It’s now coming up to half-time in my refereeing promotion season. The full year runs from March 2011 to the end of February 2012. However, as I am on the Enhanced Promotion scheme, I had until the end of September 2011 to achieve all the 7-6 objectives.
It’s a strange feeling knowing that I have now done all I can:
Refereed a minimum of 20 eligible games (I’ve managed about 27 according to my records).
Attended the ‘In Service Training’ course.
Passed an examination on the Laws of the Game (I scored 100% !).
Received a minimum of three Assessments.
There are a few other requirements, which I have also achieved, but these are more administrative (such as being CRB cleared!)
Now, I get copies of the assessments but I cannot know for sure whether they are ‘pass’ standard: The mark is not revealed to candidates! However, they are positive and give me a good feeling.
Ultimately, the decision now rests with the Refereeing Committee who will consider all of the above and decide what happens next. All I know at this point is that will happen sometime in October.
I’ve been intending to take the Surrey FA fitness test for a while. It is not strictly required for the Enhanced Promotion scheme that I am on, but I love a good challenge and also to demonstrate that I am serious about all this.
The core component is the Cooper Test. Very simple: Run as far as you can in twelve minutes without stopping. The required distance to pass is 2500 metres. I had done a few test-runs, mostly on inclined treadmills, and had a good solid pace to hit 2700 metres without keeling over. Oh, and the right music choice to pace myself with!
I’ve been running regularly, both for fitness and when refereeing, so felt confident I would do okay. Especially with the extra adrenaline boost on the day.
On the day there were five candidates. It was a good atmosphere as the test was being held on a proper athletics track, which was being used by some other people too. With just five candidates, there was no real ‘pack’ to run with, so I was glad I had worked on pacing! In the end, I nailed 2700 metres so my ‘game plan’ worked successfully. I could have edged that up a bit but wanted to ensure I saved energy for the sprinting test…
The sprinting test is also simple: Run 50 metres in 7.5 seconds or less, walk back, and do it again. I’ve always been quite proud of my sprinting speed so this presented no issues. No record was kept of my exact time, which is a shame, but really the important thing is that I passed and that no injuries were sustained.
Now to keep working on my fitness and, of course, the healthy eating! I’ve set a benchmark to beat next time round…
Accidents will happen. Right at the end of the tremendous TruLondon unconference, I managed to drop my Netbook. It was only from chair height but it sadly struck the metal parts of the chair on the way down.
Ouch.
It powered up fine but half the screen was either glowing white or corrupted. That was promising in a way as there was no obvious structural damage. As a result, I attempted the LCD Massage trick. This involves gently massaging the LCD to try and prod it back to life (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME). It managed to resuscitate half of the damaged area.
“Great! I am the master of technology!”, I thought.
It did not bring results on the remaining dodgy part of the screen. I pushed a little harder. Still nothing. I pushed slightly harder and….. CRRRAAAAACCCCCCKKK!
Oops.
On the plus side, half of the screen was still working.
In pieces...
Thankfully, screens are pretty easy to replace on these devices. I ordered a replacement screen for my Samsung N220 Plus from laptopscreenonline.com for just under £50.
I was very impressed with their service as it arrived Next Day. In classic tradition, fitting it was the reverse of taking the broken one out, and everything worked great first time.
Unexpected bonus: The replacement screen is of the reflective variety which brings out the colours better. Not everyone likes the shiny screens but I do!
Good as new!
Now to give the poor machine some tender loving care…
I enjoyed attending TruLondon 4 this week. My employer, Jobsite, is the platinum sponsor of these events, which are put together by the illustrious Bill Boorman.
This isn’t a typical ‘dry’ conference. Instead, it is run as an Unconference. The different ‘tracks’ are predicated around audience participation instead of one person lecturing the others. After all, everyone has their different area of expertise to bring to the table. Names badges are banned! (Although some sidestepped this issue with cunningly customised T-shirts…)
I led a track on ‘Future Recruiting Technology’. This touched on elements ranging from technology which is emerging now to just where things could be going further into the future. I was particularly interested in finding out where the ‘pain’ was in terms of both candidates and recruiters. After all, all the technology in the world is not going to achieve anything unless it is meeting the actual needs of those using it! I am also keen on the point that if technology doesn’t feel like magic, it is doing it wrong. This is important as we move further towards the domain of semantic search: We don’t want users to realise it is happening because it is so accurate and targeted. If they become aware of the wizard behind the curtain, more work needs to be done.
Equally, the whole recruitment process still needs fixing. There is still this culture clash where candidates get annoyed with recruiters not responding to them (a form of passive rejection). Also, fake or incomplete job adverts. At the same time, recruiters need to protect their interests by hiding who the true employer is, so that competitors don’t go wading in. Or do they? How can we reconcile the two? As was commented during the conference, “Stop talking about Recruitment 4.0 until we fix Recruitment 1.0!”
I was really happy at being involved in two video panel discussions, hosted by DeeDee Doke. DeeDee is the editor of Recruiter and does a stunning job as an interviewer of making people feel at ease. That is a wonderful skill to have.
Finally, I was nabbed outside by Keith Robinson who asked me to talk a bit about my Systems Architect role at Jobsite. This is always tricky as we are working on a lot of cool stuff and not all of it we are ready to reveal to the public yet (it’s that cool!). I love the brick wall background on this.
The video interviews were a great experience, as was sharing knowledge with old and new faces in and around the recruitment industry. Roll on the next one! (Oh, and losing a bit more weight for the camera, hah!)
