t'was the week before Christmas............

.........and the recruitment industry was winding down, except we aren't! It's mid December and we are having a good month taking new vacancies and enquiries from prospective Recruitment Partners.


Infact we have a couple of interesting initiatives running over the Christmas and New year period, which we are looking forward to as a direct result of http://www.recruitment-wave.com, Twitter and the UK Recruitment Directors Group - proof again that professional / social media works. More about these in future posts if all works out in the way that we anticipate.

So what will you and your business be doing over Christmas? We will still have plenty of staff in to help with any vacancies between now and January 4th, therefore if you need extra resources over this period, contact me in the usual way and we have plenty of resources available, especially with contract vacancies which tend to be the urgent requests. We have seen a big rise in perm vacncies and have received fewer contract roles recently and I would love to re-address the balance!

I will be taking a few days out over Christmas, but as I live near the office, can and will be around if needed. I will access email etc regularly and so either I or a colleague will respond to all requests.

I hope that the baby doesn't arrive over Christmas! We wouldn't want him or her to arrive to early, although we can barely contain our excitement as January approaches. The due date is mid / late January so not far now and if he or she arrives over Christmas, they may always feel unrewarded in the way that people with birthdays over the Christmas period often do.
My present is of course a healthy son / daughter and Jojo and I have cut back on present buying this year. We have also entered into a secret Santa deal with family this year as we know that everyone will want to buy lots of gifts for the baby when we find out whether beanie is a little boy or girl. At the moment, everything is neutral in colour and we are looking forward to adding some colour to the nursery and outfits.
I have to say that the recent pinkstinks campaign to disuade parents from dressing little girls in pink seems ridiculous and there is no way that Jojo or our mothers / aunts, sisters etc will not be buying pink outfits if beanie is a little girl! Surely, aaspirations are inspired and encouraged by parents, family and surroundings and we intend to provide the very best we can.

We had a great day in Topsham again at the weekend and will be spending the odd day down there over Christmas as we have some jobs to do on Domino while she is on the hard. I will have finished the nursery over the coming weekend so will have a bit of time to relax and have my last drink somewhere between Christmas and New Years so I intend to make the most of the time I have left!

For further information, please visit www.recruitment-hub.com or http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com/

If you would like to discuss further, please give me a call on 0845 117 0 115 or send your details to info@recruitment-hub.com

1) The Hub is a split fee recruitment business.
2) Send vacancies that you are unable or struggling to fill to us.
3) We will source candidates and present a short list to you.
4) You brand the candidates and send the shortlist to the client.
5) When the placement is made, we split the fee.

The Hub is part of a £100m + recruitment group and uses their combined delivery capability and infrastructure to deliver applications for our recruitment partners. Our recruitment partners generate the vacancy, we find the candidates, the partner maintains contact with the client, we speak to the candidate and split the fee when the placement is madeIf that could be of use, for any vacancies that you struggle with, then please let me know.


I am also the owner of a Linkedin Group, specifically for Directors of UK Recruitment businesses. To join, you must be a Director of a UK based recruitment company - Simple!

It provides a great opportunity to network and share views.

Link can be found here - http://www.linkedin.com/groups?homeNewMember=&gid=1962486&trk=

Info about me can be found at http://www.recruitment-hub.com or http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com

UK Recruitment Directors

Hello! I hope that you enjoyed the guest blog from Mike Wedge of Sticky Media last week. If anyone else would be interested in guest blogging, please let me know!

The Hub continues and despite the blip a couple of weeks a go, November has been a busy month. A number of new partners have joined the network and we are very active with live roles which we hope will resolve before Christmas. We have this morning, taken another 7+ IT vacancies from a new recruitment partner and December is looking good. Just as well that we are expanding our team! One of our partners has even informed us that from January, he will begin to use The Hub for all candidate delivery to his agency, allowing his employees to concentrate purely on business development!

Recruitment Partners typically find out about The Hub via referral or via our now establised social media channels and I am a big believer in the value to be gained from social / professional media, once you get your head around using them. The vast majority of our business has come from a free source - i.e. we havent paid to advertise! I am by no means an expert in social / professional networking tools and because we didn't want to spend loads on advertising at the outset, we had to find alternatives. There are a host of mediums that a business can use nowadays to advertise their wares and some are industry specific whilst others work for general cross market services.

My preferred network tool is Linkedin which is widely used by the recruitment industry. Linkedin allows you to build a network of colleagues, clients and associates and once established with a decent sized web of 1st degree contacts, search for other users that are linked to your contact (within a couple of degrees).
Once connected you are notified of status updates and able to search for contacts by job title or by company or organisation. - Its easy to see how why this is of use to recruiters!

One of the things that I set up a few months back was the UK Recruitment Directors Group. The UKRDG is a space for Directors of UK based recruitment businesses to network and discuss news, experiences and issues. We have a diverse membership and some interesting debates. Members include IT, Finance, HR etc agencies but also plenty of niche companies including a lift (Elevator) specialist recruitment business and, a helicopter pilot recruiter. We now have over 300 member companies and new membership applications every day. The group has been a success and we are currently considering replicating the group out of linkedin, onto a dedicated forum.
If you are not a member yet and would be interested in joining, please let me know.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?homeNewMember=&gid=1962486&trk=

Christmas will soon be upon us and things will be slowing down over the festive period. It is always difficult to predict what Christmas will be like for a recruitment business and some years i have sat around twiddling my thumbs whilst I also remember placing 7 SAP contractors between Christmas and New Year! I hope that we will be busy but also get the time to relax with family.

It's going to be a bit of a funny christmas this year for the Hiles household. Jo will be 8 months pregnant and have finished work, whilst I will be reactive to Hub requests and slightly unsure of whether I will be at home or in the office. Jo is of course not drinking and our focus is really January and the arrival of the baby rather than Christmas day. Christmas day, we are going to Browns for lunch so no washing up!

My weekends have gone from sailing Domino in Topsham and a few drinks to buying baby stuff and decorating. The past few weekends have been spent decorating the nursery and hall, whilst the next couple of weekends will be spent decorating our bedroom. We have even replaced the double glazing and spent goodness knows how much on goodness knows what! Thankfully, we have some very generous parents, greatly looking forward to the arrival of the 1st grandchild on both sides.

Yesterday, after fitting the new light in the nursery and attempting to hang a blind, Jo and I unwrapped the new Bugaboo Chameleon. I cannot believe how complex and expensive buggies are! - especially when you spend just under £1000 in John Lewis on the buggy and car seat and then have to assemble the buggy as its flat packed.

Bugaboo do very nicely out of John Lewis. It seems that you cant have something cheap, practical and lightweight when it comes to buggies. The staff at JL in Bristol appear to take every set of new parents through the same circuit when showing the buggies, starting at the cheaper but heavier / less practical ones and eventually arriving at the bugaboo. As a father, you of course do not want your wife / partner to struggle with a heavy buggy and so you end up by buying the expensive bugaboos or icandys.

