Amanda, our international careers guru, has just posted an outstanding opportunity for our Chinese students to be linked with a mentor back in China. The mentoring will be done on-line (no “all expenses paid” trips back home unfortunately) with mentors based in Beijing, Shanghai, other areas of China (eg. Shenzhen, Hangzhou etc) plus some of our other Chinese alumni now working in places like Germany and the USA.

Some of the areas which our mentors-in-waiting cover include research, IT, finance, law, HR and project management. There are only 25 places available, so read the rest of the information on Amanda’s International Careers blog and apply straight away – they’re starting to match mentors and mentees next week.

This is another one of Amanda’s initiatives to support our international students, many of whom are postgrads. For example, we’ve now installed video conferencing facilities in the Careers Service, and this week, successfully held another “over the web” event with a recruitment expert in China, following on from previous events such as the Citigroup video conference shown here.

Introduction

This document explains why/ how local services are required/ registered to a workflow. We are going to discuss the theoretical concept alone. Implementation of local services will be dealt in the coming documents.

Local services are optional services mostly used to get details from workflow to outside world.

Local Services

It got events and methods which can be called from workflow instance. Workflow instance uses CallExternalMethodActivity class belonging to Sytem.Workflow.Activities library to call a method on a local service. The method will be synchronously invoked using workflow thread. This will help us to retrieve/transfer data to outside world beyond workflow instance. So we can say call happens from workflow to host application. But for events exposed in local services, flow is in opposite direction.

Workflow instance uses HandleExternalEventActivity to accept events raised by local services. So now the host application will raise an event and workflow is going to waiting for event to happen. During this wait time workflow thread is idled and so not consuming an active thread. State machine workflows are the major consumers of event from local services. They use this service to change their state as well as processing data.

The Figure 1.1 defines interaction between workflow instance, local services and host application.

Figure 1.1 – interaction between workflow instance, local services and host application

Now we need to look into thread handling during the whole process. Normally events are executed in the same thread in which it is raised. In our case host application thread is the one which raises events. Microsoft made sure that request is handled in workflow thread itself by using an internal queue. When a local service raises an event it is added to this internal queue, which is picked by workflow instance. So we can say workflow is looking into the internal queue.

To develop a local service first we need is an interface which is decorated with property ExternalDataExchangeAttribute. This interface should include all the methods and events that are required for local service. One more thing need to be done, we need to make sure events are derived from ExternalDataEventArgs. Without these steps workflow won’t be able to recognize your local service and subscribe to event. Last step will be to write a class which implements this interface.

Local Services are created and registered to workflow runtime engine by host application. Registration happens in 2 steps

1. Create instance of ExternalDataExchangeService class and add it to WorkflowRuntime instance.
2. Add local service to instance of ExternalDataExchangeService.

ExternalDataExchangeService is a core service. So in nutshell the talking to local services is done by this class not our workflow engine.

Conclusion

It is important that everyone working on WF should have the concept of local service rather than simple knowledge of coding local service.

Click Here to Download Code

Introduction

I would suggest everyone to go through WF-Basics if new to this technology. In this document we are going to develop a simple sequential WF which receives parameter at runtime.

Sequential Workflow

Initial steps

Sequential workflow is mostly used in scenarios where there is more interaction between software’s. Real time projects are mostly combination of sequential and state machine workflow.

To start, select Sequential Workflow Console Application from Visual Studio Workflow template. It will result in workflow design page as shown in Figure 1.1

Figure 1.1 – Initial view of workflow design

Now we are going to add a CodeActivity into the workflow by dragging Code from the toolbar. Figure 1.2 displays the tools available for workflow.

Figure 1.2 – Few of the activities available in visual studio tools

After CodeActivity is dropped we are going to rename it as WelcomeActivity ans assign CodeActivity event to method WelcomeActivity_ExecuteCode. The workflow design will be similar to screen shown in Figure 1.3.

Figure 1.3 – workflow design after dropping code activity

Now we have to think of logic we need to implement. We are going to take a String on-the-fly and display it in the console. First step to achieve our goal is to declare local variable and input properties in the workflow class. Now my SampleSequentialWorkflow.cs file will have following code

The lines highlighted in yellow are custom codes.

Passing value at Runtime

We need to change the Program.cs file in order to accept input parameter. Input parameters are accepted in workflow as generic Dictionary<String,Object> where object is the value of each entry keyed by the String. The key should be a public property defined in the workflow class [SampleSequentialWorkflow.cs]. The name of the property and key should be exactly same in order to work. Also object type passed should be same as that declared in corresponding property. Even if we misspell the exception thrown are pretty descriptive, so issues resolving it.

Now we have dictionary which has value but question remains how to get this value into workflow? For that we need to implement overloaded method of CreateWorkflow which accepts type of workflow and Dictionary as parameters.

Modified code is highlighted in yellow

The final console window will be as shown in Figure 1.4

Conclusion

This document explains a simple sequential workflow passing parameter at runtime. More in-depth features and ability of WF will be explained in future documents.

Introduction

Workflow Foundation [WF] contains lot of components that works hand in hand to execute workflow. WF is the pillar over which we are going to build out workflow application. Microsoft has come up with a modular approach so that we can use individual features at users will.  For example we can say some components used at design phase alone and there are some other components which exist throughout the lifetime of workflow.

