An example of an Autocorrect gone wrong!

Like the one where a young gentleman describes his mother as a “very nice lay” (he meant lady, thankfully, but autocorrect changed it). Or the one where a lady called Amanda says she’s about to “hop on a bison” (she meant bus). The reason I mention this is because it’s easy to send things without first checking whether or not you’ve made a mistake. Thankfully, in texts to your friends and family it’s not such a bad thing but in professional documents, such as CVs this is not the case.

We all make mistakes, it’s human nature. I certainly have in the past. Just the other day I was scanning through a blog I wrote about how to get over the post holiday blues when I had to stop and laugh quietly to myself. By no stretch of the imagination could drinking “red wind” be considered a good idea. Red wine, maybe. Red wind, not so much. Correcting my mistake I was reminded of a time in the not too distant past when I worked for a different company. Typing an email to a client I added an extra C before the U in the word discount (think about it). Thank goodness for spell-check I thought to myself, deleting the unfortunate typo and hitting send.

Uh oh! Someone should have checked their spelling!

Typos are easily made and as recruiters in the Facilities Management industry we’ve seen our fair share of really bad/hilarious ones. One poor chap who had obviously failed to check through his CV before he sent it to us explained that he was on a “£30,000 basic salary plus p*nis”. We assume he meant pension, however, we don’t think our clients would have seen the funny side.

Likewise, there was the fella who addressed the cover letter of his CV “Dear Sir or Madman”. Well sure, there are a few characters in our office but we’re pretty certain this candidate wasn’t trying to insult the same people who would send his CV to potential employers.

Oh dear!

Luckily most people are savvy enough to check CVs or job applications for spelling and grammatical errors. However, occasionally typos fall through the net. Accuracy is the key when it comes to your CV. Employers and recruiters WILL check your CV for spelling mistakes and if you can’t spell (and certainly, even if you can) it’s probably prudent to get someone else to proofread it for you. A fresh pair of eyes will usually pick up mistakes which you’ve missed.

After scouring the internet for advice, I found a brilliant trick for proof reading CVs and that is to read your CV from the bottom up. Believe it or not this actually works. I’ve just read this blog from the bottom up and came across two mistakes I hadn’t picked up when reading it from top to bottom. In short, this helps you concentrate on individual words rather than sentences as a whole, thus picking up mistakes if they are made. Genius eh?

Read your CV the wrong way round

Another idea is to read your CV aloud so you’re able to hear how it sounds and if anything is incorrect. This works for grammatical mistakes and if things don’t read very well. For example, I’m in the habit of going “that crazy”. This is a phrase my manager coined, meaning I add the word “that” in a sentence when it’s not needed. When reading aloud a paragraph from a blog I’d written that contained 5 “that’s”, I was able to hear where she was coming from. I shall refrain from going “that crazy” in the future.

The bottom line is this: Always proofread CVs and online applications before you send them anywhere. Do not rely on spell checking systems. Get someone else to read through it. Then check it again. And again. No harm will come from checking and re-checking a CV but requesting a CV back from a recruiter or potential employer to “amend it” (i.e. delete that spelling mistake you made) looks bad.  

And let’s face it, no one wants to send out a professional document with discoc*nt on it.

The FM Network are one of the UK’s leading Facilities Management and Building Services recruiters.

What is FM?

With this in mind I decided to test one of my colleagues. “Alex, in your own words, what IS Facilities Management?”. His reply? “Well….errrm. I’ll get back to you”.

Facilities Manager Clive Douthwaite defines it as, “So much done by so many seen by so few!”. Similarly, Steve Davies uses  an analogy to define it, “The spine of an organisation. From top floor to ground level, servicing every organ (department) and supporting the core”. But do the general public know this? Have enough people heard of FM? Does FM have the profile it deserves in the wider market place? And does the FM function in a company have enough exposure at board level?

These are interesting question and ones which have been discussed since the beginning.

When posting these questions on LinkedIn I discovered a lot of people believe that not many people know exactly what FM is or struggle to define it.  For example, Ellie Hurst, Marketing Manager at Advent IM thinks that, “People in general are rather confused about what FM is and probably don’t realise the scope of knowledge and expertise required to really deliver the value into a business that great FM can” Furthermore, Tim Clapham, Marketing Manager at Planon Software explains that a lot of people see FM as an “an industry that fixes things that break”.

An industry that fixes things that break?

