2011 Summary

Latitude Resource was established in mid 2010 and has successfully been trading as a specialised GIS recruitment and outsourcing business for the past 18 months. As we have now completed our first full calendar year, we thought it a good idea to send out a festive season news letter.

Since inception in June 2010, the geospatial market accepted our specialised GIS recruitment and outsourcing services with open arms. Our client base has grown from initially providing services to a few specialised GIS consultancies to now servicing a wide range of clients utilising spatial technologies across South Africa, including:

• Local, Provincial and National Government
• Research Institutes
• Parastatals
• Mining Consultants
• Conservationists
• National and international geospatial data, solution and service providers
• Logistics, Marketing and BI related businesses
• Town Planners and
• Engineering firms

Apart from sourcing suitable GIS technicians, specialists and photogrammetrists to fulfil our clients’ personal requirements; we have also successfully placed geospatial researchers, software developers, business developers and sales consultants within the traditional GIS and newly developing geo spatial markets.

We are looking forward to a busy 2012 as the geo spatial market is developing at a rapid rate and GIS data, tools and solutions are more widely used across a variety of industry sectors.

We would like to wish you a very merry festive season and hope 2012 will be a prosperous year.

Enjoy the upcoming holidays!

Bursaries for Geomatics and Survey Courses

Here is a list of bursaries as advertised by GISSA and SAGI - http://www.sagi.co.za/bursaries.php

Online GIS Diplomas, Certificates and Degrees

If anybody is interested in furthering their tertiary education in GIS, but can not attend a full-time course, here is a few links to international on-line qualifications:

Various USA based courses - http://gislounge.com/distance-learning/

Denver University, USA - http://universitycollege.du.edu/gis/degree/certificate/geographic-information-systems/degreeid/31#courses

UNIGIS - http://salzburg.unigis.net

I am sure there are many more, so if you come across any, feel free to make a comment on this post for others to read.

CV Tips and Advice - 05.12.2011

Here follows a few tips with regards to making your CV as professional and effective as possible.

1. Always ad the start and end dates, preferably in years and months, to all past employment positions.
2. List your relevant work experience from the most recent to the oldest.
3. Always ad a completion date to any qualifications obtained.
4. Always double and even triple check for spelling mistakes.
5. Preferably, do not ad photo's to your CV, unless requested by the employer or agent. If you do ad a photo, please keep this as professional and formal as possible. Please keep photo's to head, shoulder or at the most upper body shots.
6. Never use capital letters only in your CV, use it to highlight a particular heading or word only.
7. Use the same font type in your CV, or if you really want to use another font, keep the use of it consistent throughout the CV.
8. Since GIS is a technical field where the use of software is heavily relied on, remember to add a section in your CV that will list your software experience. Apart from listing this in one "Software Experience" section, also mention this under each job/employment section as it will highlight what software was used for what tasks.
9. Do not include a header page unless it is requested by the employer or agent. The first page of your CV should start with your personal information, but should also display a summary of your qualifications, experience and skills. This first page will therefore double as a one page advertisement of you.
10. If you have more than 2 years experience, do not list all the subjects, plus results obtained for each in the main body of your CV as this makes the CV to long and difficult to read. This information can be added to the CV as a appendix.

We will elaborate on some of these points in future blog entries, but in the mean time, please remember the 30 seconds rule which refers to the amount of time a CV has to catch the eye of a potential employer.

Apart from the tips above, please also review some of our previous blog entries if you have not already read them:
CV Tips Intro - http://latitude-resource.blogspot.com/2011/09/cv-tips-intro.html
Applying for a advertised position - http://latitude-resource.blogspot.com/2011/09/applying-for-advertised-position-dos.html
CV Layout - http://latitude-resource.blogspot.com/2011/09/your-cv-layout-dos-and-donts.html
CV Layout Continued - http://latitude-resource.blogspot.com/2011/09/your-cv-layout-dos-and-donts-continue.html