The really strange thing though is that you dont mind and want your baby to have the best buggy they can and nicely decorated nursery. It must be that something is built into us all about wanting the best for our children, even before we meet them.
Beanie is due January 23rd and I can't wait!

More about me on this blog - http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com or about The Hub at http://www.recruitment-hub.com

1) The Hub is a split fee recruitment business.
2) Send vacancies that you are unable or struggling to fill to us.
3) We will source candidates and present a short list to you.
4) You brand the candidates and send the shortlist to the client.
5) When the placement is made, we split the fee.

The Hub is part of a £100m + recruitment group and uses their combined delivery capability and infrastructure to deliver applications for our recruitment partners. Our recruitment partners generate the vacancy, we find the candidates, the partner maintains contact with the client, we speak to the candidate and split the fee when the placement is madeIf that could be of use, for any vacancies that you struggle with, then please let me know.

Knowing You Knowing Me(dia)

I have been approached by Jonny to write a guest article for his much revered blog. By way of introduction I am part of Sticky Media Group – the recruitment advertising and media arm of Resource Solutions Group.

Continuing the theme of the UK market from Jonny’s articles, from a media perspective we have been experiencing a flurry of activity, with start-ups wanting to make a name for themselves in a down market, and existing companies wanting to refresh their image through a new website or more modern brand in time for the recovery, making the most of the rise in consumer and business optimism.

We have also seen a rise in the number of business blogs, business twitter accounts and other social media tools requested with all associated branding attached (Jonny himself has made quite an impact using social networking, a model that others emulate albeit with varying degrees of success!).

As we move further into the 21^st Century it is clear to all that those who ignore online media business potential do so at their peril, happily we are in a position to advise, design and implement online solutions to meet the needs of many, so far ranging from residential homes to Government agencies!

On a personal note we have been working on various projects with Jonny and The Hub for some time now, it has been a pleasure throughout, and we wish Jo and he all the best over the next couple of exciting months!

If you would like to find out anymore about Sticky Media Group you can view our website at www.stickymediagroup.co.uk, or contact me directly on mike@stickymediagroup.co.uk.

Recovery

Further to last week's post about a stunted recovery and maximising business, we received a number of mails from readers of the blog and our mailing list about their experience of the recovery.
One of the mails from the MD of a successful recruitment business based in Scotland stated 'Perms sector decimated in the last 10 months and no real sign of volume increases till March 2010 onwards. Our core temp outsourcing business is increasing as a seasonal trend but at a lower rate than the previous 2 years. I genuinely believe we are in a W shaped recession.'

I have used the W shaped recession term a number of times this week in talks with our recruitment partners and network and it is a term to which most subscribe. Many businesses are experiencing a slump again and pre-christmas there is less new business forecasted.
There are of course exceptions and associates that work in the public sector have suffered less than businesses that work solely in the private sector. A business based in Southern England that we work with, have maintained their position solely because of the value of their public sector contracts. March 2010 feels about right to me, but as an associate pointed out this morning, we have to wait for a potential affect from a change in government that could change everything!

Doom and Gloom I know and I count my blessings as we are still picking up requirements. Every vacancy is valuable and so work with us to maximise the opportunity from the available business.

1) The Hub is a split fee recruitment business.
2) Send vacancies that you are unable or struggling to fill to us.
3) We will source candidates and present a short list to you.
4) You brand the candidates and send the shortlist to the client.
5) When the placement is made, we split the fee.

We use the delivery engine of a £120m recruitment plc to source the candidates through access to massive online and offline resources.
You, the recruitment partner can concentrate on winning new business and maximise existing relationships by asking your clients for a greater range of roles.

More about us at http://www.recruitment-hub.com but the best way to find out more is to call Jonny Hiles on 0845 117 0 115 or email jonny@recruitment-hub.com

I look forward to your comments!
http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com

Vacancies

Is it me or has the market dipped a little? All the talk of recovery is great and generally, the recruitment industry has kept going despite of the hyped doom and gloom. The way that the British media comment about the economy of course affects the performance of the economy and therefore I hope that we are coming out of the worst of the recession.
In the past week we have been catching up with a couple of regular partners who tell us that November looks like a quiet month at the moment and then of course we are into Christmas so potentially fewer vacancies until 2010. Of course we realise that things are still tough at the moment and that few businesses will be kicking off projects in 2009, which makes it more important that we maximise opportunity from existing vacancies and clients.

(Step by Step) How we can help -

1) The Hub is a split fee recruitment business.
2) Send vacancies that you are unable or struggling to fill to us.
3) We will source candidates and present a short list to you.
4) You brand the candidates and send the shortlist to the client.
5) When the placement is made, we split the fee.

We use the delivery engine of a £120m recruitment plc to source the candidates through access to massive online and offline resources.
You, the recruitment partner can concentrate on winning new business and maximise existing relationships by asking your clients for a greater range of roles.

More about us at http://www.recruitment-hub.com but the best way to find out more is to call Jonny Hiles on 0845 117 0 115 or email jonny@recruitment-hub .com - (I put a space in the address to avoid too much spam)

Collaboration - www.Recruitment-Wave.com

We have been playing with Google Wave this week, inbetween sourcing candidates for our partners! As you know, we have been thinking about Google Wave based recruitment applications since Wave was announced. Mashable.com suugested a number of potential applications for Google Wave in their article - http://mashable.com/2009/09/05/google-wave-ideas/ and we really do agree that Google Wave could be game changing - http://mashable.com/2009/05/31/google-wave-features/

We are investigating Joint Venture opportunities and are very interested to hear from anyone that would like to collaborate with us on a recruitment based Wave extension. As you know, we own the domain - http://www.recruitment-wave.com and various other wave.com URL's centered around recruitment and we know recruitment!

If you would like to discuss www.recruitment-wave.com or www.recruitment-hub.com in greater detail, please give me a call on 0845 117 0 115

Jonny

Focus

Okay, Okay, I know that I have not posted in the last couple of weeks. In my experience, blogging is something that you need to get into the habit of doing and once you do it regularly, you will enjoy it. If you don't do it regularly, then you find it hard to start again!

I have experienced a couple of similar scenario's recently.
1) Walking
Last winter, when I started working at a regular office again, within 2 miles from home, I was determined to walk to work whenever possible to get some exercise. As soon as I started walking, I began to enjoy the fresh air, the birds in the park, the clouds and watching people sat in long queues as I walked past them etc etc. Walking is a much nicer way to start the day and far less stressful. Over the summer, I was having to bring the car in to travel to meetings and I soon forgot how much I enjoyed walking, like an idiot driving throughout the summer and autumn months and am now walking in the cold winter. As soon as I started I was hooked once again.
2) Pushing The Hub
The Hub inspires new relationships. New relationships generate new ventures. New ventures are exciting but a distraction away from core activities.
The Hub has created a number of spin offs, some of which, we hope will become successful ventures and we are always looking for more! The Group is a really great size for parterning with, we are big enough to have lots of support, capability and infrastructure, but remaining entrepreuneurial in approach. A victim of The Hub's success, I have probably been distracted from pushing and selling the virtues of The Hub and attracting new partners and vacancies.
This of course ties in with writing the Blog as a medium for promoting us to you, and therefore I am very much now re-focussed on keeping the blog uptodate with my renewed energy gained from walking in!

