Monday 30 November 2009

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.

Monday 23 November 2009

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 21st 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.

Thursday 5 November 2009

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