Hot Vacancies

Top couple of urgent live contract roles from the network -

1) Polaris / Product Writer Developer
3 months Contract Vacancy based in the Midlands
The job holder will be responsible for the programming of pricing rate reviews in the Polaris product writer software. They will also be responsible for testing Polaris deliveries using Microfocus's automated testing software 'TestPartner'. This is an urgent requirement starting asap for a leading insurance business. We have interview slots available for tomorrow!

2) Onsite Resourcing Manager
3 months contract based in Swindon
Contract opportunity for a professional onsite recruiter. Specifically, the role is sourcing against multiple perm vacancies from Direct and 3rd part agency suppliers.
Starting ASAP

If you are interested in the above, please drop me a line on 0845 117 0 115 or jonny@recruitment-hub.com

Whilst you are here - why not learn a bit more about me by visiting other pages on the blog - http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com

May

Well, what do you know, the summer has arrived! (I am aware that I speak to soon but this is the 4th straight day or cloudless skies!)
We have all spent a few days basking in the sun over the weekend and already, the office air conditioning has broken down and our office manager is spending considerable time trying to negotiate the definition of room temperature. Is it 20 degrees or 25? Wikipedia explains more - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_temperature

The second of the may bank holidays is nearly upon us and we again have had a record month. This year has been terrific for IT and Finance recruitment and as our main specialisms, we have made the most of the opportunities. I have been mapping where we place most of our business and watching the map evolve over the past 12 months, some of the biggest customers of last year have now cut back whilst others have come through in even greater numbers. Financial services is the primary industry for us and we have seen an overall increase in contractor numbers over the year, despite some the cutbacks with individual accounts. Contractor rates have increased as well as demand has increased.

Outside of Financial Services, we have recently launched a new brand, specialising in the retail market. We have supplied a number of large retailers over the years and have some well established relationships. We were approached via Fusion Investments for funding and support to launch a specialist brand and we were so impressed with the MD, his energy, passion and business plan, that we were delighted to welcome him onboard. The business is now up and running and has already made contractor placements.

If you are looking to make the most of the upturn, Fusion is a specialist recruitment investment business. We invest in start ups and existing recruitment businesses and again, looking for further opportunities so call if you would like to discuss a new venture / Joint Venture or an exit plan. My number with Fusion in 0117 370 3076.

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

Through partnership, The Hub provides the delivery capability, infrastructure & support of a recruitment plc to independent recruiters utilising our significant resources.

The Hub is part of a recruitment plc – one of the largest independent recruitment organisations in the UK with a multi-discipline delivery capability. Browse these pages to learn more about The Hub how we can help you to open up new channels and maximise revenue from your existing business.

Outside of work, we have spent the past few weekends in Topsham now that the boat is back on the water. Topsham is just gorgeous and we really enjoy our days out on the River Exe. Theodore has had his first couple of gentle sailing trips down the river and seems to have taken to it. We are taking it easy as we don't want to scare him - we are working up to a Dartmouth trip soon. I have my first boys weekend away planned with some of my old crew-mates from the round the world race f, although Domino is very different from the 60' Ocean racing yacht that we were on, but I am sure will be equally enjoyable.


If you would like to discuss any of the above, please contact me on 0845 117 0115 or email - jonny@recruitment-hub.com.

Website for The Hub - www.recruitment-hub.com
Website for Fusion - www.fusioninvestments.co.uk

Hope all are well?

Jonny Hiles

500+ UK Recruitment Directors!

I am pleased to announce that membership of the UK Recruitment Directors Group has today passed the 500 member mark. The Linkedin Group provides a forum for networking and sharing views / news with fellow recruitment industry leaders.

The Group is free to join and membership is open to recruitment directors and business leaders. Membership includes independent niche agenices as well as board directors of large global agencies. Further details via http://www.linkedin.com/groups?homeNewMember=&gid=1962486&trk=


Information about me can be found at http://jonnyhub.blogspot.com

Recruitment Investment - http://www.fusioninvestments.co.uk
Split Fee Recruitment - http://www.recruitment-hub.com or

Jonny Hiles

International Recruitment

We have been presented with an opportunity to expand our services internationally by one of our customers - a global corporation. They have numerous offices covering most countries and globally, they recruit a lot of perms and contractors. They would like us to extend our services to fullfill their needs internationally so all in all, a great opportunity! The trouble is, can we service it?

We have long supplied abroad, principally in Europe and in all honesty, we probably could have won more non-uk business if we had asked for it. With global job board access, mature databases and sophisticated relationships and network, we can pretty much find a candidate to work anywhere and so its not necessarily the sourcing that has held us back, its the; how do we process the business? question.

So a project of mine over the past couple of weeks has been to look into how could we supply into a couple of key territories? how does recruitment work in Latin America, APAC, USa etc? What are the rates? What are the legalities or setting up a business in X country? Do they have a contract market etc? etc etc.