Incase this is the first post that you have read, The Hub is a fee-splitting recruitment business. We are part of a £120m recruitment plc and use their combined delivery capability and infrastructure to deliver applications for our recruitment partners. Our recruitment partners generate the vacancy, we find the candidates, the partner maintains contact with the client, we speak to the candidate and split the fee when the placement is made.

One of the initatives that I will continue to be involved in however is group expansion.
We have ambitious plans and I am actively looking to open a West Midlands based IT Recruitment Brand in early 2010. We are therefore looking for acquisition or investment opportunities in the West Midlands and I will paste a copy of an advert that I am running to the bottom of this post. If you know of anyone that is selling their existing recruitment business or looking for investment and support, then please get in touch. We will pay a bounty for an introduction.

Another task is to re-write the website - www.recruitment-hub.com
As I said in an earlier post, we hadn't initially realised that the majority of partners would be businesses rather than individuals and therefore the website needs some tweaks. We do still work with individuals though and we signed a new partner last week - welcome aboard Tom!

Speaking of aboard, we have been making the most of the season onboard Domino before she comes out of the water for the winter. Jojo is growing daily and has climbed the ladder from the tender for the last time before beanie arrives. Next time we sail, there will be a new member of the family! She is now 26 weeks pregnant and i will now use weekends to crack on with the nursery and get everything ready.

The Advert -
IT Recruitment - Director

The Hub has been retained by a large recruitment plc, that will be launching a new IT Recruitment Business in Birmingham early in 2010.

The Group is a £100m+ recruitment plc with ambitious plans to launch a new brand in the Midlands.

The Opportunity
The Group are seeking a Managing Director to shape, launch and build a new IT Recruitment Business. You will be involved right at the outset with naming, branding and designing the business strategy with the assistance of the very successful management team of the plc. The new business will be yours to run and build, using the support and infrastructure of the £100m +recruitment group. Furthermore, you will recruit a team and offices will be provided in central Birmingham. The business will not ne restricted by location.
We are keen to attract the best and this is a salaried role, with equity in the new business.

The Person
You will be a proven IT Recruiter, with an established network in the Midlands IT market.
You will be ambitious.
You will be entrepreneurial, and have your own ideas about building a successful IT Recruitment Business.
You will lead by example. You will be passionate about IT Recruitment.

You may have already run your own or someone elses business, or be an employee looking for the next step. We are open to ideas!

To apply, send a profile to Jonny Hiles at The Hub to arrange an informal conversation. All communication is treated in strict confidence.

This is a genuine and unique opportunity and we look forward to discussing ideas with you.

Phew! - Enjoyed that and I wont leave it so long next time!

J

Jonny Hiles
0845 117 0 115
jonny@recruitment-hub.com
http://www.recruitment-hub.com
http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com

Wave!

The following is an update from the bbc

Google invites users to join Wave

By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter, BBC News

Rory Cellan-Jones talks to the developers of Google's 'next-generation' messenger service

Google Wave, which combines email, instant messaging and wiki-style editing will go on public trial today.

The search giant hopes the tool, described as "how e-mail would look if it were invented today", will transform how people communicate online.

It will be open to 100,000 invitees from 1600BST, each of whom can nominate five further people to "join the Wave".

The tool is also open source, meaning third party developers can build applications for it.

The developer behind Wave described it as "a communication and collaboration tool".

"It struck us that e-mail is still the main communication tool on the web, which seemed remarkable given that it is 20-year-old technology," said Lars Rasmussen, who, alongside his brother Jens, was the brains behind Google Maps.

In designing Wave, the brothers took as a starting point the idea of "a conversation sitting in a cloud".

"We found we could build a flexible tool with a surprising amount of functionality," Mr Rasmussen told BBC News.

Google Wave combines IM, e-mail and social networking features

Such functions includes real-time typing.

This means people can see a comment being written character by character and can formulate their answer to a question before a fellow 'Waver' has even finished asking it.

Mr Rasmussen acknowledges that this feature could be annoying, but thinks it is also a great time-saver.

For those unsure whether they want all their Wave friends to see exactly what they are writing, when they are writing it, the developers are working on a draft mode which will allow the real-time aspect to be switched off .

Unlike traditional instant messenger (IM) conversations continue even once everyone has logged out. This means that those invited to a Wave conversation but not currently online, can read the message strand in full at a later date.

Sharing photos

More radical is the inclusion of wiki-style editing tools.

All messages can be edited at any point by members of the conversation and a Playback facility allows everyone to see exactly who has edited what and at what time.

I have been accused of being pathologically optimistic about it but I can't see why people wouldn't want it Lars Rasmussen Read more about Wave in Rory Cellan-Jone's blog

Google, a famously collaborative firm, now writes all its design documents in Wave.

Wave also makes it very easy to share photos, which can simply be dragged from the desktop onto the Wave platform.

"If you are planning a trip. you can talk about it and plan it in Wave and then share all the photos at the end," said product manager Stephanie Hannon.

Google Wave runs in most browsers, with the notable exception of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). Users of IE will have to download a plug-in, known as Chrome Frame to use the application.

Microsoft does not recommend installing this plug-in, claiming it compromises security.

As IE is still the dominant browser, its incompatibility with Wave could affect take-up of the platform.

Google insists the failure of Wave in IE is not an excuse to promote its own browser, Chrome. It said the developers worked "very hard" at trying to make it work in IE.

Much of the code for Wave is written in HTML 5, the next-generation of web language.

Initial users can invite five other people to join Wave

In a nod to social-networking site Facebook, there are already a host of applications for Wave, including Sudoku and Chess.

"We are now trying to persuade someone to build a crossword puzzle," said Mr Rasmussen.

He acknowledges that the success of the platform will depend on how many people are willing to join.

"Without other people adopting Wave it will never take off," he said.

"I have been accused of being pathologically optimistic about it but I can't see why people wouldn't want it," he said.

His enthusiasm seems to be being borne out to a certain degree. Since Wave was announced at a Google developers' conference in May, one million people have registered interested.

Wave will have a full consumer launch early next year.

