The recruitment challenge: does degree score forecast performance?

This is one of those times I wish I had a statistician's skills. Maybe I ought to write to More or Less...

The BBC reported this morning that 78% of graduate recruiters are filtering out any candidates with less than a 2:1. As someone with a 2:2, and having been involved in recruitment for some years now, I take issue with this.

In my limited experience, degree score has practically no bearing on the value that an employee brings to a business. I have seen graduates with firsts last a matter of weeks, unable to make the transition from academic life to the working world. And I've employed people with no degree but clear aptitude who have quickly become key team members.

My indirect experience from networking events and the startup world bears this out. Sure there's a sprinkling of academic stars but there is a much clearer common trait between the sharpest talents. It is the criterion used by Jon Bradford of The Difference Engine to select startups for his startup programme. He looks for 'people who have done stuff'.

The example I might give of 'stuff' is getting involved in the students union (only because I did), but frankly it could be any kind of experience outside of academia. I want people with aptitude in my business, but the drive to actually do something is equally important. An academic qualification shows that people can perform well within given boundaries but for me the sheer score tells nothing about the person's ability to operate independently and on initiative - qualities that are key to success in a small business/startup environment.

I couldn't find any stats online to back up my limited experience, but I'd be very keen to see them if anyone else knows of any. Until someone can show me that degree score is a reasonable forecast of an employee's value, I will continue to pay it little regard.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Eco-Mechanics: a return to products built to last

Built-in obsolescence is the design of objects for a specific lifespan. The idea is that when one object fails, you'll buy another one. It is a very wasteful business model, especially when the things being designed could last so much longer.

Take cars for example. Modern cars are made from many materials with a limited lifespan, and designed with fixings that aren't meant to be repaired or replaced. Just look at the faded and cracked bumpers hanging off many cars just a few years old. Beyond a certain point, maintaining them becomes uneconomical for all but the keenest enthusiast or expert mechanic.

This seems mad to me, especially in the current climate - both environmental and economic. We are a world in need of solutions to the mounting carbon problem, and looking for ways to spend less. With these factors in mind the retail model of the car industry looks increasingly flawed.

Why not make cars that are designed to last us twice or three times as long and change the business model from one of regular retail sales to one of lifetime maintenance?

Of course this would require cultural changes too. But if cars were designed to be upgraded with new safety and comfort features over time, the opportunities for customisation and personalisation could be enormously attractive to consumers.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Leave the Earth Behind: Separatist Scientists - Repost from man-blog.co.uk

This is a rather angry piece I wrote for my other blog (now dormant again) a few weeks back.

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I’m getting a little sick of science denialists. The people who – either through sheer bonkersness or for personal profit – reject established scientific orthodoxy on all manner of things: vaccination, global warming, AIDS, evolution, homeopathy. I’m all for scepticism, but beyond a certain point if you haven’t accepted the weight of evidence, you are simply not a rational person worth debating with. Unfortunately the anti-science movement seems to be gathering pace rather than diminishing. Even though support for organised religion seems to be waning, its influence doesn’t appear to be following suit, and the raft of alternative ‘spiritual’ belief systems is more than filling any gap.

For me this is potentially the start of an evolutionary split in humanity. I’m going to have to be careful not to stray into the realms of some form of supremacist theory here, and I realise as I’m writing that I risk being deeply offensive. But this blog was always meant to be about opinions and debate (not the car build blog it has been so far).

Lack of investment notwithstanding, we’re not that far from making space travel more practical than experimental. With our scientific knowledge even at current levels, settling other worlds is not an absurd prospect. So at some point in the future, if there remains this schism between the scientific and the anti-science, could we perhaps split our society over two worlds?

I’d obviously rather work to bring the rest of society along with us, but sometimes my frustration at the nonsense given credence by certain sections of the public (and the media), does make me want to jump in a rocket ship and start afresh on another world.

Palm Pixi Plus Review

I'm reviewing the Palm Pixi Plus for Retail Therapy on BBC Radio Manchester tomorrow (Saturday 26th June) at 10:25 AM. We'll be coming live from somewhere in the Trafford Centre if you're out that way.

It took me about two minutes playing with the phone to remember all the things I loved about my old Palm devices. You see I used to be a Palm/Handspring devotee until the dreaded iPhone came along and stole my heart. I started with a Handspring Visor back when PDAs were still just about interesting, then progressed through a series of Treos up to the 680 at which I point I switched to a SonyEricsson P1i and then quite rapidly to the iPhone.

The Pixi Plus made me think of my old Treos because it is just so intuitive to use. In fact, I''d go so far as to say that it is possibly easier to use than an iPhone - especially for those people who are used to a standard Nokia and need a bridging step into the world of the touchscreen.

The touchscreen itself is fab: bright, clear, and very responsive. Multi-touch works just the way you expect if you're familiar with the iPhone. I'm not convinced about the need for the 'gesture bar' where you slide your finger to make things happen, but it's a nice gimmick I suppose.