Most of the capabilities are implemented as pluggable component that can replaced by custom user code. The Figure 1.1 displays major components of WF

Figure 1.1 – WF Component Categories

Class Libraries + Framework

The class libraries include all the base classes and interfaces used to develop workflow application. They are the basic building blocks. For example all Activities
are derived from base class Activity in System.Workflow.ComponentModel
namespace. Microsoft provides users with predefined activities by extending this base class.

There are some other classes like WorkflowRuntime derived from System.Workflow.Runtime.Hosting namespace which can monitor and control execution of workflow.

WF framework help user to follow a predefined procedure to achieve required workflow and it handles routine tasks associated with a workflow enabled application.

Some of the WF namespaces are shown below

Runtime Engine

WF contain core runtime engine represented by WorkflowRuntime
class. It is not a self contained application. So we need a host application to contain this workflow. WorkflowRuntime
provide working environment to WorkflowInstance. WorkflowRuntime has the ability to configure and control workflow.

.NET 3.5 let user use workflow instance as hosted WCF service. User develops a hybrid runtime class named WorkflowServiceHost in System.WorkflowService assembly. This class has basic capability of workflow runtime with ServiceHost
[WCF].

The workflow runtime environment could be described as shown in the Figure 1.2

Figure 1.2 – Workflow Runtime Environment

Runtime Services

Services are class instance that user creates and register with a workflow at start of application. Services are mostly for a specific task/logic. Services can be classified into core and local. Core services are that provided by Microsoft. Services like SqlWorkflowPersistanceService, SqlTrackingService
are example of core services. Local services are user services.

Host application is the one responsible for creating and registering services that runtime requires. Local services and core services are registered to a workflow in the same manner.  The interaction between host application, runtime engine and services is shown in Figure 1.3

Figure 1.3 – Interactions between Host application, Runtime Engine and Services

Design Tools

Users can visually design and maintain your workflows. WF design tool included workflow debugger into design tool trough which we can place breakpoints in activities.

.NET 2.0 Runtime

Though WF was introduced with .NET 3.0 it is build on .NET 2.0 CLR. So we can still use the native .NET 2.0 features with WF.

Conclusion

This document gives a bird-eye view on WF components.

Introduction

This document gives an introduction to Windows Work flow Foundation [WF] and some basic concepts.

Work flow Foundation – Basics

Workflow can be defined as a set of activity that coordinates people or software.  WF enables workflow within an application.

There are two types of workflows

1.       Sequential workflows: used where there is interaction between programs.

2.       State Machine workflows: used when there is more user interaction.

Let’s start with a simple sequential workflow sample.  Select Sequential Workflow Console Application from Visual Studio Workflow template. It will result in workflow designer page as sown below

Figure 1.1 – Workflow Designer

WF related assemblies :

1.       System.Workflow.Activities

2.       System.Workflow.ComponentModel

3.       System.Workflow.Runtime

4.       System.WorkflowServices [with .NET 3.5 only]

Workflow Activities

Activities are the steps in the workflows. Activity defines a particular set of logic [mostly unique purpose]. Activities are derived from System.Workflow.ComponentModel.

Sequential Workflow has a definite start and end point as shown in Figure 1.1.  Activities are dropped in between these two end points. Activities are provided with set of properties which can be set.

Few of the standard activities are as shown in the Figure 1.2

Figure 1.2 – Few of the activities available in visual studio tools

Logic to Workflow

Drag and drop CodeActivity[class name] into the workflow designer. It is displayed as Code in tools. CodeActivity is one way through which we can place our logic.

Figure 1.3 – Adding CodeActivity

The exclamation mark says there are some properties which need to be set.

Figure 1.4 – Property window for CodeActivity –Before and After

Now we need to fill the event codeActivity1_ExecuteCode in the Workflow1.cs with our logic.  Shown below is the logic to display a message.

namespace SampleImplimentationSequentialWorkflow

{

    public
sealed
partial
class
Workflow1 : SequentialWorkflowActivity

    {

        public Workflow1()

        {

            InitializeComponent();

        }

        private
void codeActivity1_ExcecuteCode(object sender, EventArgs e)

        {

            Console.WriteLine(“My First WorkFlow worked.”);

        }

    }

}

Hosting Workflow

Inspecting Program.cs in the project

namespace SampleImplimentationSequentialWorkflow

{

    class
Program

    {

        static
void Main(string[] args)

        {

            using(WorkflowRuntime workflowRuntime = new
WorkflowRuntime())

            {

                AutoResetEvent waitHandle = new
AutoResetEvent(false);

                workflowRuntime.WorkflowCompleted += delegate(object sender, WorkflowCompletedEventArgs e) {waitHandle.Set();};

                workflowRuntime.WorkflowTerminated += delegate(object sender, WorkflowTerminatedEventArgs e)

                {

                    Console.WriteLine(e.Exception.Message);

                    waitHandle.Set();

                };

                WorkflowInstance instance = workflowRuntime.CreateWorkflow(typeof(SampleImplimentationSequentialWorkflow.Workflow1));

                instance.Start();

                waitHandle.WaitOne();

            }

            Console.WriteLine(“Press any key to continue …”);

            Console.ReadKey(true);

        }

    }

}

These autogenerated lines of code host the workflow runtime and execute the workflow.