Link for this page - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8280864.stm

More about our plans for Wave at www.recruitment-wave.com
More about The Hub at www.recruitment-hub.com
More about Jonny Hiles at http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com

Topsham Town Page: Personal & Blogs

Topsham Town Page: Personal & Blogs

Cyclical Recruitment

Has it really been two weeks since my last post? Where do the days go?
We have received positive feedback from our www.Recruitment-Wave.com ideas and thank you to all that sent us a message. Also welcome to all of the new members of the UK Recuitment Directors Group on linkedin. We added 50 new recruitment businesses in a week!

Professionally, I am pleased that August is out of the way. It's not that I dont like the sun, its that fact that everyone is on holiday. The week either side of the bank holiday was the quietest couple of weeks we have known all year. Our Recruitment Partners were working, but applicants were hard to find and client decision makers were all away!

We picked up a recruitment consultant role in birmingham from one of our partners which we had a look at as we thought that it would be very straightforward. We placed an advert on Reed on the Friday evening, anticipating a huge response, only to find that we had received one application by Tuesday morning. It really was just a consultants role with £18k basic, but we should have been inundated. We opened the role up to Monster and Total Jobs in the end and still very few responses.

Now that we are back in September, life returns to normality and the cyclical recruitment market starts up again. I think that I may have mentioned in a previous post that the year for a recruitment consultant tends to look like this -

January - 1st two weeks are quiet but then busy busy! +the long wait til payday
February -busy busy but short month so commission may not be great.
March - gets a little quieter as clients have run out of budget!
April - 2nd half is manic
May - manic and a lots of working days so good commission
June - busy and make the most of it as summer will soon be with us!
July - holiday season (need I say more!)
August - holiday season
September - typically a great month, contractors do lots of hours to recoup holiday costs
October - busy busy
November - busy busy
December - 2nd half quieter but activity switches to renewals of contractors

Of course, January and September are normally months where people look for new employment having had some time away from the office to think about life!

So, because of the way that the year works, agencies are able to anticipate what the month is likely to throw at them and allocate resources and budget and maximise the opportunity. This year has seen some spectacular lows and quiet months but the boom times will come again.

The Hub concept supports a recruitment agency business by providing a professional flexible resoucing team that you only use when all of your resources are tied up. We use the resources of the £120m recruitment plc to find the best available candidates for your role, which you then deliver to your client. When we place, we split the fee! It really is a very simple model.

Aside from delivery, we can offer recruitment business support and consultancy and this is an area that it growing for us. Once again, we just use the groups resources but becuase of our size, we know what we are doing and how to maximise revenue and opportunity. Call me if you would like further info.

We have been spending our weekends down in Topsham, enjoying the boat whilst we can. Pilotage on the Exe is interesting, and really not as complicated as you may initially think although we havent tried it after dark yet! We took Domino across the Bar at Exmouth this weekend. My ancestors would have known the run down the Exe, out across the bar into Lyme bay well, as well as the various pubs in Topsham that would have provided hospitality to them upon their return as they do for us now. It is nice to follow in footsteps sometimes. The entrance to Exmouth is notorious and lumpy and poor Jojo was ill, which oddly had the most wonderful side effect as she felt the baby or beanie as it is currently known, began to kick for the first time on Saturday evening and has been kicking ever since. We may have another sailor on our hands!

Watching Jo climb off of the tender, up the ladder onto the stern of the boat is becoming more and more nerve-racking so we know that we will not be able to do it for much longer. I thoroughly enjoy life on a boat and actually had forgotten how much I really do enjoy it. I am grateful that I did loads for a while and gained the experience and the skills I have. I am in a very fortunate place at the moment with a great and healthy family, a job that I enjoy and believe in and of course a baby on the way! I was reminded of how fortunate I am when I watched a disabled couple struggling to cross the road this morning. We are very fortunate not to have that constant struggle and sometimes not as grateful as we perhaps should be. I will make a donation to a local charity today.

If you would like to discuss anything contained in this blog, please call Jonny Hiles at The Hub on 0845 117 0 115 or email info@recruitment-hub.com

More detail on The Hub at www.recruitment-hub.com or via the pages on this blog - http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com

Jonny Hiles

www.recruitment-wave.com is live!

The new page for Recruitment Wave is now up and running! Sorry for the brief delay. Let me know your thoughts.

Jonny Hiles

The URL is http://www.recruitment-wave.com


Jonny Hiles is a Director at The Hub. For More information, please visit http://www.recruitment-hub.com or http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com for the latest news.

Making Waves

What happens at this time of year? People are away, decisions are not being made and the whole recruitment process is on a go slow for much of the summer. It seems especially the week either side of the bank holiday. Hits on my websites - http://www.recruitment-hub.com and http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com were down and just look at the volumes of traffic around on the road to tell you that people are on holiday and not in in the office. This morning I was the only car sat at traffic lights where there are normally 10+ cars waiting in the line with me.

Again we still have vacancies and infact a few more arrived over the weekend, so we are keeping our guys and girls busy. We have picked up some more interesting roles over the past week or two including a Pastry Product Developer for a well known company. They want someone to design cakes!

I have been determined to find some time to look at new Hub projects and products. We have opened up our offering further and we are now providing a broader range of Hub services to compliment the delivery. This effectively means that we are now offering everything from incubation services to recruitment business process outsource type services although I am slightly reluctant to really term the additional services under that banner. In my opinion, the term business process outsource is a minefield because of all the offshore companies that use this term. We are a UK based recruitment company first and anything else second!

One of the new projects that we are excited about is the potential of Google Wave. incase you haven't heard or read much about it yet, A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. There is loads about it on the web and search for Wave on the Google tool bar or have a look at wikipedia.
I first heard of Google Wave one evening whilst checking Twitter and noticed that Wave was a huge trending topic. A quick look on the rest of the web about Wave convinced me that there was a huge buzz about the potential and I realised that this was potentially a game changing product if Google gets it right.

If it really does what it says it will, then Google Wave really could revolutionise the way that people communicate over the web. Of course to succeed it will need to be 1) Relevent 2) User Friendly, both of which really remain to be seen, however Google has invited developers across the globe to develop applications to sit upon it.
I believe that it will have both business and social applications and of course the business applications are what interest me. I have plans for www.recruitment-wave.com and www.recruitment-wave.co.uk and www.cv-wave.com and www.jobwave.co.uk etc and will be launching the holding page for these this afternoon. What is interesting is that a couple of these sites get hits even though I am not promoting them in any way, which potentially is a good sign for the future!

I am of course keen to continue promoting and speaking to new Recruitment Partners and am sure that demand for The Hub will increase as the market picks up. If you are interested, drop me a line on 0845 117 0 115 or to jonny@recruitment-hub.com

Outside of work, Jojo is doing really well and looks great. We started clearing the spare room over the weekend and chose the buggy so all is becoming more and more real. We managed to get to Topsham early on Saturday and took Domino down the Exe to Exmouth. We managed to get down and back in time to enjoy the festivities of the Topsham Carnival on Saturday afternoon and evening which we enjoyed greatly. It had been years since we were out on the Exe near Exmouth and Starcross and brought back happy memories of my childhood, family sailing in a small dinghy.