Does the industry itself struggle to define itself? If so, will others be able to? Moreover, why would an industry be unable to define itself? Is it a result of conflicting viewpoints regarding the definition of FM or is it a lack of consultation between associates to agree?

Perhaps, as Naveed Khan suggests, it’s just the case that FM is named differently in different organisations, such as building support services or maintenance. But are these names necessarily correct for the industry or necessarily the names that FM deserves?

Is it the case that the FM Industry simply has an inability to effectively market itself? What’s more, why should it effectively market itself? It is even necessary for people to know or even to care what it is?

Ellie Hurst believes that in many ways FM is an unsung hero. She states, “Perhaps there’s a need for Facilities Managers to blow their own trumpet a bit more, or at least let the business world know they have a trumpet!”.

Should Facilities Managers blow their own trumpet?

However, will this change? Furthermore, as Paul Phillips, Head of Customer Sales and Service at Elementus states, is there, “a real job of work to be done in order to raise awareness and understanding of the contribution FM makes to the success of any organisation”?

So, how do FM professionals raise the industry profile? If not enough people have heard of FM then how could this be changed?

Tim Clapham thinks that “FM professionals need to get better at communicating the strategic value they can add to an organisation”. But how do they get better as this? Is it a case, as he suggests, of  FM professionals acting as, “Internal consultants who advise their Directors on the best use of the resources/space that are available”?

So, is Facilities Management an unknown industry? Maybe, as Ellie Hurst suggests, a push towards professional status or maybe even chartered status will help to raise the FM profile. However, in the meantime it might be down to FM professionals to spread the word, to promote their industry and how it benefits different organisations. Afterall, as Paul Philips states, “Those of us who support FM will be very happy to help and promote the profession we all depend on for our livelihood”.

For those who were wondering, my colleague Alex did get back to me. “Facilities Management is an industry that goes relatively unnoticed unless something goes wrong! You don’t notice that the office is clean every morning, but you do when it isn’t.

FM - The spine of an organisation?

You don’t notice when the air conditioning works just fine, but you do when it doesn’t. FM is an industry that most people only hear of if there are problems to deal with. If the industry didn’t exist nothing would function as we know it. Facilities Management – The back bone of business”.

What are your thoughts on this? Let us know!

The FM Network are one of the UK’s leading Facilities Management and Building Services recruiters.

Brrrr!

The UPS itself (we are talking static) never needed temperature control as they were (and are) rated for full load at 0°C to 35 or 40°C, depending upon type.  They are however packed with sensitive electronics and have cooling fans that drag a high quantity of air through the cabinet.  City-centre air quality is totally unsuitable for direct UPS cooling as the crud collects inside the UPS and smothers the electronics with carbon-rich particulates.  So air-con was the best solution, not for temperature but for cleanliness.

For the battery it is the other way around.  Cleaning is part of the routine maintenance (as dust is attracted to the plastic jars) and outside air is more than a suitable cooling medium but why the predilection for air-conditioning?  Well that story is rooted in the very late 80s when VRLA (Valve Regulated Lead Acid) took over from ‘real’ Lead Acid, Planté.  The VRLA mono-blocks were sold as ‘Sealed’, more compact, ‘maintenance-free’ and at a very much lower cost.   However the early versions proved to be anything but maintenance-free and their fate was sealed when most were stuffed into poorly ventilated and hot ‘broom-cupboards’.  The problem was that the failure mechanism of VRLA was dominated by internal corrosion and drying out.  Despite being called ‘sealed’ they were in truth ‘vented’ and gassed when re-charged, losing water in the process and that failure mechanism was accelerated by elevated temperature.

Probably a slightly bigger battery than this!

The battery manufacturers fell back onto an old theorem – that of Arrhenius.  This theorem, when transposed for battery installations, stated that a battery designed for X years at 20°C would have a halving of life for each 10°K above that temperature.  So that a 10 year ‘Design Life’ battery would reduce to 5 years at 30°C or 2.5 years at 40°C.  Then the ‘actual’ Service Life would be something lower than the Design Life, usually about 80%.  The knee-jerk reaction to this was that any battery which had suffered a temperature excursion above 25°C was deemed ‘un-warrantable’.

So where are we today?  Well energy isn’t cheap and it’s getting more expensive every year, yet we cling to the traditional solution of air-conditioning.  What should we be doing?  Save money but not compromise reliability!

Separate the UPS from the battery room, simple as separating an egg!