WorkflowRuntime class provides methods and event to monitor and control workflow. Each workflow defined is going to be executed in separate thread. In this sample only two events of WorkflowRuntime is referred [highlighted in green]

1.       WorkflowRuntime.WorkflowCompleted

2.       WorkflowRuntime.WorkflowTerminated

These two events informs console application when workflow is completed /terminated.

 The code highlighted in yellow creates object AutoResetEvent class; used to release a single waiting thread. In this sample threads are going to be from host console application and workflow itself.

The code highlighted in grey creates an instance of workflow. Now build and run the workflow to get following console window.

Figure 1.5 – Output console window

Conclusion

This document gives a bird eye view on workflow and dissection of a simple work flow.

A slidecast (slides plus audio soundtrack) on Assessment Centres is now available as the final instalment of my “Essential Guide to Careers for Postgrads”. If you want to know about

• how to tackle aptitude tests
• some hints and tips on how to look good in group exercises
• what’s an e-tray exercise
• some advice on “the informal dinner” on a two day assessment centre

you can either listen to it below, or find it alongside the other talks in the On-Line Talks page on this blog, or the playlist on the Postgrad pages on the Careers Service website.

If these talks are any use to you, or you would like me to tackle other topics, just let me know with a comment.

Went to the .Net Meetup Tuesday night and had a great time.  Plenty of interesting discussion and some laughs too. (All that and free pizza too). Highly recommended:

        if (yourGeekiness >= myGeekiness)

Daniel Chait (my boss led the meeting.  The below info is mostly from Dan’s notes which he wrote on the overhead in real-time (I take credit for any errors or omissions).  As you can see, if you didn’t attend, you missed a lot.  These are mostly just the topics.  Each one generated lively discussion:

PDC 2009 started today:

- Microsoft CodeName “Dallas” announced.

Microsoft “Micro Framework” open sourced:

(not including some stuff like Crypto etc)

Scott Hanselman had a podcast about it?

Azure going live in February (cloud services)

Business Model announced.

Cloud Computing : Compare Azure vs others

Vs Amazon EC2?  Amazon gives you a virtual machine, whereas Microsoft gives you specific services (i.e. web, database, WCF services).  Also cloud-based Pub/Sub model.

BizSpark!!!

- For co’s & individuals

–Co less than 3 yrs. old, less than $1MM, private

- You get all Microsoft stuff basically for 3 yrs. free.

- Check out the “Program Guide” off the website for more details

WebSpark?

- You get VS, SQL Server, and Blend, etc. to get started

- 3 year license for free

PowerPivot

- Part of Office 2010 (was codename “Gemini”)

WPF Grid Controls?

- Using DevExpress (WinForms grid)

- Infragistics – not much new there. tech support pretty good.  glaring bugs in new versions.  difficult upgrading between different versions due to problems with style upgrades

- WPF Toolkit has a grid control: very basic, missing a lot of features (i.e. Filtering etc)

- XCeed well regarded. Been around the longest, full featured.  Cons: tech support iffy.  Licensing may be problematic – issues when you convert from demo to licensed version.

Data Direct products:

- XML converters

- Database connectors

- Difficult licenses

.NET Framework v4?

- Tasks, parallel stuff – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Extensions

- WorkFlow changing a lot in V4 as well

- Documentation is very minimal at this point

- Maybe some good PDC content coming out?  i.e.
http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/P09-22

- Maybe some channel9 stuff to find?
- Hello Workflow 4

- WF4.0 A First Look
- More

What do people actually use WF for?

- Sharepoint development.  Basic stuff.

Architecture in .NET Question: Model Approach to Database Access?

- ORM Software: Developers make clean code which makes horrible queries

- Call Stored Procs from software: nice queries but ugly to call

- Entity Spaces

- Experience: Easy to use, decent performance but on a simple app

- In ALL cases, need to analyze queries in detail, can’t just rely on the ORM to sort it out

- Microsoft Entity Framework 1.0 – not full featured enough

- New one coming out

- Linq2SQL is dead

- Linq2SQL used a GUID(?) which killed query caching

- NHibernate – “granddaddy of them”.

- Cons : “Has a case of the Java’s”.  XML Configuration, FactoryFactoryFactory…, etc.

GRAND CLAIM: Try to avoid open source:

- Hmm…

- IF something is just a small, weekend project on CodePlex, probably worth avoiding.  But, like, …

- NUnit

- NHibernate

- NCover

- NMock, moq, RhinoMock

- Log4Net, nlog

- log better, easier to configure

- Fluent NHibernate

- The MONO project

- Need to treat it more like “code” than a “product” from a vendor.  Actually understand the code don’t just consume it.

- Open source projects are driven by enthusiasm

- JQuery plugins for example

One user mono in production spoke up.

- Follows the Pareto Principle – for example doesn’t use code signing

- Implementing silverlight (i.e. Moonlight) which works on the iPhone

- Castle project – ActiveRecord implementation – says it’s at least as good as say RoR – just does property setting in code, built on top of NHibernate, scaffolding, etc.