As ever, if you would like to discuss any aspect of the blog or The Hub, please drop me a line on 0845 117 0 115 or to jonny@recruitment-hub.com

More info is available via the other pages on the blog or The Hub website - http://www.recruitment-hub.com

Jonny Hiles
Director
The Hub
www.recruitment-hub.com

We are looking for Recruitment Partners!

The Hub is a UK based network of recruitment specialists utilising a centralised delivery, back office and support function – or hub – hence the name.
We are part of a £120m recruitment plc. The Hub provides independent recruiters with the benefits of group infrastructure and support.

We are looking for Recruitment Partners to join the network.

How it works
As a recruitment plc, we can call upon significant resources which we deploy across our brands. Our brands include recruiters across a range of industries but also media companies, job boards, incubators and VC’s. We have a significant delivery capability using our own mature resources but also access to international, national, regional and niche job boards.
The Hub offers this infrastructure to our recruitment partners.

Typically, The Recruitment Partner passes us details of a vacancy that they would like support with and The Hub uses the groups delivery capability to find the best available candidates. The Recruitment Partner maintains contact with the client and we maintain contact with the candidate. When the placement is made, we split the fee.
Our Recruitment Partners benefit from the support of a large recruitment group, providing additional services and taking away some of the pain of life as an independent. Our Recruitment Partners are able to concentrate on winning and delivering business using our range of services and crucially open additional delivery channels by working with The Hub.

We also able to offer additional services including advertising , websites, invoicing, technology, investment etc and work with established recruiters and start ups. For further information, please visit www.recruitment-hub.com or http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com
If you would like to discuss further, please give me a call on 0845 117 0 115 or send your details to info@recruitment-hub.com

I am also the owner of a Linkedin Group, specifically for Directors of UK Recruitment businesses. To join, you must be a Director of a UK based recruitment company - Simple!
It provides a great opportunity to network and share views. Link can be found here - http://www.linkedin.com/groups?homeNewMember=&gid=1962486&trk=

Info about me can be found at http://www.recruitment-hub.com or http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com

Winning & Maintaining Business

The Hub
It is clear that the current recruitment market is a tough place to be at the moment. Over the last 10 years, the £26bn UK industry has been saturated by small entrepreneurial businesses looking for a slice of the action. The vast majority of the smaller agencies owners, by which I mean a business with less than 15 employees, would have started life with a larger agency where they learnt their trade and made their contacts before finally realising why am I doing this for someone else?

Most of these business owners would have always had the ambition to start a new business, although a few would have been forced into a situation where employment options were taken away and had to start a business.

The Recruitment Industry has always attracted ambitious, energetic sales people with no particular career direction as the employees of choice (I myself was in that category and have hired in that category). There can be no suprise that this group of people by nature have entrepreneurial spirit and one day look for an opportunity to start their own business.

When I used to be a corporate recruiter, I used to tell my suppliers that I wanted two things from them. 1) Consistently Deliver 2) Make my life easier - be easy to deal with.

In my experience, smaller recruiters place more emphasis on relationships and their success comes from the strength of their relationships. A single vacancy matters far more to a small agency when they are keen to win repeat business from you. How often does a large corporate pass a vacancy to a multi-national agency on a PSL and the vacancy just disappears into a black hole? The big multi national may know how to write a tender, but they do not always value your business when procurement has agreed a 7% margin.

I believe that a smaller agency, is far more likely to offer flexibility and genuinely try and make life easier for the hiring manager, simply because they have fewer vacancies and want to prove themselves to win repeat business.

Of course, smaller agencies however, are less likely to be able consistently deliver across a broad range of roles and different disclipines and that is where The Hub can offer support.

Example - We are working with a business owner, who is keen to maximise opportunity from her clients. As a finance specialist recruiter, she had been asked from time to time by some of her clients whether she could also deliver other vacancies such as HR, IT or Sales & Marketing. She had always declined because she did not have the infrastructure to deliver outside of her core market and therefore didn't want to commit and then lose her customers confidence. She has been well aware that she was turning down business, but when times were good, it wasn't as noticeable. We are now working with her business to maximise revenue from her clients. She now has confidence that she can deliver across the wider disciplines and the client is only too happy with her business as they can deliver and have an excellent relationship.

The Hub becomes your delivery engine, using our £120m recruitment plc infrastructure. You maintain the relationship with the client, we work with you in partnership to deliver.

The Hub has a range of services and we are always interested to hear from potential Recruitment Partners. Call Jonny Hiles on 0845 117 0 115 or info@recruitment-hub.com for more information.

The Hub website - http://www.recruitment-hub.com
Latest news - http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com

Hiles family

Quick Personal Blog! - The Hub Business Blog to follow!

Thank you all for your messages. Jo has actually had a couple of days now with no morning sickness so is loving life!

The Pic this week is of me in my mad hat at Jo's birthday 'Mad Hatters Tea Party' at the weekend.
Why the Roman helmet? - I was after a Bicorn(e),- imagine an Admirals hat, but was unable to find one that wasn't either cheap floppy felt or an expensive antique. As they are Naval hats, I went on to a militaria website to try and find one and thats when I happend upon the Steel Roman Legionaires replica helmet. I guess that it would have been made for someone that is into re-enactments, but I couldn't resist it when I learnt that it was only £14.40!
Granted, I hadnt really thought through wearing it on a hot day and running around playing rounders!

We will be flaking the main on Domino this weekend and heading off down river so keep fingers crossed. Update next week!

Blogging

The Hub Blog - Monday morning and a big list ahead of me.

Firstly, news! - I am delighted to announce that JoJo and I are expecting our first baby! Jo is three and a half months pregnant and due in January. We are both over the moon and have greatly enjoyed telling family and friends of the news over the past week or so.

Secondly, apologies! I am sorry for not updating the blog last week! Thank you for your various prompts and especially Martin McNerney for his email - It amused me so it got posted. I have lots on at the moment as you will read!

As you can imagine, life is busy at the moment. I am over-joyed at the pregnancy and the prospect at being a father and Jo is doing really well despite constant morning sickness. She has a lovely bump and the scans looked great. The pregnancy really only hit me a couple of weeks ago when we could see the baby moving and its heart beating, seeing this little life really affected me and made me determined to be the best husband and father that I can be.
This really is a life changing event for me and although friends and family tell you that it will be, until it happens, it is impossible to understand the affect that it starts to have upon you.

The baby however, is already giving me sleepless nights as I lay awake concerned with my new sense of responsibility and wondering about all of the things that I now need to do. Practical things include - convert the spare room into a nursery, sell Jo's Mini Cooper and buy a 5 door car, save lots of money to support us whilst Jo is off work, pay a chunk off the mortgage, and move house!