We should try to separate the UPS room from the battery room.  If the air quality permits (with a reasonable level of filtration that will not absorb too much fan power) then ventilate the UPS using outside air and use all of the 0-35°C capability of the UPS.

For the battery we need to go back to basics and determine what temperature control really is required.  The Arrhenius theorem (it’s more of a rule-of-thumb than a theorem) is a good model to describe corrosion versus temperature but it should be immediately obvious that the elevated temperature it is based on is ‘continuous’ not intermittent.  If we use an RMS method (Root Mean Square) to calculate the average temperature we will immediately see that even a temperature as high as 33°C (the UK high) experienced for 50 hours per year (out of 8760 hours) make no appreciable difference to the average.  In fact if we consider the UK average temperature is around 10°C then it should be obvious that outside air will suffice for cooling and (the essential) ventilation.  The battery room needs to be kept at around 20-25°C – less will extend the life but reduce the capacity, more will reduce the life but increase the capacity.  A pair of (redundant) VSD extract fans, thermostatically controlled, can be used to control the room temperature.  The battery thermal mass is high and very little heat is generated in float operation.  Even in recharge mode the fans need only be rated (at full speed) to transfer about 5kW of heat per 250kW of battery.  The battery OEM will provide the full data set.

So the answer to our question is ‘no, batteries do not need air-conditioning’.

Blog written by Dr. Datacentre
AKA Dr Ian Bitterlin - Ian is the Chief Technology Officer at ARK Continutity

When I started working on this, I thought to myself, “I’ll get this started then pop it on my data stick and take it with me to finish tonight”. Have any readers ever done that? Of course you have. You’re probably doing it now. The trouble is that some people, who really shouldn’t do it, are. If the information you were about to pop onto your data stick is security marked, it’s called a data breach.

Let me explain, there is a watchdog that deals with data breaches, it is called the ICO (Information Commissioners Office). Forgive me if I am telling you something you already know, but awareness amongst the general public is not as high as it might be. People don’t realise that this is the watchdog they can complain to if they think their personal data security has been compromised: credit card, bank details, medical records, salary etc. The ICO can then investigate and issue a fine of up to £50,000 for serious data breaches.

I started thinking through the implications for the public at large if there is a lack understanding or awareness of the ICO’s function. This was what I really wanted to talk about. I found an article on the register.co.uk. This was the headline, “ICO: NHS data security breaches are just ‘plain daft’. As bad as gossiping about patients down the pub, says watchdog”.

When you start to look at the kind of incidents Jonathan Bamford, head of strategic liaison at the Information Commissioner’s Office, is talking about and not just the NHS ones either, your data stick,  CD and other portable devices, start to look a little more worrying. In one incident for instance, a USB stick was lost, containing the medical details of 800 people in Surrey. According to a report on SC Magazine’s website, East Surrey Hospital had transferred patient information, such as details of operations, names and dates of birth, to an unencrypted data stick. That stick was apparently lost in September 2010 and never recovered, and the patients concerned were not informed.

In August, an unencrypted USB stick, which contained housing association tenant details, was left in a pub. Leicester City Council has admitted to losing the USB stick that contained details on around 4,000 people. The data included medical details for elderly and vulnerable people. The sick also contained 2,000 ‘keysafe’ codes that are used to open boxes that are attached to an outside wall of people’s homes, these boxes contain a key to the front door.

These incidents are the tip of the data breach iceberg and let’s not forget all the other means of breaching data: printed materials, CDs (don’t get me started on them), other portable devices.

We all trust our personal, sensitive, valuable information to be handled responsibly by organisations who really should know how to do it. As a consumer, credit card holder, employee and NHS patient myself, I want to think that my details are not currently sat in the back of a taxi on its way to Wandsworth. As an interested member of society I want to know who is responsible for the safe-keeping of my data and if they don’t keep it secure then I want to know to whom I should direct my most strident complaint.

My data stick is in my desk drawer now. It can do no harm from there…

Ellie Hurst performs the Marketing function for Advent IM – Independent Holistic Security Consultants. Blogger of the Advent IM security blogs:

www.adventim.wordpress.com general blog
www.adventimforarchitects.wordpress.com design and architecture
www.adventimforuklegal.wordpress.com legal profession
www.adventimforgambling.wordpress.com gambling industry

www.advent-IM.co.uk

@Advent_IM

and occasional guest blogger!

