A recent piece of research by Bristol based Recruitment Consultancy Just Adlib has probed into our happiness levels at work with illuminating results. An interesting read, the research was conducted by people living in the west of England and working in the Digital, Marketing, Advertising and Creative Industries.

Just Adlib found that, 37% of participants said job satsifaction was the most important factor to ensure their happiness at work, closely followed by the people they worked with (17%) and a nice environment to work in (12%). Surprisingly being well paid only accounted for 5% of the responses and additional benefits only 1%.

I can’t help but wonder if the results would differ if respondants were asked the same thing in London or Manchester? I suppose there’s one way to find that out!

Chinwag have teamed up with UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) to help them assess their UK ICT Marketing Strategy. This is a rare and exciting opportunity for our industry to really make a difference to how the government spends our money and promotes our industry abroad. By completing the survey, you will also get automatically entered into the prize draw to win an iPod Touch 8GB, brilliant eh?

The UKTI’s purpose is to encourage the best overseas companies to invest in the UK and to help UK companies take full advantage of opportunities overseas.

The Government is committed to selling the UK proposition, but why should foreign companies set up here and why should our companies be the partners of choice in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)?

For the chance to have your say and win an iPod Touch 8GB please take 3 minutes of your time to fill out the survey

How serious is the talent shortage in digital media?

After much number-crunching, the results of the Chinwag Jobs Digital Skills Survey have been released today, 23rd January 2008.

The full details are available in both HTML format (for ease of copy/paste) and also as a PDF to download.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the conclusions. From the results, it’s apparent that 2008 is going to be a tough year to fill the skills gaps that have appeared across the industry.

A few statistics to illustrate the scale of the issue and the impact it’s having on our industry right now…

97% of respondents find it either difficult or impossible to attract the right digital staff for their businesses

76% of respondents find it difficult to retain staff within their companies.

57% of respondents reported that the digital skills shortage impeded the growth of their business in 2007

Read the full report online:
http://www.chinwag.com/reports/chinwag-jobs-skills-shortage-2007

Download the PDF:
http://www.chinwag.com/reports/chinwag-jobs-skills-shortage-2007-download

Note: This survey was conducted from 29th November - 19th December 2007. For more details see the methodology section of the results.

PRESS ENQUIRIES:

Contact: Sam Michel - CEO, Chinwag
Email: sam(AT)chinwag.com
Tel: 0870 730 7313

Chinwag Jobs has been named as a finalist in the Onrec.com Awards 2008 for the Best Technical Innovation Award. You can see the full list of finalists here. (Is it just me, or are there a *lot* of finalists..?)

We’re very happy to have made it to the finalists stage, and fingers crossed we’ll win!

We have exciting digital news in the shape of our party, Big Summer ‘07!

As you have probably already heard, we are holding a huge networking party at the Imperial College, South Kensington on Thursday July 5th, which has caused much excitement here at Chinwag Towers! We have some cracking partners on board to help us celebrate all things digital, including Adobe, Channel 4, Purple and Agency.com and we would all love you to come!

For those of you who haven’t already signed up, best be quick! Space is limited and this is THE digital networking event of the Summer, and definately not one to be missed.

Big Summer ‘07 news just in; Agency.com have launched a prize draw to win 2 pairs of tickets to The Big Chill Festival who will be hosting one of the rooms on the night, so dust off your dancing shoes and start practising your best moves in preparation for an evening of digital fun!

There will be something there for everyone and of course plenty of stimulating digital chat served with a large helping of delicious BBQ food and drink, what more can you ask for?

We look forward to seeing you all there

Chinwag will be having a stand at the Adobe Live event happening in Islington on the 5th and 6th June. We’re really excited to see everyone there, so do swing by if you’re planning on attending.

From Adobe:

“Feed your imagination at Adobe Live. June 5- 6, London Be inspired. Learn how Adobe® Creative Suite® 3 will change the way you work and create. Turn your creative visions and designs into reality – on the page or screen, in print or on the web.”

Book your FREE ticket at www.adobe.co.uk/live138

This morning Chinwag Jobs received a press release letting us know that today Aquent is annoucing the aquisition of Pricejamieson. This is huge news for anyone in the recruiting industry:

“This acquisition brings together two highly efficient and successful companies from within the UK market, the industry areas of focus for pricejamieson are extremely complementary to Aquent’s current offerings, and the level of relationships pricejamieson currently has will enhance Aquent’s position within the senior levels of the UK’s top companies.” - Stefan Ciecierski, Aquent’s Managing Director Europe

The union of Aquent and pricejamieson in London creates the largest Aquent market globally and the largest single provider of marketing, communications and creative recruitment solutions in any city anywhere in the world. It also creates the UK’s largest database of prospective candidates – in excess of 150,000.

We’ve just added all our services to Twitter, so you can keep up with Chinwag on the go. If you’d like to add us our three services are:

• ChinwagJobs - one Twitter per day with the top 3 companies posting, and number of jobs
• ChinwagLive - a few Twitters a month announcing events, and any related details
• Chinwag - a general Chinwag info point, content and amounts tbc at the moment!

We saw a landmark in our history today, as for the first time since our January 2006 launch, the site held over 1,000 jobs!

We might have to celebrate with half a pint of shandy tonight - thanks to everyone who’s been advertising with us for making the site such an exciting and varied place to find jobs in new media.

I’m pleased to announce that Chinwag Jobs will be sponsoring the drinks after the BarCamp Scotland event, happening this weekend.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.

We hope you all have a great time, and have a beer for us!  Actually, there’s quite a few of us here, having a beer for eash of us chould get choo verry drunk!