We have moved!

Quick update that we have moved into Albion House, 29 Winckley Square, Preston, PR1 3JJ. New telephone number 01772 825448. It's a fantastic building and we have views from our office into the park and a brand new kitchen with a dishwasher! Also we can post our jobs and contact details in the window for the Preston Professionals to notice when they pass. Photos and further update to follow.

Our Unique "Third Option"

Our "third option" - this is what we've started to call our unique service proposition. All recruiters offer permanent or a temporary/contractor resources but that's all (normally). We offer these as well but that's not all; our "third option" (which I'm sure I've mentioned before) is the services of another company to fill a resource shortfall with one of our clients. Having a close relationship with Test-Direct allows us to offer testing services to any of our clients and we have also had success offering the services of a small web development company to another client. Over the next few months, we're are hoping to talk to several other companies within development, project management, business analysts, support etc to build our portfolio of companies who would allow us to offer their services to our clients
So if your reading this and your company could handle some extra development/analysis or support work etc, please do not hesitate to get in touch. My contact details are on our website.

We're moving to Winckley Square

Within the next couple of weeks Together Recruitment will be moving to Winckley Square. Now this use to be the place to be in Preston and was traditionally full of Solicitors and Accountants - lots of information on Winckley Sqaure can be found here. The square has been neglected a little over the last few years and some of these companies have left the centre to take up purpose built offices on the outskirts of town. However, maybe this was premature; as over 3 million pounds is about to be spent on the redevelopment of the park - check out Preston City Council site and details of the plans.
We are very excited about moving there and will have a new office with windows looking onto the square. We shall also be able to advertise our roles in the window and as a result have individuals popping in for a chat. Hopefully Winckley Square will become the centre of Preston again and we look forward to helping with the prosperity of the city centre.

London Marathon 2008

I suppose I'm writing about London Marathon on here because I was running for Macmillan. I managed to secure my own place through the ballot system and approached Macmillan as they are in the Business for Breakfast group that I attend in Leyland.
My parents live on the Isle of Dogs and as an addicted fell runner I've been saying for years that I should do the London Marathon, even although I hardly ever run on tarmac. I had no idea what to expect as most of the races that I normally do have between 100 to 500 runners. Even then I thought 500 seemed like too many. How was I going to cope with running on the road with 34 thousand other runners?
Well I needn't had worried because it is a truly amazing event. The support and crowds are absolutely fantastic (BBC thought that over half a million lined the streets). The cheering/screaming was so loud on some sections that I'd have had to put my fingers in my ears if I wasn't running past! The official Macmillan supporter places were tremendous too. Hundreds of Macmillan supporters stood together (I bet some of them had been there for hours to get the best spots) and they would go absolutely mental once they saw any of their green vests.

I smiled, laughed and waved most of my way around the 26.2 mile course in 3Hour 11 minutes. Not bad since I didn't have a clue what sort of pace to run at and all important "marathon taper" wasn't typical as I'd ran a 40 mile fell race the week before, (it had almost killed me!). I'm even tempted to go back next year! Online ballot is already open so maybe I'll see you there in 2009.

Northern Lights

I'm not talking aurora borealis, although to see the Northern Lights is definitely on my do-to list. This Northern Lights is a comprehensive business support programme run by the Knowledge Transfer Service at Uclan (University of Central Lancashire). It's based at the Media Factory on the university campus which only opened in September last year. It was through the Business Link ICT forum that I first attended the Media Factory in March and while I was there I picked up some information regarding Northern Lights. A couple of telephne calls later and I had a meeting with John Duckworth who is a Business Advisor/Mentor. What is boils down to is that they can provide FREE support for SME's who qualify within the ERDF Objective 2 ward. It's based on postcode; check if your eligible here. John was confident that he could assist me in producing further business and marketing plans for Together moving forward. All the things that I know I should be doing but never manage to find the time. With the additional bonus of expert help along the way at no cost! And these Mentor are big hitters who have far more business experience than me and probably you. I signed Together up straight away - what a fantastic service. They can help companies who are eligible with turnover's of upto 30 million - so what's stopping you!

London Marathon looms!

I'm pleased to be running in this years London Marathon for Macmillan. www.justgiving.com/rosslitherland Macmillan are represented at the Business for Breakfast club that Together attend every two weeks for networking/business support and having secured my own ballot place I thought I should probably try to raise a few pounds for this charity. This is my first marathon, although I've run much further than this over the hills, I'm definitely looking forward to the atmosphere and the experience.