The Munawar principle – 20% will be good, 80% will be garbage

FBK #2: Sturgeon’s Law – “90% of everything is crap”

NCover – code coverage tool

“Where’s my LINQ2 Mainframe?”

SubSonic – open source framework for stuff – http://www.subsonicproject.com/

- “A Super High-fidelity Batman Utility Belt that works up your Data Access (using Linq in 3.0), throws in some much-needed utility functions, and generally speeds along your dev cycle.”

[long discourse about non programmers.  in short, they are inconvenient.]

AJAX / ASP.NET – still buying into it?  As opposed to WPF / Silverlight / Flex?

- Corollary – as a novice, what should I be getting in to

- Corollary 2 – if I want to get out of ASP.NET and get into WPF and realtime .NET desktop apps, how do I do it?

- Endless debate about Silverlight vs Flex

- Silverlight can be applied-ish to WPF knowledge

- Flex VERY easy to learn

Silverlight vs WPF?

- Third party controls maybe a bit better in WPF at present

- If heavy desktop integration, use WPF, else Silverlight by default

- Silverlight Out of Browser – still in the sandbox but just looks like the browser is missing.

- Databinding in Silverlight not nearly as good as WPF.  A bit better in 3.0 but still not great

[spontaneous demo of Castle ActiveRecord]

Good localization solution?  Want to translate our site into multiple languages….

- Sharepoint can do some of this but not ALL languages

- New version of Sharepoint (2008?) does this

- Beware of language specifics (i.e. German has long words)

- Maybe any content management solutions that exist?

- How to handle caching?

- Generate static content or regenerate on the fly every time?

- See http://latino.msn.com/ for more

- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c6zyy3s9.aspx

Just to prove that I’m not fixated on chemistry (got that out of my system a looooong time ago), if working in government, the public sector or other regulatory bodies is more your thing, and you want to stay here in the North West, we’ve got a list for you too – all here in a pdf.

It includes links to regional and local government websites, and links to those parts of the Civil Service which have offices in the North West of England (though the links are generally to the main website – they won’t normally have a direct weblink about their NW offices). Some of the “other and regulatory bodies” with presence in the NW include the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Charity Commission, the Information Commissioner, English Heritage and the Audit Commission. Finally, there are links to Health related organisations. This obviously includes local NHS Trusts, but it also includes the General Medical Council, NICE, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and the Health Protection Agency.

The document also includes a link to the Civil Service recruitment portal, which allows you to filter jobs by region. However, for non-Civil Service jobs, another resource which might help is a website which gives direct links to the jobs pages of  government and “other publicly funded organisations” – Government Jobs Direct.

We’ve got loads of other resources on employers in the North West or in specific occupational sectors, but they’re all being reorganised at the moment, so I’ll do another post to highlight what’s there, once they’re ready to be relaunched.

Yes, I know the last post was also for chemists, but I was asked yesterday to update our list of chemical companies in the North West of England, so before it goes on our website as a pdf, I thought I’d let you see it as a Word document – TheChemicalindustryintheNorthWest.

It’s not meant to be an exhaustive list, but I do try to make sure that the companies mentioned are more than just a sales or distribution arm of a larger company, and that they employ more than 3 people in the North West. Some of the companies listed have full blown research labs  in the North West, though many more have manufacturing plants.

As manufacturing plants are potential sources of jobs for chemical, mechanical and electrical engineers, as well as chemists who are interested in process development or quality assurance, I make no apologies for including them on the list (plus I still have a soft spot for companies who make things, from my own time in manufacturing). I’ve tried to make it clear on the list which are research labs and which are manufacturing plants but if you spot any errors, please do drop me a comment here so I can change it.

I should point out (though it should be obvious!) that it’s not a list of who currently has vacancies. However, if you have a specialism which might be in line with a company’s work, you could keep an eye open for ads from the company, consider making a direct speculative application, or see if you know anyone in the company who you could talk to as a contact.

Hello friends,
Cheers!
Here I am with some useful terminology and these acronyms are generally used now days in broad way take a look.
1) ESB : Enterprise Service Bus
2) POX : Plain OLD XML
3) REST: Representational State Transfer
4) SOAP: Simple Object Access Protocol
5) RIA : Rich Internet Application
6) XML : Extensible Markup Language
7) JASON: Java Script Object Notation
DOM : Document Object Modeling
9) XAML : Extensible Application Markup Language
10) LINQ : Language Integrated Query
11) RSS: Really Simple Syndication
12) WCF: Windows Communication Foundation
13) WF: Windows Foundation
14) WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation
15) AJAX: Asynchronous Java script and XML
16) XLST: Extensible Style Sheet Language Transformation
17) INDIGO: Code name of Microsoft windows Communication foundation Technology
18) OSLO: Code name of Microsoft Modeling Technology
19) SOA: Service Oriented Architecture
20) ORCAS: dot net 3.5 Version called ORCAS
21) AVALON: code name of Microsoft Windows Presentation foundation Technology
22) Azure: Microsoft new Operation system Related to Cloud computing
23) Astoria : Code name of Ado.net Data services

I hope you people like it.
Enjoy life with dot net.