The fact that each item in my list is dependent upon The Hub's success and building some security in an unstable market is not lost on me and therefore ultimately I lay awake think of work at 3am several nights a week!

The Hub is working, we have some great partners supplying us with vacancies, we are sourcing candidates and generating interviews and placements. We are working hard and the volume of business and the interest that we attract is also growing. I still lay awake worrying. My greatest concern is the market - a) the volume of business, b) the margins, c) the slow recruitment process.

a) is obvious and I cant complain. We have business where plenty are struggling.

b) margins are down as everyone tries to be competitive and is squeezed. Again, i can't really complain as we only work above 15% perm and 12% contract and we still have business.

c) the slow recruitment process is a massive frustration at the moment when we are all keen to secure business and as a newish company, I am particularly keen to prove our worth and demonstrate how well the model works. One of our partners, a specialist search company, gave us some finance vacancies in late June. We sourced and had feedback and interview requests during the first week of July, requesting interview dates in mid-August! In reality, a two stage process with this customer will conclude in September with a start date in October and invoices paid in November. (if they stick to 30 days). The major work by us will have taken place in late June and therefore the recruitment cycle for this role is likely to be c5 months!

It would be far worse if the candidate was on 3 months or more notice.
12 months or more ago, this would not have happened. The customer would not have the luxury of waiting 6 weeks before first interview. The candidates would have dissapeared!

In recruitment, the summers are always a little slower as decision makers are on holiday but we are finding that this year, the process has been slower than I can remember.
Last week we were working with a couple of great new partners and a three partners that had been quiet for a few weeks have given us some new roles, so our resources are keeping busy. We are working across some familiar and unfamiliar markets and the variety of roles keeps things interesting for the team. CV's are out on most roles, so just waiting for feedback!

As always, we are looking to work with new recruitment partners even if the market is slow!

Our attraction strategy for Recruitment Partners has always been 'Ninja Marketing' - a phrase that I coined in error with Sticky Media. By 'Ninja Marketing', I meant, use of the online communication tools such as Linkedin, Twitter, etc and this blog. 'Ninja Marketing' is obviously not the correct term and is nonsense but I quite like it anyway. What I guess we use is a 'Gen Y' approach, which is simple, cheap and seems effective. Sticky have helped design lots of pieces of this strategy and thank you Mike once again for the new look blog, I hope you all like it?

Linkedin has probably delivered the most initial interest via things like my profile and the UK Recruitment Directors Group, but The Hub website and the blog are probably the most important forms of communication. I do not believe that I have met with any recruitment partner recently that hasn't read the blog and I regularly receive positive comments about it. It is something that I enjoy but sometimes find it hard to spend the time to keep updated. I know that its an important tool for The Hub and my rule is to try and add one item a week. I try to keep the blog chatty and a mix of personal and professional. I find some very dry business blogs very dull and surely that should not be the objective!

Of course, if you do enjoy the blog, the best way to check for updates is to subscribe, although I understand that it is difficult unless you have the right kind of email account. Therefore, we are creating a subscribers list for updates. The list will not insist that you have the right kind of email account and all we need is your name and email address. We will not spam you! If you would like to receive the updates, please send an email with 'Subscibe' in the title line to info@recruitment-hub.com and we will add you to the list!

The Hub is a UK based network of recruitment specialists utilising a centralised delivery, back office and support function – or hub – hence the name, Details about The Hub can be found either in the blog - http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com or The Hub website - http://www.recruitment-hub.com

Finally a boat update! I have spent the past couple of weekends on Domino, helping with general fixes. Domino is in great condition and has a fantastic pedigree. We are still a couple of weeks away though from our maiden voyage, just because of time, but she is coming together well and I cant wait. My bro has taken lots of pics so will send a link to his photo blog when he has updated.

Thank you for your patience in waiting for the update, if you would like to discuss any aspect of The Hub, please contact me at jonny@recruitment-hub.com or 0845 117 0 115.

Jonny Hiles
Director
The Hub
www.recruitment-hub.com

P.S. Congratulations to Che and Maria. We enjoyed the wedding!

Recently received this message...

Its all about me!

This new blog post is coming...............
24/07/2009
In the mean time, let me know what you think of the site - http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com

jonny@recruitment-hub.com

Jonny Hiles
The Hub

The Hit List!

The Hub - Quick Vacancy Update - The Hit List!
These are active roles that we are sourcing today using a variety of online and offline resources, national and local job boards and networking!

If you are one of the following, please get in touch via the contact details on http://www.recruitment-hub.com

1) Associate Director - Sustainability to £70k basic London.
(International Construction and Property Consultancy)
2) Partner - Corporate Commercial Legal Practice - c£100k, South West
3) Key Account Manager - Corporate Accounts, c £60,000 London
4) Senior Mechanical Engineer - £40k Leeds
5) Insurance Account handler - £25k Bristol

As you can see, we work across a broad range on industries!

Jonny Hiles

The Hub - http://www.recruitment-hub.com
Blog - http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com
0845 117 0 115


PS. WE ARE LOOKING FOR RECRUITMENT PARTNERS! - CLICK HERE!

PPS. The Pic is of a yacht called Chernikeeff 2, a Farr 52 that I sailed onboard for the Round The Island Race a few years ago. (I think we were 3rd home of 1700 or so boats!)

Professional ramblings of a wannabe adventurer! (from my office!)

Hola! I have been meaning to update the blog all week and just been nagged into it by Mike Wedge from Sticky Media Group who has promised to update the look of The Hub Blog for the princely sum of a beer or two! I really like what he has done with his blog and recommend that you have a look here.

The Hub continues to attract new vacancies, this week, we have had a real push into some new markets, namely Architects and Lawyers. The construction market has obviously been suffering for a while and we have been inundated with applications for the roles. It would seem that the construction boom in Dubai is finally over as perhaps 60% of the applications are from architects that have been working over there and are now available to start immediately. Of the rest, 10% are perhaps from USA / Canada, 10% from Asia and 15% are from UK citizens that have been working abroad, that are now keen to return to the UK. The remaining 5% are UK workers whose latest role has been in the UK. Does this mean that construction in other countries has suffered much more than our has? I am not an expert in this field but it would seem so based on the applications that we have received.

I am suprised to have vacancies in this sector at all, given the press about the industry, but we do have a meeting set up with a potential partner, a construction specialist next week.

The legal roles are certainly keeping us busy and the market does work differently from others. We have subscribed to a couple of legal specialist job boards and now have database access so are sourcing, although placing adverts seems a complete waste of time as we get very little domestic response from either the national, regional or niche job boards. Lawyers dont seem to be moving on and the only end of the market that is suffering is the newly qualified.

