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