Given the size of the recruitment industry, I am amazed that there is not a guide somewhere to how do you recruit in x country? or at least an overview! My first point of call was REC whose only focus is the UK, so were unable to help. I have run numerous google searches and drowned in irrelevent information and search results. I have spoken to consulates - although helpful and polite, most did not have recruitment specific information. I have viewed websites like Monster etc but they really don't appear to have much presence in some of the territories that I am looking for. I have posted questions on forums, but not had much response. AARGH! Where to go now??

This is an appeal for information!

Can anyone recommend information sources or share experiences of recruiting in the following regions -
South / Latin America (Brazil, Chile, Argentina)
Asia - Pacific (Malaysia, Hing Kong, Singapore)
USA
and while we're at it, we may as well bundle the other European countries in as well?

Ideally job boards, how it works, where to go, can we do it etc? Anyone done it? What's good bad, do's and dont's etc etc.

I am happy to post the information and build a repository for use by others, unless there is one already that I don't know of! (Please tell me!)

I am grateful for any advice, information or any experiences that you can share and please forward this post onwards to maximise the exposure. The more contributors, the better the information!

It's a great opportunity for us and even if we decide that we can't service the business, i would hope that its for a good and genuine reason, rather than declining because we're simply unsure.

Hope all is well and I welcome your comments!

Jonny Hiles
The Hub
www.recruitment-hub.com

Investing in Recruitment

Hello all, just a quick interim message to let you all know what I have been up to and why I haven't blogged in a while.
The market is busy and our ventures have seen huge activity over the past 6 weeks.

The Hub - www.recruitment-hub.com has benefited from the uplift in the market as our partners have been swamped with vacancies. The Hub is a flexible resource and we have been providing a valuable overflow option to our customers with some great results! As always, we are looking for new partners so call if you would like to discuss!

My work with Fusion - www.fusioninvestments.co.uk has generated two new recruitment ventures which we are very excited about. Fusion is a specialist recruitment investment business that I am running as an interim. We invest in start ups and existing recruitment businesses and again, looking for further opportunities so call if you would like to discuss a new venture / Joint Venture or an exit plan.

I will get time to blog in more detail over the next week or so but I was conscious that I hadn't updated in a while. Home life is great by the way!

Hope all is well?

Jonny

www.recruitment-hub.com

Pushing Social Media

The necessity for business presence in social media is now commonly accepted and well-documented although a crucial starting point for any business building an online network is still their own website: the shop window to their services. We as a business work hard to demonstrate our grasp of new recruitment technology and practices and having just revamped the website, one of the key additions that has generated comment is the introduction of a Twitter feed.

The Twitter feed serves three purposes - 1) to demonstrate that we are a leading edge recruiter, using cutting edge practices to generate the best available candidates for our partner vacancies and 2) to provide a live news feed for us to advertise vacancies, links, jobs, news etc. 3) To maximise exposure of the brand across multiple channels and increase SEO.

We find this technology hugely successful and Twitter in particular has the potential to become the worlds largest job board. As a business, you either adapt to the new technologies and practices or you fall behind and use the various forms of social media allow you to push the brand and message to an audience at very low cost. Once you have set up the accounts, the feeds and branded them, the ongoing cost should be modest if not free! The key investment is time.

As a regular reader may know, we have been working closely with Sticky Media for some time and they are offering an extremely competitive deal for companies wishing to bring their website up to date and push the brand yet further.

The offer is as follows -

The offer is a Live Twitter or Blog Feed on your web site! (£75 +VAT)*

Leading Edge Recruiter grasping the power of Social Media? Want to prove to your customers that you know what you are doing with Social Media?
Keeping a website fresh and up to date can be a costly process in both time and money; particularly when also juggling Twitter contacts, Blog articles and any other online interaction. We have been busy working with our customers developing a cost effective social media strategy, maximising brand and product exposure across the various media channels.

We have developed a very cost effective product that can be added to an existing website from only £75 +vat, thereby avoiding expensive redevelopment, but still keeping your site bang up to date.

Sticky Media can integrate a live Twitter feed or a Live Blog feed to existing websites for £75. This will update automatically, keeping your website fresh, and using your company web site as the hub of your online network - exactly as it should be. Post all of your vacancies to Twitter - increase traffic – maximise brand awareness.

For an example of a recently completed client project please visit http://www.recruitment-hub.com – each page has a Twitter feed with real time vacancies and update; the 'News' page is automatically populated from the director's blog - keeping news up to date automatically, at minimal effort to the director.

We are only offering this product at this price for a limited number of clients and as a member of the UK Recruitment Directors Group, you qualify for the discount. We will even help you set up a Twitter Account if you haven’t started using one yet!

For further information and to discuss viability, please contact me via mike@stickymediagroup.co.uk or 0845 872 1942.

(£75 +VAT – subject to availability and viability.)


The Sticky Media site is http://www.stickymediagroup.co.uk where you will find further info. I dont often push another companies products, but really feel that this is an excellent offer from a reliable source and they won't be offering the £75 deal for ever!