Outside of work, I am greatly looking forward to the arrival of the new yacht next week to Topsham in Devon. The belated arrival of my parents new boat has been caused by the maintenance of the crane at Trouts Boatyard. We hope that it will be finished for Tuesday as the yacht is being delivered on a lorry and the alternative use of other boatyards cranes in Topsham in expensive and complex. Keep your fingers crossed! You could follow the progress via the webcam at Trouts next Tuesday afternoon if you have the time and interest. Details here!

Sailing is something that I had got out of my system really after completing the Round The World Yacht Race and the Yachtmaster. I had a change in personal and professional opportunities at that time which meant that I didn't have the time or interest to go to sea, although upon relection, it may have been a perfect time. I guess that I am and was too ambitious. Everytime I see clips of the Volvo Ocean Race though, it makes me want to go back to sea and have another adventure! Those VOR 70's are amazing and I want one!
Sailing is like riding a bike though and i dont believe that you will lose the feel of it. I made some great friends sailing, sharing life experiences and I look forward to sailing with them again, albeit in a slightly more sedate kind of way accompanied by WAGS!
I am lucky that JoJo is happy for me to indulge and sees the opportunity for family holidays in the future. She is even considering signing up for the RYA Dayskipper course, no doubt so she will then challenge me at sea as well as on land!

Other great friends in my life came from Rugby, which I will always dream of playing again, although the body definitely could not take it any more. Sailing is something that I can hopefully do for many years.

On rugby, I too was sickened by Schalk Burger's eye gouging in 2nd Test of the British Lions tour of South Africa the other week, I had forgotten to post a note about it at the time. I was very disappointed by the Springbok's response.

Before I get back to The Hub, my brother reminded me of this the other day. It continues to make me chuckle!

We continue to look for new Recruitment Partners!

The Hub is a UK based network of recruitment specialists utilising a centralised delivery, back office and support function – or hub – hence the name.
We are looking for Recruitment Partners to join the network.
We set up The Hub as part of a UK based £120m Recruitment plc to specifically cater for the UK market.
The Hub is a simple mechanism for the independent recruiter to open up additional revenue streams and develop business, utilising the delivery engine of a recruitment plc.
The Recruitment Partners generate the vacancies that they are unable to deliver competitively against and The Hub uses the delivery capability of a major recruitment plc to find the best available candidates. When the placement is made, we split the fee.
The Recruitment Partner maintains contact and the relationship with the client, but crucially opens additional delivery channels by working with The Hub, especially on roles where you are unable to deliver.
For further information, please visit http://www.recruitment-hub.com or http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com/
If you would like to have a conversation with me, please give me a call on 0845 117 0 115 or send your details to info@recruitment-hub.com

Hope you are all well?

We are looking!!!

Short and slightly repetitive I know, but another busy Monday and I need to get on..................!

Briefly, had a great weekend, with the focus of sailing, rugby and family - so near perfect. I am greatly looking forward to next weekend and playing with the 2 new family yachts!! One of them is even a real one - details about the class here!

After stressing last week about having too many vacancies, we now have applications out and interview requests so now my focus is generating more vacancies and generally spreading the word about The Hub to find new Recruitment Partners.

Any suggestions about other ways to communicate are gratefully received!

We have successfully been recruiting in new markets and really are expert recruiters. Because we have the resources, we can source in most industries, so give me a call!

This is the advert we are running. It is probably about time we re-wrote something. I may try this week! -

The Hub is a UK based network of recruitment specialists utilising a centralised delivery, back office and support function – or hub – hence the name.

We are looking for Recruitment Partners to join the network.

We set up The Hub as part of a UK based £120m Recruitment plc to specifically cater for the UK market.

The Hub is a simple mechanism for a recruitment business to open up additional revenue streams and develop business, utilising the delivery engine of a recruitment plc.

The Recruitment Partners generate the vacancies that they are unable to deliver competitively against and The Hub uses the delivery capability of a major recruitment plc to find the best available candidates. When the placement is made, we split the fee.

The Recruitment Partner maintains contact and the relationship with the client, but crucially opens additional delivery channels by working with The Hub, especially on roles where you are unable to deliver.

For further information, please visit http://www.recruitment-hub.com or http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com/

If you would like to discuss further, please give me a call on 0845 117 0 115 or send your details to info@recruitment-hub.com

Trust The Hub with your recruitment vacancies!

Successful relationships are built on trust and we have to trust our partners as well as build their trust in us.

The Hub is part of a £120m recruitment plc. The Hub re-sells the groups delivery capability to our recruitment partners. We are sharing our resources with the recruitment partners and they are sharing their vacancies with us.

I regularly get asked about my background and where the concept of The Hub was developed. This I believe is an important question, and one of the first steps in building a relationship and testing credibility.

Like many others, I fell into Recruitment. When I returned from Uni in Southampton I had no idea what i wanted to do apart from be successful. Throughout school and university I would always answer 'entrepreneur' to the question of what i wanted to be. A friend who was working for a sales recruiter suggested that I should try recruitment, and pay off my debts before going travelling and deciding what I wanted to do.
So I fell into IT recruitment with the intention of staying in the industry for 6 months, paying off debts and doing something different. It was pre-Y2K and the IT market was booming. The company that I was working for tripled in size in a couple of years and I got stuck in the money trap.
6 months turned into 5 years and I needed to pursue an adventure or change of direction. I was offered a place on a Round the World Yacht Race at the same time as being offered a place at the University of Bristol to study Law. I requested a delay in the law course so that I could do the race. The Round the World Yacht Race was a fantastic experience and I met some amazing friends along the way. Whilst you are at sea for long periods of time, you have a huge amount of time to think about life and your direction. Lots of my fellow crew members changed direction, started businesses and careers after the race. Whilst I was somewhere in the Atlantic, I decided that I liked recruitment and I did not want to be a lawyer!
I arrived back in the UK and received a call from my old boss to catch up and see what my plans were.
The company had continued to grow and set up and acquire other recruitment businesses.
One of the successful businesses withing group was an Recruitment Process Outsource (RPO) offering which had some large bluechip customers but did not offer an interim solution. I was offered the task of setting up the interim and contract RPO business.

RPO's have been very successful and continue to grow. We were able to save our customers tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds in some circumstances and built a very successful £multi million model and business.

*RPO's are not suitable in every industry or organisation and I have views which I may or may not share at some point in the future or will share now for a fee!* - http://www.sumptus.com

As we grew, we were approached by a number of organisations about providing someone like me on a day rate, which we were happy to oblige. I got to a point where although happy and enjoying the business, I wanted more autonomy. Throughout 2007 / 2008, I set out as a day rate consultant, advising businesses on recruitment, & resourcing.

Throughout my time as a self employed consultant, I was able to pick up vacancies and typically a client would approach me and ask whether I could source a .........? or a did I know anyone? etc.
It always occured to me that this was wasted opportunity and revenue as I did not have the time or resources to deliver a solution. - The Hub concept was born!