Your host
Rajat Jaiswal

This is a question which should be bothering you if you’re thinking about working in R&D, engineering, patents or other technical or business functions in fine or bulk chemicals, the pharmaceutical industry, the environmental sector, petrochemicals, food, brewing, polymers, nanotech …

In other words, it could affect a lot of postgrads – and of course, there’s no easy answer to the question.

The best way I’ve found to keep up to date with what’s happening in the chemical industry is to follow the “The Commercial Chemist” posts in the Chemical World blog from the RSC.

In the most recent post, I’ve learnt that:

• Merck are due to shed 15,000 jobs worldwide now that the Schering-Plough merger is complete
• Novartis is planning to build the largest R&D institute in China, increasing jobs from 160 to over 1000
• Ineos Bio is doing a feasibility study into a new bio-energy plant in the North East
• Shell is cutting 5,000 jobs (though they are still currently looking for new postgrads – see recent tweet for details)
• Cost savings at Rhodia have led to increased 3rd quarter profits (up year on year by 19.5%) on reduced sales (down 15% year on year)

There’s a new update every Friday, plus lots of other chemical content in between.

For instance, you can watch a student “singing” all the elements of the Periodic Table, in order to a Russian folk melody – though I admit I prefer the old standard :

Courtesy of Harvard academic, Tom Lehrer. It dates back to 1959 which is why there are some elements missing, including the latest new element on the block, Copernicium.

There can’t be any scientists in the UK who haven’t heard of the magazine, New Scientist. (No? You’re kidding, right? Hmm, you need to get out of the lab more.)

You’ve no doubt browsed through the back pages at all the job ads, but there’s also a lot of careers info targeted exclusively at science students (postgrads and undergrads) available on-line. The New Scientist Studentzone has recently been relaunched but I hesitate to recommend it to you – it’s really far too distracting. All under the guise of “career research”, I’ve already been sucked into reading

• career profiles of Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell and comedian and mathematical physics graduate, Dara O’Briain (under “Real Lives”)
• the move to green chemistry (under “Career Inspiration”)
• how to break into forensics (under “Your Dream Job”)
• being happy in Scandinavia (under “Working Abroad”)
• an article on scientific CVs – although I take issue with the advice from one expert not to “focus too much on scientific detail” (like one of the commenters, I agree that although soft skills are important, you do need the hard scientific skills covered first if you’re applying for a science job). I do, however, agree with the careers adviser quoted as saying “Create a section called ‘research interests’ so you can elaborate on the scientific content of any research and experiments you have done” – which is a good job as he works just down the corridor from me…

There’s just too much interesting stuff to help you plan out the rest of your life, so, if you want to get your research done, or your coursework completed, DO NOT CLICK HERE

If you missed the Interviews talks I did last week for Masters and PhDs, they’re now available here and on the On-Line Talks page on this blog. They’re also on the postgrad pages of the Careers Service website.

It’s quite a long slidecast but you can take it in bite sized chunks and skip or go back to slides of interest and the audio should follow. One warning though – when you first view it, it takes a little while to buffer all the audio, so you won’t immediately be able to skip to the later slides. Should only take a few minutes to load it all up though (depending on your internet connection).

Just to tempt you, within the slidecast are hints on talking about salary (see slide 14, “Your Questions”), my views on the oft quoted “fact” that “70% of communication is through body language” (see slide 15, “Presentation” – you’ve probably already sussed out my view…) and recognising and talking about your natural talents (see slide 9, “Forensic Interviewing”).

Right, only got Assessment Centres to do now (aiming for early next week for recording and editing).

If you’re interested in becoming a consultant, Deloitte are running a case study event at the Careers Service to give you an insight into how they work with their clients. You’ll work alongside consultants from different areas of Deloitte’s work (eg. Technology Integration, Enterprise Applications, Strategy etc) on a realistic business scenario.

• Date : Thursday 19th November
• Time : 12.00-14.00
• Where : Careers Service, Crawford House (5th floor)

You’ll need to sign up in advance, and do some preparation by reading their website describing the range of consultancy work at Deloitte. I’d also get to the event in good time, as I suspect it will be very popular (and the first to get there get the seats).

Public Policy Competition

While you’re on the Deloitte website, you might also want to have a look at their Public Policy Competition. This is an essay competition, open to all UK students (it explicitly mentions Masters and PhDs) where you’re asked to tackle a great big complicated problem facing the Government (of whichever flavour) over the next 10 years:

“The current economic climate and an ageing population present significant challenges to Britain’s public services. If you were in charge of a government department dealing with these issues, what key changes would you implement over the next ten years?”

Come up with an answer in under 2000 words and you might be in with a chance (and no, I don’t think “I’d stop paying consultants” is going to get you very far…). You need to register by 15th January at the latest and the closing date for entries is 29th January. Prizes allow you to choose between work experience at Deloitte – or holiday vouchers.

UK and International Applications

Deloitte, like many other consultancies, are open to applications from UK and international students, subject to work permit restrictions. They are happy to consider those who can work in the UK through the Tier 1 (Post Study) scheme, so that could apply to most of our current postgrads. Their website clearly states their stance on work permits and it looks like the only area where they explicitly state you need a UK passport is for their “Enterprise Risk Services Technology (Security & Privacy)” roles.

