In Austria we are partnered with Celum, a leading Digital Asset Management software vendor. Today we are happy to say that this partnership has extended out into the UK as well and we're looking forward to working together on some projects very soon.

We've recently been trying to recruit some new developers here in our UK office. Just after we'd hired someone, my copy of .Net magazine arrived with a double page spread asking different agencies how they go about recruiting peope. It's almost as if they had been watching...

Now this isn't the first time we've been through the recruitment process, here or in previous roles; but this time around it felt like some of the CVs had been vetted by a bunch of monkeys. Job roles weren't clearly defined, skills we'd specifically asked for were missing or the level of experience was suitably vague. Even if the skills were present on the CV they didn't always marry up with the list of roles that the person had been carrying out.

Having just been through the process I thought we'd post up some of our tips on what to do when applying for a technical job. Obviously these are just our preferences, but it should help anywhere.

Be clear about how long you've been using a technology

It's all well and good saying that you've used Sitecore or C# in your previous job, but if that job is listed as being for 4 years, a recruiting agency is going to assume that's 4 years experience in those technologies and that you're up to date with it all. You and I know full well that you could have been using them for a month somewhere at the start of those 4 years and you're now really rusty. Be honest and clear about what you've done. It's better for everyone if this isn't in the middle of an urgent project.

If you (or an agency) are going to send your CV for a role that requires a specific technology (or combination there of), make sure to vet what is being sent through. You don't want to lose out on an interview because the CV you sent wasn't clear about how you used it.

Break down your CV into projects within each employer

By breaking down your CV into separate projects, even if it's just a one liner for each project with the technologies as keywords and start/end dates underneath it we get a better indication of when you used stuff. If you're using one liners, pick one or two projects that are relevant to the job you're applying for and flesh these out a bit more.

After watching last nights Apprentice I was shocked to see how Lord Sugar, Karen and Nick complimented Melody on her behaviour during the task.   She lied about "Market Research", she was aggressive towards her team mates and was solely there to make a profit, regardless of the impact to team or customer. As far as I could see, she was unprofessional, rude and didn't care about anyone but herself.

This made me think of my first impressions of ecomplexx when I joined,  its was very clear to me that the customer is the absolute centre of everything we do and that long term relationships are key. I can guarantee you Melody would not get past the first interview for this organisation and for that I am eternally grateful.

I'm really looking forward to see how this progresses, as the only people with an ounce of business value are Tom and Helen, best of luck to them both.

As of yesterday afternoon, ecomplexx UK became part of the ecomplexx support team for two of our Austrian clients. OPEC, you all know them right?, had us build a new site for their 50th anniversary last year. For the second client, the Rettig Group, we've produced a set of internationalised sites for Vogel & Noot, who produce heating systems. You may not know the name, but you've probaby got something of theirs in your house.

We are now provide ongoing technical and development support for both clients.

A couple of days ago Google made rather a brave announcement regarding their ongoing support of older browser versions for their online applications.

We all hate testing in older browsers, IE6 I'm looking squarely in your direction, but surely there's a fine balance between trying to limit your testing plans and outright blocking a large portion of your customers. Google's plan is to support the current release of the major browsers, plus the last version. Normally I'd say this was a great plan, but with the fast turnaround on browsers this year alone it can easily spell problems for Windows users who plan on using Google's web applications. Google have already decided to stop supporting IE7 in a couple of months time and, with IE10 due out by the end of the year, they will be stopping support for IE8.

So what's the problem here? Sounds sensible enough from an application development standpoint, but when you realise that IE8 is the most popular browser on the web and the latest version of IE that is installable on Windows XP, the most popular OS by about 12%, you start to see a problem. They are also not explicitly supporting Opera, one of the most popular mobile browsers; so good luck if you wanted to use GMail on your mobile... it's a guessing game as to wether it'll still work later in the year.

Sometimes we're lucky enough to work with a customer who's forward thinking enough to want IE6 gone as much as we do, but there are also a lot of Public sector organisations that we work with that have no choice but to continue to support IE6 and 7 thanks to legacy applications and a lack of funding to do upgrades for thousands of computers to Windows 7. I can't help but wonder if Google has really thought through the implications of their plans though