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

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

Through partnership, The Hub provides the delivery capability, infrastructure & support of a recruitment plc to independent recruiters utilising our significant resources.

The Hub is part of a recruitment plc – one of the largest independent recruitment organisations in the UK with a multi-discipline delivery capability. Browse these pages to learn more about The Hub how we can help you to open up new channels and maximise revenue from your existing business.

400+ Members of the UK Recruitment Directors Group

UK Recruitment Directors

The UK Recruitment Directors Group on Linkedin has today passed the 400 member milestone.
The UK Recruitment Directors Group provides a forum for Directors of UK based Recruitment Businesses to network and share views and news with fellow industry leaders.

The Group now has over 400 Directors, actively participating in discussions on the forums and has seen huge growth in the past couple of months.

Jonny Hiles, founder of the UK Recruitment Directors Group has been thrilled at the success and growth of the group and has ambitious plans to integrate the group into other Hub project and services such as The Recruitment Wave.

More about The UK Recruitment Directors Group can be found at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?homeNewMember=&gid=1962486&trk=

For further information on The Hub, please visit - www.recruitment-hub.com

The Hub's projects are listed on The Hub's projects page -

If you would like to discuss any aspect of the UK Recruitment Directors Group or The Hub, please contact Jonny Hiles on 0845 117 0115

New Site

With the upturn in 2010 and a general need to update what we do, we are redesigning our website. - http://www.recruitment-hub.com

The new site should clearly define what we do and include news and latest updates from our solcial media channels. We also have a projects page for ventures such as Fusion or Recruitment Wave.

The release is a test version which will be live for 24 hours to gather feedback and test links / funtionality etc. I therefore would appreciate your comments / feedback on the site - please mail to jonny@recruitment-hub.com

I have used Sticky Media Group as the designers / developers - www.stickymediagroup.com.

Hope you are all well and enjoying a positive start to 2010?

Jonny Hiles
The Hub
www.recruitment-hub.com

PS. you may need to refresh your browser if you had visited the old site recently. On the new site, there is a picture of a chain on the home page!

PPS. Still no baby news!

J

Fusion

The eagle eyed amongst you and in particular those following a link from Linkedin may have noticed the introduction of Fusion Investments to my profile.

At the outset it is important to state that The Hub is still my focus and the primary business. The Hub is a specialist split fee recruitment brand and for more details please visit www.recruitment-hub.com
The Hub provides a delivery partnership to independent recruitment businesses thereby improving their delivery capability. The Hub is growing as the popularity of split fees grows in the recruitment industry.

Fusion is a specialist investment company, specialising in the recruitment industry and investing in recruiters. Fusion provides funding to start ups and new businesses as well as acquisition of established recruitment agencies.
Fusion is actively looking for new investment / acquisition opportunities.

Fusion is an initiative that I have been involved in for some time but had not accepted a formal role with but I am providing specialist consultancy to them and enjoying it greatly. For more on Fusion, please visit www.fusioninvestments.co.uk

As for everything else - No baby news yet, even though I am asked by everyone I speak with and the market is busy so happy days!

Hope all is well and speak soon!

Jonny

PS. Fusion pays a bounty for successful introductions - for more info please call 01179 370 3077.

J

PPS. I hadnt realised that the silly pic in the last post was so big and visible! Never mind.

New Year = New Job(s)

Happy New Year!
I am sorry that it has taken me until the 12th to write an update and as you sit with bated breath, No, its not because I have been on paternity leave!

As everyone is constantly asking; Joanne is good, a little tired and very much looking forward to having the baby. She has really enjoyed the pregnancy and I am sure will miss being pregnant, but is very excited about the arrival and finding our whether we have a son or a daughter. We have names picked and the baby will arrive in the next 3 weeks or so - watch this space!

I will obviously take some paternity leave, but I shall check emails and colleagues will be able to answer any queries whilst I am away. The main line number is 0845 117 0 115 and the email address is jonny@recruitment-hub.com

I will hopefully get the opportunity to blog again before the baby arrives!

New Year = New Job is a phrase that has been bandied around the industry for years and used in numerous recruitment campaigns. There is undoubtedly sentiment in the statement and January is a very busy period for recruiters.
The weather in 2010 has certainly had an affect on the whole of the UK and the recruitment industry is as affected as any because decision makers have been absent from work or interviewees being unable to attend interviews. A busy IT recruiter that I know had 7 interviewees cancel in one day with a single client and most businesses will have lost revenues because their candidates failed to attend selection.

Most of our staff made it in last week as the majority live locally but all have been refreshed by the Christmas break so are definitely up for it. Activity levels are good and we are the market feels busy with a good supply of candidates.

We are of course looking for new Recruitment Partners and vacancies so if you have had a busy start to 2010 and are struggling to source for all your vacancies, please get in touch!

That's it for now, keep your fingers crossed for us and watch this space!

Jonny

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 made. If that could be of use, for any vacancies that you struggle with, then please let me know.
Info about The Hub can be found at http://www.recruitment-hub.com

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

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

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