UK and International Equivalent Qualifications

They also have clear requirements of the level of qualifications needed, including undergraduate degree level, and A levels or the equivalent qualifications which got you to university. Unusually, their website also clearly lays out the international equivalents – worth a look if you’re confused about how your non-UK school qualifications compare to UK equivalents, even if you’re not planning to apply to Deloitte. Just be aware that they do set the bar pretty high (especially for their consultancy roles) so other employers may not be quite so demanding.

No i pięknie oczywiście pada deszcz, nie no musi padać deszcz skoro wreszcie postanowiłem iść na WF. Założę się, że jutro rano to i grad będzie padał.

Ale nie ja się nie dam! Poprzysiągłem sobie, że choćby nawet gówno strugami waliło z nieba, to ja i tak na ten zasrany WF, na tą siódmą rano pójdę!

///Czas pisania notki 23:26- no i znowu się kurwa nie wyśpię…..///

At last, in one place – the closing dates for “graduate schemes” of over 130 recruiters.

Jenny, one of our information & IT specialists (and a postgrad herself) has selflessly trawled through the two major paper graduate employer directories (Prospects and GET) and summarised the results in this Word document:

Graduate Scheme Closing Dates 2009.

It includes a good number whose closing dates are in the New Year, who have no official closing date, or who do year round recruitment. However, as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, many of those employers may be filling up places as we speak. Worse, they may have already made offers on all their jobs, even as you’re slaving away into the small hours, trying to get your application in just before their stated deadline. Apply sooner rather than later to be sure of being considered.

If you’re interested in reading the ads or profiles of any of the employers mentioned, you’re welcome to pop in and pick up your own free copies of Prospects & GET from the Careers Resource Centre.

Ya se encuentra disponible para su descarga la lista de cambios de “rompimiento” entre la Beta 1 y la Beta 2 de WCF y WF para .NET 4.0 Beta 2 (en inglés).

Entre los cambios listados se encuentran:

• La característica de seguridad que afecta tokens SAML ha cambiado su comportamiento predeterminado.
• El codificador de burbuja (Blob encoder) fue rebautizado como codificador de flujo de bytes (ByteStream encoder). Mas aún funciona de la misma forma.
• El canal de transporte Local "en el dominio de aplicación" ha sido retirado. Utilice las canalizaciones por nombres en su lugar.
• Cuando se agrega colecciones de comportamientos a nivel de sitio o de máquina, las conductas se fusionaran con las configuraciones de comportamiento a nivel de sistema del mismo nombre. Anteriormente, sólo se obtenían los comportamientos configurados directamente por la aplicación si existía un conflicto de nombres.

Descarga: Breaking Changes between .NET Framework 4 Beta1 and Beta2 for Windows Communication (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).

Siedzieć i się nie ruszać. Mrugać oczami. Tylko.

W trakcie dnia planowałem napisać coś ambitnego, takiego na czasie i na temat, co swoją drogą byłoby sporym ewenementem w mojej karierze. Mogę jeszcze dodać, że planowałem już od poniedziałku, tak by zobrazować, jak to wygląda z moimi planami. Najlepiej wychodzi życie, kiedy się go nie planuje. Kiedy wyjeżdżałem z Białegostoku stawałem się innym człowiekiem. Kimś, z kogo byłem zadowolony. Byłem szczęśliwy patrząc na swoje zachowanie, na swoje słowa i myśli. Na swoją postawę. Coś, dzięki czemu nie starając się wcale stawałem się kimś, kim nie mogłem zostać u siebie w domu, siląc się i męcząc nad samym sobą. Zmienia się wszystko, od stosunku do miejsca, w którym się żyje, do obrazu własnego ‘ja’ rysowanego przed sobą. Nowa energia, zapał, siła.

Potrzeba tylko czasu, żeby wszystko wróciło na swoje miejsce, a szok nowego życia przeminie. Hello, old guy.

o

Wypływa to pewnie ze zmęczenia. Kładzenie się spać grubo po północy, zatracanie się galimatiasie czasu. Prawdziwy chaos. Teraz ciężko się złapać na właściwą godzinę. Ciemno robi się przed piątą i wszystkie kolejne godziny zlewają sie w jedną papkę i zanim zdążę uzmysłowić sobie, że trzeba zażyć drogocennego snu, jest już druga. Zanim leniwe myśli przedrgają nerwami do odpowiednich mięśni na zegarku pojawi już się trzecia. Poduszka, pięć minut i sen, nieprzytomny i mało dający. A rano wstaję i nie wiem, co się dzieje.

Wczoraj położyłem się koło 23:30. Pewien sukces, ale i tak na nic, zważywszy na to, że dzisiejszego dnia zaczynałem zajęcia o ósmej, tak więc o siódmej wypadałoby wstać i ożyć.