Agency Partnership Framework

We are currently working on a framework for other Recruitment Agencies to work with us. Agencies working together? Whatever next? Well we haven't got it working yet; (although we know we've got a fantastic product that will work for other agencies); when we’ve introduced the idea in the past it didn't generate much interest. We feel that agencies may have thought that all we were after was their client list. So we’ve decided that we need to offer a benefit in line with traditional recruitment agency services. We propose that all vacancies that we receive from our clients, we will inform our partners and get them to identify candidates for us for a pre-arranged margin and vice-versa (of course we would be working on it ourselves at the same time). This way we both gain something straight away. It doesn't matter who found the candidate, just that the client is happy with the service. The construction industry has been working like this for years using sub-contractors which are invisible to the end client. Why can't we set up partnerships with other agencies that work in exactly the same way? Once this partnership is established and we have worked together successfully we could explore other/further opportunities. For example: When a client finishes Contractors or halts permanent recruitment because they are off-shoring the testing department; the agency will lose a revenue stream. Traditionally there is very little that they can do about this. Partnering with Together Recruitment will also bring access to Test-Direct. Test–Direct as a solution partner, offer near shore solutions which might allow agencies to win some of this business back.
We would also look to partner with Development Companies and other service providers to fill any gaps in the service that we offer to our clients and continue to open new markets. There are many possibilities. Yes it's unconventional, but I am working hard to ensure it will work to the benefit of all parties and hopefully we'll have recruiters eager to partner with us.

Facebook

We gone from being established for almost 18 months without a website and now we now have almost every resource available. Blog, website and now facebook page. Have a look at:
www.facebook.com/pages/Together-Recruitment/9835888724

We've only created it today but we have soon really good ideas so keep looking.

Sport Relief 2008 - Sunday 16th March

A few individuals from Together Recruitment and Test-Direct (www.test-direct.com) ran in a 3 or 6 mile events for Sport Relief in Preston. We managed to raise over 350 pounds and had an excellent afternoon out. Thankfully the weatherwas kind to us - at least it didn't rain.


Natasha (Together) heads for the finish


Gary (Test-Direct) looks nervous at the start!


The Team warm up before the event.



Gary practices his sprint finish.


Kevin (Test-Direct) and Anthea (Kevin's partner) looking relaxed after 6 miles.

Everyone is keen to do some other events. Natasha is going to do the race for life and I'll be running the London Marathon for Macmilliam www.justgiving.com/rosslitherland

Sport Relief 2008

I've just finished the raffle for a bottle of champagne and managed to increase my fund-raising total by 5 times. That was easy cause I'd only raised 5 pounds. 6 of us are running on Sunday for sport relief - a mixture of Together and Test-Direct (www.test-direct.com) employee's and partners. Check back after the week-end for a write up and pictures of us in our Sport's relief socks!

Our website is live!

Check out www.recruittogether.co.uk
We are really happy with it and have been busy listing our jobs for all to see and hopefully apply too. We promised something different, I hope it's not just viewed as the standard agency stuff - comments welcome. We really like the idea of Guerilla Marketing and since we haven't the budgets of the big agencies, we'll definitely be coming up with ideas to try this out. Actually the first one is this blog. We have had loads more ideas since we signed off development for the site and I'm sure a 2nd release will be along sooner or later.

Networking our clients together

Ok this blog is hoping to show the world (well hopefully a few individuals at least) that we are serious about offering innovative recruitment services. This month we have successfully managed to win two new clients already. Fantastic, this is what all recruiters aim to do but nothing exceptional. However there could be an opportunity for us to sell one of these clients' services to the other. Not only would we make a fee (albeit a small one) on this, but the client who would be providing the services would probably require further resources as a result. How's that for a different service? We truly believe this is the future and a service that all Agencies should be providing (but we're secretly glad they are not).
We are very keen whenever possible, to offer a different solution to our clients resourcing needs. Not only just the traditional offering of Contract or Permanent resources. We will offer our clients/partners services as well as a third option. Is there a better way to build the relationship with a client by helping them to sell their services?

Our Website!

You figure that when you start a business that one of the very first things that you'll do (these days anyway) is get the website going. Well it doesn't work like that for me. We have been operating for almost 16 months and we are finally going to launch this week. I wish I could blame someone for this, but it is purely my fault! Too much day to day stuff to look at and make decisions on.
Anyway we are days away from having it Live. I'm sure it will change and develop over the next few months - we are doing some charity stuff which might be worthy of a mention.
We just have to come up with an idea to market it. We're very pleased with it so it would be great to show it off.