Are employers asking for too many skills?

Are employers asking for too many skills?
Written by James Vivian.
Copyright © 2011 furiousdesigns.co.uk

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In a recent survey completed by http://www.furiousdesigns.co.uk it appears that over
90% of the current available job advertisements are asking for too many skills for a single applicant.

During the tough times of the global recession it's no wonder that businesses are looking to minimize their outgoing's by merging jobs and making redundancies but is this just a way to ask for more talented individuals for less money than they should be earning? Upon research, it appears that employers are asking anywhere between £12,000 - £20,000 for almost triple the skills, not to mention the required qualifications and "commercial experience".

It certainly seems that many designers are having to have a very broad knowledge of web design -
we looked into the requirements that many employers on recruitment websites such as: Reed, Jobs 24, Jobsite and JobCentre all in which had employers asking for a minimum skill level of: HTML, CSS, ASP.Net Visual Studio 2005/2010, MySql, Windows Server 2003 to the more ambitious, HTML, CSS, ASP.Net Visual Studio 2005/2010, MySql, Windows Server 2003, Adobe CS5 Suite (Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign) and a minimum of 1-3 years commercial experience. It's fair to assume that businesses are asking a lot of web developers for the poor salaries they are currently offering. The skills listed may not appear significant but ask any web designer and they will certainly explain the mountain to climb in order to be this fluent in web development.

We at furious designs believe that there are many talented individuals in web development which currently do many of the skills on either a hobby or freelance basis which under the circumstances find it hard to obtain a position within a business due to lack of "Commercial Experience". The question on every one's mind is: "How to we obtain it?" unfortunately this situation can more commonly be resolved on a "Who you know" basis thus being a very small gap.

Unfortunately this issue will continue until the economy grows again and even then, many companies will continue to take advantage.
Here a just a few helpful tips to get yourself known and help to obtain work.

Study Up.
As we discusses earlier, employers are asking for many skills, more popular web programming skills such as the ever popular ".Net framework" Also due to social networking and blogging increasingly growing, investigate powerful blogging tool; "Word Press".

Get your name out there!
The most common way to become noticed is the "word of mouth" technique. So sign up to popular social networking sites such as "Facebook, Twitter etc" post blogs, get a web based portfolio set up and join
discussion boards - This helps not only get your name out but can increase web traffic to your website!

Sell yourself.
Arguably Curriculum Vitae's (CV) are very complicated to word and can often have the wrong details, employers are often misinterpreting these and getting the wrong idea so ensure you research ways to write your CV, ensure you list only skills you genuinely can do, be honest, thoroughly check spelling (especially if you've stated you have "great attention to detail") as this can commonly be missed by computer spell checks spelling a word in the wrong context. Word your CV carefully selecting words that make you stand out.

James Vivian.
Managing Director,
Furious Designs.co.uk.

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What Is Search Engine Optimization or “SEO?”

A brief insight. Written by James Vivian.
Copyright © 2011 furiousdesigns.co.uk

Search Engine Optimization or “SEO” Involves a range of skilled and basic methods to help improve your website’s page ranking on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Msn etc...
Utilizing “SEO” methods takes time and patience, some more than others – Many web developers spend hours, days and even months optimizing their pages to perform in well in search engines. As many people are not trained professionals in this sector, here is a brief insight into three ways in which web developers increase traffic to their web pages.

for more information visit: http://www.furiousdesigns.co.uk/what_is_seo.html

Furious Designs.co.uk.