Budzik. Twarz do ściany, obracam się i mniej więcej tak w połowie obrotu uzmysławiam sobie, że nie jestem w tym łóżku, w którym zwykłem bywać. Jasno-beżowa ściana, szafka, sufit, różne meble pokoju w akademiku. Amh, jestem w Lublinie. Telefon gdzieś pod poduszką. Szukam by wyłączyć irytujący budzik. Znajduję, wyłączam, leżę dalej. Pięć minut mnie nie zbawi. Wstać, czy nie wstać, oto jest pytanie.

Wstaję, a dziwne myśli wkradają mi się w głowę. Koledzy śpią jak aniołki, ja jeszcze śpiący toczę się do stolika. Zastanawiam się nad mordercami, którzy później w sądzie zwalają wszystko na głosy. Ciekawi mnie, czy oni rzeczywiście je słyszą, czy tylko uznają, że powinni je usłyszeć, tak po prostu, by ubarwić sobie  życie.  Ot tak po prostu wstają pewnego ranka i myślą – ubić kogoś. Nożem po szyi, albo jakoś innaczej. Tak po prostu, bez przyczyny. Ale musi być jakiś powód, niech więc będą głosy.

Sięgam jednak po herbatę, a nie po coś innego. Wrzucam torebkę do kubka, zaparzam. W międzyczasie rozsmarowuję przymarznięty pasztet na kromkach chleba. Podumać trochę nad rankiem, a potem gnać na uczelnię.

Niezależnie od tego, który jest to rok, czy chodzę do gimnazjum, liceum czy na studia, środa zawsze jest najbardziej męczącym dniem. Ilością zajęć, rodzajem zajęć. Zaczynać wcześnie i kończyć późno. Od wielu lat ten dzień w kategorii ‘najbardziej męczący’ wygrywa od lat. W gimnazjum zdarzały się takie perełki jak od 8 do prawie 22. Teraz na szczęście takiego zapieprzu nie ma. Ale wstać na 8 muszę, inaczej rytuał nie byłby zachowany (a to byłoby złe). Kończę natomiast w pół do siódmej; dość efektownie, bo wf-em, po którym nie mam siły aby ruszyć ani ręką, ani nogą. Dziś ruszyliśmy nawet na okap, ścianka prawie pozioma – my rzecz jasna wspiamy się od spodu. Robi się coraz ciekawiej. Teraz doszły do tego bolące stopy, uciskane przez półtora godziny przez przymałe buty do wspinaczki (zakupem którym planowałem pochwalić się w poniedziałek). Ale nic to. Jest to satysfakcjonujące, więc cena zmęczenia nie gra roli. Jest  dobrze.

Lecz trzeba jeszcze zająć się ruskim na jutro… znacznie mniej kolorowo w tym rejonie.

Quick Update: 5th November
Hear Chris Leigh of Real Time Race interviewed on the Chris Evans radio show tonight (BBC Radio 2, 5-7pm). Don’t know who’ll be more enthusiastic, Chris or Chris (they’re two of a kind!). If you miss it today, I’m sure it will be on iPlayer for the next week.

Want to see what can be achieved with a lot of entrepreneurial passion, some very smart technology, plus a few added PhDs working part-time for the sheer love of it (and the possibility of future stock options)?

Real Time Race was featured this week on “Click“, the BBC news technology programme. They’re demo-ing a platform which has the potential to let you race a virtual F1 car alongside real F1 racing drivers – as a real F1 race happens. Instead of using CGI to recreate the track, they use video footage, laser positioning, GPS and real-time telemetry from the other cars (I think – hey, it’s complicated!). The programme is available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer until Monday 9th November and features Real Time Race as the first item.

The company behind all this is based at Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus near Warrington, which I visited a few weeks ago. I got the chance to talk to the CEO of Real Time Race, Chris Leigh, and as well as enthusing us all with his company, I felt he epitomised the challenges and excitment of setting up your own small (but with potential to be huge) hi-tech venture.

The company finance was (at that stage) Chris’s mortgage, so recruiting expensive postgrads wasn’t an option. However, he had 3 PhDs working with him, including someone who was working as a full-time consultant, whilst working on Chris’s project part time, and another PhD working part-time from a distance – Adelaide in Australia. They weren’t getting a salary, but working for share options, partly because they could see where this company could go, but also, I’d guess, because they were excited about working on the application of cutting edge technology.

Want to have a play with their technology yourself? You can download a demo from their website.

We saw several other hi-tech small businesses and I was encouraged to hear most of them talking about needing postgraduates – one business had 17 employees, 14 of whom had PhDs (Perceptive Engineering, working on process control, energy efficiency and pharmaceutical manufacturing).

However, what they really needed, in addition to smart brains, were people who were entrepreneurial, dynamic, could think for themselves and move at the lightning speed at which small companies operate, and ideally who were confident enough to be able to interact professionally with the senior managers who were the customers or backers of the business.

It was this last skill which they struggled to find, so if you can spend some of your time as a postgrad improving your commercial “nous” (more about understanding how businesses tick than management theory) and improving your confidence and business etiquette, you’ll be particularly sought after.

For more ideas of up and coming employers, have a look at some of the other Daresbury Campus tenants including Link Information Technology, Probio Healthcare, Web Comms, Applied Computing and Engineering, Calon Associates and Slainte Technologies, all of whom spent time talking to us about the jobs they have to offer and the skills they need. There’s more info about the event we attended and the skills these companies need in a recent Daresbury blog post (yes, they blog, and tweet too).