We're certainly hoping this is a CV blunder!

Take fancy fonts and colourful CVs for example. Although you might think it’s aesthetically pleasing, there really is no need for different colours, fonts or italics throughout a CV. It makes the CV hard to read and, being quite frank, it looks like a child playing about on a word document. Stick to one font, one colour; this is much more pleasing to the eye! 

Beware the Grammar Nazi!

Another common mistake that people make when creating their CV is to lay it out in chronological order. This is a big faux pas. CVs should read in reverse chronological order; who wants to read about your time at The Red Lion when you were a university student twenty six years ago? Make sure you list your most recent position first on your CV and limit your career history to your most relevant positions for the role you’re applying to. Again, employees in the FM market aren’t particularly interested in reading about your time stacking shelves at WH Smith so there really is no need to add roles like these to your CV.

Spelling and grammar play an important part of every professional, good quality CV. If you don’t know how to use a semi-colon correctly, don’t use it! Be sure to spell check your CV before you send it off to potential employees or recruiters and proof read it for typos that the spell checker on your PC won’t pick up. For example, make sure you have used the words “too” and “to” correctly.

Photos of yourself on CVs? No. Just….no.

If we see a CV where your strengths and achievements are unclear we would consider this a “bad” CV. Make sure you don’t detail your job role and achievements in one long paragraph. Aside from failing to read very well, it is easier for a potential employer to see your achievements bullet pointed and set out clearly, distinct from the actual job role. Moreover, this is what a CV is all about: selling yourself with your achievements! Be aware though, your CV shouldn’t be too long. Let’s face it, who’s going to sit and read a ten page CV? Detail your achievements succinctly and try and limit your CV to two pages. Anything else you feel relevant to the position you’re applying for can be voiced in an interview.

Employers despair of unclear CVs...though probably not to this extent!

Switching from first to third person is a definite no-no. At The FM Network we would suggest you stick to first person. It reads better and being your CV, it’s obviously about YOU! There’s no need to talk about yourself in third person, “John’s played an integral part in the project…” It just sounds a bit silly.

Finally, those of you who put “Curriculum Vitae” at the top of your CV…come on, we know what it is! We’re not stupid!

The FM Network are one of the UK’s leading Facilities Management and Building Services recruiters www.thefmnetwork.co.uk

Now don’t get us wrong, in informal circumstances we have had a lot of fun answering questions like these. For example, as this question was bounced around the office, our consultants were outspoken with examples. One consultant, naming a well know airline, explained her reasons:“Because they’re pricey, classy, exotic, yet generally not worth the money”. However, in formal situations these questions can catch you off guard and if you’re not expecting them they fluff you up a bit.

Great hiding placing for an elephant....a herd of elephants!

This candidate was not alone. Interview questions are getting more and more wacky and wonderful, with our candidates being asked questions such as, “If you were an animal, what would you be and why?”, “Tell me your favourite joke”, “Where would you hide an elephant?” and “Rate yourself, on a scale of 1 – 10, how weird you are”.

Here at The FM Network, our initial reaction was to laugh and think, “surely you can’t be serious”, however, it is becoming more and more common for employers to ask quirky, off-topic questions as part of their interview process. Which begs the question, when interviewing and faced with a question like the examples above, how does one go about answering them?

In order to help you out (because we’re nice like that) we’ve designed a simple guide to offer candidates advice for when they are thrown that interview question curve ball.

"Hmmmm...."

It’s all about you.

Firstly think your answer through and remember there is no right or wrong answer. You’re not being tested on your ability to retain information but your ability to construct a well thought out answer and show a bit of your personality.

Questions like these are designed to get you thinking.

Impossible questions, such as the ones above, are not about the answer you come to but the way in which you work it out. The question tests your common sense, agility and speed of thought, or in other words, your  ability to think on your feet.

Remain calm!!!

Don’t rush into giving an answer.

This shows your ability to remain calm under pressure and cope with weird situations,  a quality a lot of employers will look for in finding their ideal employee.

The answer is not important so much as your ability to defend your position or reasons for the answer you give. If you’ve thought your answer through for 30 seconds or so you’re more likely to be able to provide strong rationale as to why you’ve answered in a particular way.

Let your creativity and ideas shine through!

The interviewer may be looking for creativity.

