Summer Months

Mid July and August are traditionally a little quieter for recruiters as everyone is on holiday! (Alas not me this year with a young baby!)
This year, however, we haven't really stopped as fewer requirements provides us with time to concentrate on other activities.

Fusion Investments, the recruitment investment business that I run is in negotiations with a number of existing agencies that are looking for an investment of either, money, infrastructure or expertise to build, grow and exit in the future. There are a couple of likely prospects that I am hopeful of completeing some time during Q4 2010 so watch this space.
The summer is a good time for reflection about business direction and if you are looking for an ivestment or exit, please do give me a call. We regularly receive a number of enquiries, purely making contact for some time in the future or for information and we welcome all contact. We try and offer sage advice to recruitment owners and start ups, which includes encouragement as well as discouragement where necessary. We have been approached by lots of job boards in the past months which is a sign that there is still plenty of ideas of how to improve on the current formats which will be great for the industry. We do own a job board and again continue to welcome fresh ideas.
A success story for us is from a business of ours called SNS. SNS were a new start up business that have been trading for 4 months. The MD, had been an undervalued recruiter working in a niche IT market for a number of years. SNS specialise in EPOS and Networking recruitment.
We set them up with an office, salary, car and IT infrstructure as well as a job board access etc and delivery support from the main group. The MD has unlmited access to us for delivery, business processing, support and advice if he wants to use it!
They now have regular permanent placements and contractors working and an extra sales staff member to push business further. Its a great model and I will ask the MD to write something about his experiences of Fusion Recruitment Investment in the coming weeks.

We are looking for businesses particularly in the North West, Midlands, Scotland and the South East. Call me on 0117 370 3076 for an informal discussion.

The other activity occupying a significant amoungt of my time is recruitment compliance. I have done a number of assignments over the past couple of years reviewing pre-engagement and pre-employment checks for agencies and corporates and it's a complex subject. The recruitment industry is still getting to grips with it as legislative, regulatory and client-led demands are made on the recruiter to gather pre-engagement information. Some are reasonable, others are impractical and some clients are in danger of making it impossible to do business with them! The current project is well underway and was scheduled by the organisation to run over the summer to minimise impact on the business in quieter times.

Outside of work, family life is great - We are still getting to Topsham most weekends, although as Theo is becoming more active, its becoming harder to keep him entertained on the boat. We have had a couple of long weekends and are off for a week in early September.

Call me if you would like to discuss the above on 0117 370 3076 or email jonny.hiles@fusioninvestments.co.uk

www.fusioninvestments.co.uk