The Hub was set up by me as part of the recruitment plc that I had worked as part of for so many years. I trust them to deliver!

Nowadays the recruitment industry is happier to partner, as long we are able to work effectively and trust each other not to steal each others resources. Businesses are having to diversify and compete with specialists in markets that they are not experienced in to generate revenue. This is where The Hub works.

We cannot promise to deliver everything, but we will use all of the resources available to us to give us both the best possible delivery capability. Our recruitment partners build trust with their customers because they can deliver.


The Hub - About Us
The Hub is a UK based network of recruitment specialists utilising a centralised delivery, back office and support function – or hub – hence the name.

We are looking for Recruitment Partners to join the network.

We set up The Hub as part of a UK based £120m Recruitment plc to specifically cater for the UK market.
The Hub is a simple mechanism for the independent recruiter to open up additional revenue streams and develop business, utilising the delivery engine of a recruitment plc.
The Recruitment Partners generate the vacancies that they are unable to deliver competitively against and The Hub uses the delivery capability of a major recruitment plc to find the best available candidates. When the placement is made, we split the fee.
The Recruitment Partner maintains contact and the relationship with the client, but crucially opens additional delivery channels by working with The Hub, especially on roles where you are unable to deliver.
For further information, please visit www.recruitment-hub.com or http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com/
If you would like to have a conversation with us, please give me a call on 0845 117 0 115 or send your details to info@recruitment-hub.com

Final pieces - I was of course sorry to hear about Michael Jackson and dissapointed that I didnt get to see him in concert!

The Hub - Top 5 Live Vacancies

The Hub update.

Keen to provide a quick update, although will keep the post brief as I am busy!

We have some live 'Hot' vacancies that we are urgently looking for. I will list the top 5 at the end of the post.

I have a number of meetings this week with new and prospective Recruitment Partners. This week includes both individuals looking to set up a new recruitment business as well as established recruitment businesses looking to work with The Hub. I will be out of the office for some of the week so if you needed to reach me, please call The Hub main office number 0845 117 0 115 where one of my colleagues will answer your call and ensure that new roles are actioned immediately.

As The Hub continues to grow, we are growing the recruitment team and prioritising The Hub with group staff. If you haven't already, give me a call to visit our delivery center and see the way that we operate as a recruitment business.

I am looking into new ways of communicating The Hub and any suggestions welcome!

The Hub About Us -

The Hub is a network of indpendent recruitment specialists, utilising a centralised delivery, back office and support function or hub - hence the name! We are part of a UK Recruitment plc, one of the UK's largest independent recruitment companies.

We are looking for Recruitment Partners to join the network!

Our recruitment partners include established recruitment businesses and professional recruiters, keen to set up and grow a new recruitment business.

For further information, please visit - http://www.recruitment-hub.com/ or this blog for the latest news and updates.

If you would like to mail us, use - info@recruitment-hub.com or you can call on 0845 117 0 115.

The Hub is run by Jonny Hiles, Founder and Managing Director. More on Jonny Hiles can be found in the profile page.

Top 5 Current Vacancies

1) Corporate Finance Executives - Birmingham & London

2) C# Developer - West Midlands

3) Marketing Executive - Salisbury

4) Solicitor (insolvency / Corporate Recovery)- Bristol

5) Insurance Account Handlers - South West

Call Jonny Hiles if you would like to discuss!

http://www.recuitment-hub.com/

PS - I really dislike the new version of Internet Explorer. I will start using something else!!!

PPS - I went to the Banksy exhibition at Bristol Musuem and Art Galleries. I can highly recommend and it is worth the travel and the queues! You have until the end of August 2009. More info here!

New Vacancy!

I have just been asked by a contact whether I can recommend anyone in my network for a new RPO Account Director role. More at the bottom of the post -

So what have I been up to? Its actually not an easy question at the moment. We are really busy with candidates sourcing, meeting new Recruitment Partners and looking at other ways to communicate what we do as a business. (Via low cost or free resources!)

Despite me having a bad back and having to work from home on Monday, the week is shaping up well and a couple of long standing client contacts called to catch up and tell me that they are begining to look at new requirements within their businesses. Watch this space!

We are all still a lot quieter than we would like to be but at least there is plenty of activity. The recruitment process is slow however and there is concern whether some of the vacancies actually exist or whether the candidates that we are talking to actually have any intention of making a move. Time will tell but at least The Hub is demonstrating that the model works and can add value in a tough market. We keep our recruiters busy with candidate sourcing, an activity that they are experts in.

Our model of course relies on our ability to deliver. Our consultants concentrate on candidate sourcing rather than new business and do not tend to be end to end consultants. They are experts in multi-discipline sourcing and we provide them with the channels they need. My main activity is to communicate The Hub to the market and generate the business for the team to deliver.

Of course there are fewer vacancies around at the moment and I met with an old friend for lunch on Friday who had just made some redundancies.

There are some good recruiters that are struggling at the moment because their traditional client base is not hiring and there is no new business around. Every agency is cold calling like mad at the moment with little return so a lot of agencies are losing staff. Its a sad situation for all concerned but I hope that some will turn their current situation into a positive outcome.

There was an item on BBC Breakfast about redundancies 'under the radar' where businesses with less than 20 staff were losing 10-20% of their workforce. Whilst these numbers were small and not newsworthy, the national affect was huge. I am sure that this will be the case in lots of independent recruitment businesses.

On the subject of cold calls, I still get cold called now and again from when I was an onsite corporate recruiter. There is one multi national agency in particular that seems completely unable to update their records and call me every month or so. I presume that its all about call stats!

When we set up The Hub, we felt that we would attract both, established recruitment businesses and individuals that were looking at self employment for a variety of reasons. This model still stands and if you are a recruitment professional that is facing a change, talk to us. We dont offer salaries, but do offer a reveune stream if you are able to generate business.

The Hub is a UK based network of independent recruitment specialists utilising a centralised delivery, back office and support function – or hub – hence the name.

We are looking for Recruitment Partners to join the network.

We set up The Hub as part of a UK based £120m Recruitment plc to specifically cater for the UK market.
The Hub provides the independent recruiter with the delivery capability of a large recruitment plc. The Hub is a simple mechanism for the independent recruiter to open up additional revenue streams and develop business, utilising the delivery engine of a £120m recruitment plc.

You are likely to be a Recruitment professional, perhaps with your own established business or an ambitious entrepreneur keen to capitalise on your experience. If you do not have your own existing business, we can help you with branding, technology etc at no cost by joining The Hub.

For further information, please visit http://www.recruitment-hub.com/ or http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com/

If you would like to have a conversation with us, please give me a call on 0845 117 0 115 or send your details to info@recruitment-hub.com

This post turned out longer than I thought it would!

The role that I have been asked about is an RPO Account Director based in Essex. You will need to have specific local government expertise. If you want to discuss, give me a call!