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!