caution is reflected in overall hiring plans being the weakest in nearly 10 years (since Q1 1999) and the weakest Q4 result since 1992.

Employers have faced difficult times since the credit crunch, rising fuel prices and wider economic and confidence worries really took effect last year. Automotive industry had it’s worst August for new registrations since 1966. Automotive production output is being scaled back. This uncertainty is being reflected by new recruitment plans being put on hold and with slightly more employers now looking to reduce their staffing numbers than add to them.

Many employers anticipated these more challenging conditions and have taken steps to ensure their businesses are as robust as possible. Employers have also focused on training and improving workforce productivity. Even as we see redundancies in the labour market, the majority of employers want to avoid reducing their workforce. This should allow them to benefit from any pick-up in the economy.

It is not clear how long the current business climate will last. In the current conditions, it is not surprising that many businesses are not predicting any increase in hiring and are using temporary and contract workers to meet short-term demands.

Popularity: 84% [?]

On Monday 30 June 2008 UK Border Agency will fully implement Tier 1 of the new points based system. On that date they will complete the roll-out of Tier 1 (General) worldwide (more…)

Popularity: 91% [?]

Purple Squirrel, a new Recruitment Consultancy that was founded by Engineers to serve the niche hiring needs of engineering, technical and industrial sectors, today announces launch of it’s new website.

“The website now provides Jobseekers, Employers and Contractors with online access to our range of recruitment services, says Yvonne Paige, Proprietor and Recruitment Director”.

A former successful Engineering, Programme and Business Development Manager, she has previously held high visibility posts in some of the world’s largest corporations. “After I had my family I just wasn’t satisfied with the level of roles accessible to me. Like many people I have always privately wanted to start my own business. Recruitment is an ideal way for me to use my industry experience to the benefit of my former peers and colleagues, 95% of companies struggle to find candidates for their job vacancies. The UK credit crunch is making that situation worse as people are fearful about their ability to sell and relocate for a new job and yet many potential candidates are struggling with fuel prices and long commutes.

I am always being asked why on earth I picked the name ‘Purple Squirrel’. Well all industries have jargon, recruitment is no different. I learned that a Purple Squirrel was the recruiter’s term for an elusive candidate with the exact qualifications to match the client role. I immediately liked the fact that it was different, memorable and a name I could build a brand around.

Purple Squirrel is definately a career choice and I am hugely optimistic and positive about the future.”

Popularity: 100% [?]

The study, published by the Chartered Management Institute, DWP and Institute for Employment Studies examines the career aspirations and job-search methods of a range of diverse groups in the UK.

Report urges employer action to boost recruitment from diverse groups (more…)

Popularity: 72% [?]

Fans of the hit TV show will know that now it’s official: Who Lies Wins. Recruitment sales manager Lee McQueen last night beat 15 other candidates and has been crowned Sir Alan Sugar’s £100,000-a-year apprentice, despite telling a huge whopper on his CV – and, more unforgivably still, being caught.  He claimed that he attended Thames University for two years when he had stuck it out for just four months.

However, his admission that he lied on his CV has provoked controversy.

He is by no means the first high profile job candidate to be caught out embelishing his qualifications: below is a selection of the most infamous cases

Name: Alison Ryan

Job: Communications manager, Manchester United

Claim: First-class degree from Cambridge

Truth: She got a second class degree and had been banned from practising as a lawyer

What happened: Ryan got the £125,000-a-year job after being interviewed by Sir Alex Ferguson but was sacked after lies were exposed.

Name: Patrick Imbardelli

Job: Chief executive of the Asia Pacific arm of UK-based InterContinental Hotels Group.

Claim: Two degrees from Cornell University in the US and one from Victoria University, Australia

Truth: He attended classes at both universities but did not graduate from either

What happened: Imbardelli resigned

Name: Ronald Zarrella

Job: Chairman and chief executive of Bausch & Lomb

Claim: MBA from the Stern School of Business at New York University Truth: Mr Zarrella did not have an MBA and was exposed by a business website

What happened: He offered to resign following an “error of judgement” but the board backed him to continue. Forfeited a bonus of more than £500,000

Name: James Stocks

Job: Chef at top Scottish hotel Balbirnie House in Fife

Claim: Worked for Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay

Truth: They denied knowing him

What happened: He admitted “beefing up” jobs he had done at previous restaurants on his CV and resigned.

Name: David Edmondson

Job: Chief executive of electronics retailer Radio Shack

Claim: Degrees in theology and psychology

Truth: He only completed two terms at the Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College in California

What happened: He resigned but received a payout of more than £500,000

Lee McQueen was clearly by the end of the Series the right man for the job and we say to him congratulatons. However, as ethical recruiters and members of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, we have to advise our candidates that “Factual Discrepencies” or Fibs are not at all to be condoned. Yes of course your CV is a sales document but if the Employer is going to make a hiring committment to you as a permanent staff member you can be sure that checks on ‘details’ will be made. So if you were thinking of putting a little extra polish on your CV, please don’t. If like Lee, you were meant for that role, it will be yours anyway without the need for a lie.

Popularity: 75% [?]

The very nature of the global internet means a candidate may apply for a position practically anywhere,  subject of course to securing the necessary work permissions. This company regularly receives inquiries from India in particular. I was therefore interested to read that at a 3 day event called E-Cube 2008 held this week in Calcutta that Indian engineering (mechanincal, electrical, civil) undergraduate intake is currently 10.8% and enrolments are expected to grow to 15% by 2015.  That is staggering.

Conversely in the UK the popularity of engineering degrees among undergraduates is still in slow decline. 2006/7 only 5.9% of UCAS entrants took an engineering or technology subject, compared with 6.5% in 2000.

There are many barriers affecting the supply of UK engineering undergraduates principally lack of awareness of what an engineering career entails (poor careers advice and let’s be honest folks no iconic role models) and lack of mathematical preparedness from a GCSE and A’Level education.

Annual demand for engineers in the UK increases year on year by around 2% while 95% of firms report difficulties in finding candidates. So what is the future for the UK engineering industries and UK education system?

Well it would appear that in India, teaching of mathematics to a relevant standard and also encouraging students to enter engineering as a career choice is not a problem. So if a Purple Squirrel is the elusive candidate with exactly the right qualifications and capabilities to match the client requirements, then maybe future civil, mechanical and engineering Purple Squirrels will be found from India?

Popularity: 62% [?]