Essentially , this is why the interviewer is looking to hire a candidate; to solve problems. In the interview, unusual questions enable the employer to find out a lot about you from your answers. It gives them an insight into how your mind works and if you can be creative you’re more than likely going to impress your potential employer.

How? What? Where? When? Why?

Ask questions.

One of our recruiters suggests that in instances like the above it might be an idea to ask the interviewer more questions to understand the problem, rather than simply answer the question straight off without finding out all the facts first. For example, if asked the above question of “where would you hide an elephant?” you might want to ask why the elephant needs hiding or what type of elephant it is. This shows the employer that you are apt at getting a detailed brief and make sure you have all the information before carrying out any given task.

Surely there won’t be many!

Above all else, remember to remain calm. We’re certain that for the most part, professional interviews will ascertain your market knowledge and your credentials rather than your lateral thinking abilities….and just so you’re aware, we believe the greatest amount of elephant hiding ability in the world won’t beat good, old fashioned suitability for the role.

The FM Network are one of the UK’s leading Facilities Management and Building Services recruiters www.thefmnetwork.co.uk

This is the first of my ‘UPS’ blogs for The FM Network and I hope that you find them informative and, sometimes, entertaining. I promise to keep them ‘FM’ related but, as we all know, promises are hard to keep.

I sold a large UPS system in the mid-90s; I vaguely remember 4x630kVA modules for a 1.5MW IT load, to a building in the city housing trader desks. It was amusing when, a few weeks after installation, the facility manager rang me and declared ‘we had a mains failure last night but the UPS cut-in and saved the day’. I found it funny because the client had just spent nigh on a million quid for the new power system and what did he expect for his cash? Certainly not a failure after such a short time! But what sort of ‘reliability’ should the facility manager have expected? It was a big system with N+1 redundancy built in and one (single event) failure every 8-10 years would be about right. By ‘right’ I accept that when the failure happens it is disastrous but it seems so long since the last failure that ‘bad-luck’ is cited rather than ‘bad-system’.

An American business guru once declared that all corporations make the same mistakes on a 7-year cycle and that was based on the collective memory and staff turnover. Mind you, when you consider that 30% of all UPS ‘failures’ are down to human error (and over half of those occur when the service man is on site!) the actual MTBF of the UPS system needs to be in excess of the 8-10 years, in the order of 12-15 years. I also found the ‘cut-in’ comment interesting since the UPS (it was a series on-line rotary but could have been any large static system instead) handled the entire load all of the time. It didn’t ‘cut-in’ because it hadn’t ‘cut-out’! Yet … Of course there are reasons why the UPS is always feeding the load (I’ll cover that on another blog) rather than ‘cutting-in’ only when needed but it does lead to power losses due to the inefficiencies in the UPS itself – often in the 8-12% range for typical partial load factors. How your facility gets rid of that waste heat is an interesting question.

Anyway the FM manager was happy that his UPS had done its job in 1995. Here we are in 2011 and I know that the power system was pulled out and refreshed in 2007. In that time, to the best of my knowledge, they have never had a failure of power to the traders. Mind you, for similar trading bank clients, there have been times when a power failure could have saved a great deal of money, or even a whole bank at Barings…

Blog written by Dr. Datacentre
AKA Dr Ian Bitterlin - Ian is the Chief Technology Officer at ARK Continutity

We also took this as a fantastic opportunity to build (and completely change) our brand identity. For the last few years we have been FM Property Recruitment Network – which just gets plain confusing. Some of our clients call us FMP, some call us FM Property, some even call us “the” FM Recruiters!

With so may different aliases over the years we have chosen something simple “THE FM NETWORK”. Whilst we were there we decided to bin off the old logo and go for something a bit more modern, which appears to have been heavily influenced by a famous sporting brand. We assure you this is merely coincidence!

You can check out our new website on the following link OUR BRAND SPANKING NEW WEBSITE - let us know what you think.

While we were in this dramatic period of change we thought we should get involved with the world of blogging. So welcome to our blog. It was obviously a great idea beacuse you’re reading it!! We are new to all this blogging lark so if it is dull as dish water please keep coming back just to check to see if we are getting better!

Anyway, we hope you like it.  Let us know what you think!!

We are also looking for guest bloggers – if you are from the world of FM or Building Services or Recruitment (or anything that is worth reading about) then let us know. Why not join in the fun and get blogging!

For more info on how to “guest blog” please drop us a line on the NEW website or drop us an email info@thefmnetwork.co.uk

Look forward to hearing from you!