In episode 2 of the Data Debrief we caught up with Edosa Odaro, Head of Data Services at AXA, to gather some insight around the evolving role of the CDO and how the discussion is changing from the control and compliance of data towards extracting its full potential for data-driven business. Edosa covers the key challenges that CDO's face from organisational design, structure and the relationship with the CIO through to the issue of attracting and retaining talent from a data recruitment perspective. Over a year on from GDPR we also discuss the impact the regulation has had on the issue of data ownership and whether investment in data functions is driven by the carrot of new use-cases or the stick of compliance.

In our latest edition of the Data Debrief podcast we caught up with Addison Lee Chief Data Officer, Graeme McDermott and Guy Garrett, Managing Director of Achieve Intelligence, to discuss some of the latest technology trends impacting data engineering and data science.  In this session we explore the impact that cloud based opensource technologies are having as an enabler of agility for data and analytics functions. We also evaluate the changing attitudes to the use of opensource within both analytics and engineering environments. Our host, John Eveleigh (Consultant, Data Engineering & Analytics) also facilitates the discussion around the factors that are driving the growth in the adoption of Python alongside more general hiring challenges associated within data recruitment.

The primary objective of any interviewer is to make sure you get the best out of every candidate you meet, but sometimes it’s interesting to throw in the odd ‘curveball’ question. These questions are designed to help you get a deeper level of insight around candidates and their potential. Due to the broad range of backgrounds and skillsets migrating towards the area of customer success, it will sometimes be necessary to find potential diamond candidates in the rough. We asked our network of hiring managers to give us some of their curveball questions, and here’s our top five.

We know better than most that hiring managers are time poor. You've got to make a new hire in your customer success team and when it comes to the job specification it's easy to rush. You know the score. Copy and paste a few important points, bang in a generic overview of the company and away you go it's time to ship your job spec over to the talent team to start attracting potential candidates. This article will explain why job specs are so important in attracting the best talent in the deeply competitive field of customer success and offer up some great examples from tech brands that are positioning themselves favourably in this space.

On the eve of International Women's Day we hosted our latest GroWiT (Growing Women in Technology) event entitled 'Balance for Better Business Outcomes' in partnership with Ericsson. The focus of the evening was to drive collective thinking around whether we create better business outcomes from having more gender diverse teams. If you missed the event you can watch the highlights right here or, if you prefer, read a brief summary of the event below.
 

We are almost through the first quarter of the year and social media has been full of posts (some original others copied and pasted) around key predictions for the cyber security industry in 2019. In this episode of Stuart Talks Security we took the chance to catch up with Gary Hayslip, VP CISO at Webroot, to get his unique take on what should be front of mind for security leaders this year. 

What’s the first thing you do when you are looking for security talent? Post a job on LinkedIn? Contact your internal recruiter or your external partner? It might surprise you to hear this from a recruiter but it's often prudent to start your search a little closer to home. In fact a CISO we spoke to in our recent CISO Survival Guide stated "Skills are important but given the shortage that exists it’s rare that you will find a candidate that has every attribute you are looking for. In such cases it’s often a good idea to develop from within where you’ll find people that know the business and know the stakeholders – that’s a great starting point."

How many times have you been in the situation where you’ve managed to get talent through the door, vetted the candidates to the point of offer stage and then they’ve either rejected the offer, pulled out or in some cases, gone dark completely? You are certainly not alone. According to our recent Cyber Security in Focus research over 36% of hiring managers see ‘getting offers of employment accepted’ as a headline challenge. 

Diversity is (quite rightly) an incredibly hot topic in the talent markets that we operate in. Whether it’s security, software engineering, data or technology sales the question hiring managers are asking is the same: how can we attract a more diverse workforce? In a recent interview we conducted with Jane Frankland (CISO Adviser, Author & Champion for Women in Security) she stated “diversity makes for a strategic and competitive advantage. It’s not just about recruiting diversity for diversity’s sake.” Studies show that diverse teams are safer and higher performing due to a more balanced perspective on risk and reward.