Features are plenty: GPS, Wifi, camera with flash, and a fairly well-stocked app store so that you what you don't have you software-wise. The built-in messaging client is particularly nice, allowing you to maintain conversations across SMS and instant messenger in the same window.

Overall then, a big thumbs up. However, there is a caveat to this: o2 offers the Pixi Plus's big brother, the Pre Plus, at exactly the same price point on monthly contracts - both devices are free. So unless size and style are the biggest issues for you (and they may be for the teen/twenties audience this seems to be aimed at) the decision will be a straightforward one to go for the Pre Plus. Or, I'm afraid, if you're a little more flush, the flawed but beautiful iPhone 4.

Man think therefore man blog...again

It's nearly twelve months since I blogged here. In that time I've done almost no long-form writing apart from a couple of posts about my new project (a kit car) on the stalled attempt at a replacement for BOTF - man-blog.co.uk.

Why? Well with a baby and two businesses under twelve months old, my attention has been needed elsewhere. And yes, with a baby and two young businesses, not a lot has happened on the kit car either.

So what am I doing here now? Well to be truthful I have missed this blog. I have missed writing about technology, society and geekery. I have missed using the long form to assemble my own thoughts. I don't have any more time now, but I'm going to make some. Part of that means finding a good blogging app for the iPhone - certainly a better one than I'm using now, though I can't really complain for 59p (altBlogger).

I'll start by reposting the car updates over here, and then see if I can get something up on the gadgets I'm reviewing for BBC Radio Manchester this weekend, including a wrist-watch phone and the new Palm Pixi Plus phone.

Let's see how it goes.

Posted with altBlogger.

'Broken Britain': Why are we so convinced things are getting worse?

Hard though it may be to believe, by most metrics, things are getting better in Britain. Maybe not year on year, but certainly decade after decade, crime is falling, poverty is falling, education is improving. There are blips and blots on this record: sometimes for a period society becomes less equal rather than more; rates of pay may not balance as fast as we might like; we still have recessions, as we all know.

Yet it seems the majority of us remain convinced that the world is falling apart. Phrases like 'Broken Britain' get bandied around by politicians and the media and we believe them. What happened to our pride and optimism to make us accept such negativity so readily?

It's hard not to blame the media. In a survey about the NHS a few years back people were asked about their general impression of the NHS, and reported that it was in a terrible state. Asked about their own specific experience, they largely raved about it. Having been told repeatedly that the NHS was failing, they convinced themselves that their experience must be the exception.

The same seems to happen with crime: fewer and fewer of us are victims of crime in reality, yet we are convinced, often without specific examples, that things are getting worse. Why? In my opinion it is in part because reporting has improved: less crime feels like more.

But I think it is a little lazy to blame the press. Are we so incapable of looking at our own experience, and more importantly, engaging with our own communities, to develop our own impression? If we did we would more easily recognise the gap between the theoretical 'Broken Britain' and what seems to me to be a country moving slowly, falteringly, but consistently, up.

My hope is that our increasing switch to community communication and user generated content online might spur us to rely less on the national media. As digital media becomes ever more about the local, it might even get us talking to our neighbours. There may be such a thing as society after all...

Flashback on BBC Radio Manchester: 2008

Second Flashback year of the day on BBC Radio Manchester this afternoon at 4:25 is 2008. Listen live on 95.1FM, or via the iPlayer if you're outside the Manchester area. I'll be talking about the technology stories of 1979, and 2008 - details of the latter below:

• Blu Ray defeated HD DVD, with the HD DVD consortium surrendering on the 19th February.

• The Tesla EV1 Roadster became available to the public. This Lotus-based electric car redefined what was possible, with an electronically-limited top speed of 125mph and a 0-60 time under 4 seconds. A seven seat hatchback model is launching in 2011 and I want one.

• The Large Hadron Collider went live, and then went off again nine days later following an electrical fault. The fault caused six tonnes of liquid helium to be released and the force from this gas flooding into a vacuum caused 10-ton magnets to shear from their mountings. It will restart in November this year and contrary to popular belief, the world will not end.

• The Global Seed Vault in Svalbard opened, a gigantic repository for plant samples that will enable us to jumpstart nature in the wake of an ecological disaster.

• 23andme began offering genome scanning on a retail basis. For $399 and a sample of your spit you can find out about your risk from genetic diseases, and your ancestry.

• The first bionic eyes were implanted into two blind patients at the Moorlands Eye Hospital in London. They can now see light and dark using a camera mounted on a pair of glasses that sends a signal back to an implant at the back of the eye.

• The SpaceX Falcon 1 becomes the first privately developed space launch vehicle to reach orbit. Last month it was used to deliver the RazakSat, a Malaysian imaging satellite.