Where are all of you Natural England Bat Licence holders....? As a recruiter who is reasonably new to this specific sector and type of role, the search process for bat experts has been both interesting and somewhat difficult at times. There appears to be many people with lots of experience working with bats both professionally and voluntarily, however the number of these with a full Natural England Bat Licence is far lower. So, are there more of you qualified guys out there, or is the art of Bat surveying and research more of an amateur affair......?

Ripe4 have many exciting ecology jobs across the UK and Europe

As the larger pharmaceutical companies have closed major manufacturing sites in the UK over the last six months leaving many unemployed, what is the future for British QPs? Big name Pharma companies are looking to either outsource their manufacturing outside of the UK, to countries that adhere to international standards, or to third party manufacturers that can offer manufacturing services on a contract basis. The role of the Qualified Person in the UK pharmaceutical market is becoming increasingly uncertain. Whereas smaller organisations used to offer employment strictly on a contract basis to a naturally exclusive and elite circle or European QPs, in recent months these companies are looking to hire permanent members of staff that they can rely on to support batch release and remain loyal to one company.
This means that potentially there has never been a better time for Quality Assurance professionals to begin their training to become eligible for Qualified Person nomination.  If you find yourself in a position to offer your services as a QP then please get in touch, or conversely if you are an employer looking for a QP at the moment, why not make the most of the current climate and get in touch?
 

Are recruitment agencies jumping on the renewable energy band wagon?

With renewable energy being the most booming sector in the current market it seems everyone is trying to latch onto this industry. Various agencies who have always worked within other sectors, IT, Telecoms, Marketing, Hospitality, etc seem to be moving towards the renewable energy sector purely because their particular sector is ‘quiet’ at the moment. What does this mean for us recruiters who have actually worked hard to specialise within this area? Are recruitment agencies going to ‘sack off’ the renewables sector once the market picks up?
 

Does Six Sigma stifle creativity?
What is about Six Sigma, everyone seems to hate these days? Having delivered famous results for most of the Fortune 500 and beyond over the past decade it seems to have become the victim of increasing numbers of slights and accusations in recent times. Six Sigma's heavy reliance on data massaged the minds of many a statistician however frustrated and annoyed those who were far more hands on, focused on the act of doing. The stats at the heart of the successful application of six sigma may seem a pain Six Sigma has often been shrouded in mystery and the language of black belts and green belts along with the carrying out tough acts such as headcount reduction and embedding a change mindset have often ruffled the feathers of those preferring the status quo. Successful Six Sigma deployments however have always had voice of customer (VOC) at their heart. At the heart of this practice of Six Sigma is the opportunity to listen to the voices of both end-users and your internal customers.

Whilst a heavy reliance on data at one end of the spectrum may be seen as stifling to creativity surely the act of extracting ideas and methods of countering problems and issues combined with interacting with focus groups and customers can generate means by which we can harness both internally generated ideas from the ‘shop-floor’ and from the external customers – listening and changing our business to more of an outside in model – absorbing ideas from the customer whomever this may be and using those to harness creativity be that in problem solving or product or service innovation..
 

Innovation throughout the nation:  There are many small businesses folding as well as many bigger producers of hard goods & electronics thorough the world. Is this a necessarily a bad thing? Of course its not the best for our economy, employees on the pay roll in who fall redundant will of course suffer the most. But its not all negative, it could have a positive effect on the worlds progression of innovation & new, market leading products. The concept, ‘only the strongest will survive’ will ring true for many similar products in the same market. The inferior products will be made redundant forcing any new products to be much heavier on R&D & aimed at markets that perhaps haven’t yet been thought of.