In case you’ve missed the barrage of emails, Facebook messages and Twitter messages, Digital Pulse is a monthly confidence index for the digital industry. If you’re reading this blog, the chances are that’s you. It’s been running for a couple of month’s now and has already produced some insight into how the digital industry is faring under the weight of bad news stories about the economy.

The results for April have just been published and these will be followed up with a full report in July, when the analysis is completed on the full quarter’s results. Early indications show the digital industry is holding up pretty well, with a 2.5% drop in the index between March and April. The next few months will be telling. Will new media provide respite for companies looking to cut costs and make efficiencies, or will the digital economy catch a cold?

The full analysis of March’s Digital Pulse shows a sector in rude health, but with concerns emerging over the next six months. Chinwag’s editor, Deirdre Molloy, has whittled through the full analysis of Digital Pulse March 2008 and written up a handy summary, if you’re pushed for time.

Most importantly, we’d like your opinion. How confident are you feeling? Help create a picture of how the industry is faring by filling in this very short survey - 25 seconds, honest - and for each completed survey we’ll donate 25p to WWF.

So, why not fill in May’s Digital Pulse now?

Chinwag are in need of a dynamic front end developer. We’re after someone who’s enthusiastic and brimming with ideas. We don’t mind if you’re a spritely young graduate or someone with stacks of experience we’re just looking for the right person.

We’re a relatively young company but what we lack in years we make up for in ideas. The ideal candidate would be able to unleash their HTML skills on our weekly newsletters and various web projects. We’ve got a wiki full of schemes that need working on. For the right person this opportunity could lead to fantastic career opportunities.

We reside in the creative hub of soho, surrounded by the UK’s leading digital agencies. It’s the perfect time to come along and take advantage of the hot weather on our roof terrace. We’ve been known to have the odd meeting up there when the sun’s out.

From humble beginnings as an email discussion list, back in 1996, we’ve evolved to encompass industry blogs and online resources. As well as hosting live events, we provide research to support the people working in digital. With our digital jobs board, Chinwag Jobs, we have plenty to offer a Frontend Developer.

The perfect candidate would have solid frontend technology knowledge and skills (HTML,CSS, JavaScript, AJAX) as well as a good eye for layout (although this isn’t a design role). You’d be able to pick things up quickly, new technology and trends with a burning desire to learn. Preferrably you’d have experience building HTML newsletters and websites in a commercial environment. This could even be work experience. For more details, please check out the ad on Chinwag Jobs

On the way to nailing that dream job, more often than not, it’s that first job that proves the most important in setting the precedent for future success.

As far as Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst for Forbes Research: Social Computing, is concerned, it was his time as a lowly intern that has to be credited with his current corporate achievements. It was while paying his dues, fresh out of college, that his drive and determination really came into its own.

His was hell bent on securing a web strategist’s job. So he kept copies of job ads for strategists, circled the salaries and stuck them to his bathroom mirror. Every morning, before work, he went through the skills and piece by piece ticked off the job requirements as he achieved them.

In a new industry such as digital where multitasking is the rule of thumb, enthusiastic young interns eager to learn new skills often end up being invaluable. If your company can’t afford the time or money for a formal intern programme, there are plenty of informal measures that can be put into place. Plus you could benefit from a fresh perspective on company operations.

From an intern’s perspective the time spent with a company has to be taken advantage of. It’s while doing the mundane grunt work that the real learning starts. For many, the networking oportunites afforded by a position in a well-connected company result in the perfect opportunity arising. The rate at which digital is changing has meant that education has struggled. Internships can, and do, teach the valuable applicable skills that education just can’t - not for want of trying of course. Speaking from experience, my internship taught me so much more than I ever learned throughout my four years at university.

Businesses past and present are littered with succes stories of people who all started out at the bottom and never stopped until they had achieved their goals. After all, you are the company of one – in the not so literal sense.

Oh, and before I forget, Jeremiah got that Porsche in the end.