Small businesses are definitely a great source of new jobs and those based on Science or Innovation Parks are likely to need the higher order skills which postgrads can bring. They’re normally cash strapped in the early days, so with most, you won’t get rich quick – but you might get very rich long term.

Quick reminder that I’m doing two more talks this week in the “Career Essentials for Postgrads” series:

• Interviews for Masters Postgrads – today (Monday 2nd Nov) at 1.00pm, LT 1.4, Kilburn Building
• Interviews for PhDs – Thursday 5th Nov, again at 1.00pm, LT 1.4, Kilburn Building

Next week is the last talk in this series, on Assessment Centres. As there’s normally a smaller audience for this talk, I’ve combined Masters and PhDs into one talk:

• Assessment Centres for Postgraduates – Monday 9th Nov, at 1.00pm, LT 1.4, Kilburn Building

Again, I’m aiming to make a version of the Interviews and Assessment Centre talks available on-line (audio plus slides) after the face-to-face talks.

So, did anyone else get one?

Thanks to Andy from www.FindAPhD.com/www.FindAMasters.com for the freebie – and for producing a useful web resource which I do recommend frequently.

Their website is especially comprehensive for biological and chemical sciences but also has lots of opportunities for other subjects.

However, the one area which is less well represented is humanities PhDs, so I challenged Andy about this. He pointed out that for most humanities PhDs, you have to come up with your own proposal – so there are far fewer pre-defined PhD projects to advertise. Obvious really, if I’d only engaged my brain before asking.

Tomorrow is the big Postgraduate Study Fair at Manchester Central (G-Mex as was).

Good reasons to go:

• You’re thinking about continuing with postgraduate study (for most of you, this will be a PhD – or maybe another Masters?)
• You want to talk to almost 100 exhibitors, face to face, about applying to their institutions, what funding they have, what their university is like etc.
• You want to investigate studying outside the UK – there will be representatives there from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland, in addition to lots from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England.
• You’re interested in some professional study programmes such as News Associates Journalism training or MAs from Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
• You want to talk to careers advisers about where postgrad study might fit in your career plans.

Bad reasons to go:

• You’re looking for postgraduate jobs.
  This is about doing postgraduate courses. There isn’t a purely “postgraduate jobs fair” – all the graduate jobs fairs include jobs open to postgraduates.
• You need to talk to someone about a specific PhD or research topic.
  They’re unlikely to have your potential supervisor in attendance, but may be able to talk to you more generally about support for postgraduates.
• You’re looking for more of those freebies you picked up at the last two fairs.
  Hmm, these are universities, so you might strike lucky with the odd pen or cardboard coaster but don’t expect lavish giveaways (though I have heard that someone will have mugs which you can write on with chalk, like blackboards – but I’m not telling you who’s got these until I’ve been there first…)

If you fancy being your own boss, there’s a new one day event aiming to help you, taking place in Manchester, with free places for graduates and postgraduates.

The thing I particularly like about the Flying Start “Make It Happen” programme is that it recognises that whilst some of you might want to set up your own businesses, others are more interested in self employment or freelancing – and they have follow on programmes for each of these approaches. In addition, they are offering 12 months mentoring support to help get you started.

The initial Manchester programme is on Wednesday 18th November at the Manchester Conference Centre (right next to North Campus) from 10.00am until 3.00pm, and in addition to Flying Start, they say there will be representatives from Business Link and HSBC. You have to sign up beforehand for a place. I suspect this offer will be popular, so if you’re interested, I wouldn’t wait too long to register.

In a slightly different sort of Question Time to the one in the news at the moment, there will be a Careers Question Time for life scientists next week. This is the chance to talk to life science graduates and postgraduates who have gone into careers in :

• Patents
• Pharmaceuticals
• Clinical science
• Science communication
• Clinical trials
• Medicine (as a graduate entrant)
• Business development
• Environmental strategy (come and meet Erica, former zoologist, who I met at Yorkshire Water)

It’s taking place on Wednesday 28th October, from 2-4pm, in Stopford Lecture Theatre 1. Come armed with all your career questions.

Following the slidecast on “Finding Jobs for Postgraduates”, I’ve now created an on-line version of my Applications talks, covering CVs for Postgraduates, Covering Letters and Application Forms, with both slides and audio commentary.

You’ll find them embedded in this post, archived on the “On-Line Talks” page on this blog (later today), and with a bit of luck – available soon from the Careers Service website as a rather nifty playlist widget on the Postgrad pages.

There’s always lots more I could cover in the talks, so inevitably there will be things you might want to know about applications which are missing – there are always plenty of questions in a face-to-face talk. So, if you have questions on anything in these talks, or things you think are missing from the talks, just drop me a comment and I’ll try to answer them. If there are lots of questions, I’ll find a way of presenting them together as FAQ s.

Note: To get the best out of the CVs talk, I’ve suggested having a copy of some sample CVs to refer to. The clickable links on the presentation refer to our standard CVs handouts, CVs From Scratch and CVs for Research Students which both have example CVs at the back.