There’s not a cloud in the sky, it’s scorching outside, you can see the sunlight streaming through the windows, hear the birds in the sky. What a waste to be sitting in a sweat box of an office when you could be lying with your feet in the grass soaking up the sun? Corona in one hand, good read in the other.

A survey by Peninsula Law consultancy firm recently found that 80% of businesses reported staff “pulling” a sickie over the period of nice weather. Out of the 7000 staff surveyed 7 out of 10 were tempted to pull a sickie and 8 out of 10 felt that there was nothing wrong with taking an unwarranted sick day.

As tempertaures in the capital reached 28 degrees, this week, the city boar a striking resemblance to Madrid or Rome - lots of alfresco lunching and scooters buzzing about, you would be forgiven for thinking that while no one was looking London had upped sticks and moved slap bang in the middle of the med!

With the usual soggy british summer having disappeared for the time being those who do decide to pull a sickie, could almost be forgiven…that’s only almost, mind.

I just wish I’d done it first!

Workers accused of theft or damage may soon find themselves on a black list that’s accessible by all potential employers according to a recent BBC article. The National Staff Dismissal Register (NSDR), will allow disgruntled ex-employers to post references online, will go ahead at the end of this month.

The article describes the national register as a development of the Criminal Records Bureau which was set up to provide stringent background checks on those working with society’s most vulnerable, like teachers, careworkers and social workers. Although personal details are deleted after 5 years the attempted theft of property, forgery of documents, money laundering and damaging company property will all get you on to the list.

It’s a tricky business providing a reference for an ex-employee who, simply, wasn’t up to the job. Many companies resort to the old staple of just providing the basics - the start/end dates and just state that they fulfilled their obligations, or in the worst case they provide no reference at all. Never before have records been available in such an open access format and with well established companies like Selfridges, Mothercare and Reed Management registering, there is an obvious demand for a collective database of some sort.

According to Hannah Reed of the Trade Union Congress (TUC),

the register could lead to a candidate not being given a job by an employer who holds nothing more than a personal grudge.

On the other hand who’s to say that a company would want to advertise the fact that they’d been the victim of theft or embezzelment at the hands of their unprofessional, (or even criminal) staff? Surely that’s potentially more damaging to a corporate image than anything an employee could actually do?

In such a setup where ex-employees can be blacklisted even before an official crime, in the legal sense, has taken place, the logical conclusion is that it’s solely the police who should have access to this information. We do live in a time when innocent people become blacklisted, every day, by credit companies for the wrong reasons

From an employers point of view, while they will want to know whether a new recruit has done anything underhand in their previous job, there’s a old fashioned way of finding out, by picking up the phone and calling their old boss to find out. Surely the refusal of a reference is enough to substantiate any sneaking suspisions without resorting to such a public airing of dirty laundry.

Tell me if this sounds familar….it’s just your run of the mill Tuesday evening. You go out for dinner with the best of intentions. Before you know it, that one glass of wine you promised yourself turns into two, two turns into three and then like magic it’s three in the morning and you’re knocking back the shots all over town like you don’t have to be awake in four hours time. 

According to a recent BBC article one in three people struggle to concentrate, make mistakes and have to go home early from work because they’ve over indulged the night before. The survey, carried out by Norwich Union, states that forty-one percent of people in media and the creative industries said they’d been to work still drunk from the night before.

In an unpredictable industry like media, where entertaining and smooshing clients is, often, part of the job the line between unwinding after hours and drinking at an unhealthy level can get clouded. Perhaps blame can be portioned to the drinking culture we have here, and the temptations on offer in the big cities or even the high number of people under 30 in these industries who are still, relatively, free of responsibility. Maybe that’s why the figures appear so startling.

Although there is something karmically rewarding about swapping a pain crushing headache for an all-out night assault on one’s liver. If the prospect of a raging headache and a day of the simplist of tasks becoming all but impossible then, frankly, better you than me. I could, however, recommend you a nice glass of red.