Lee McQueen’s byline – Task 10

Afternoon everybody just to give you a quick overview on week 10 – we are fast approaching top 5 after this week.  I’ll give you my thoughts on the top 5 in a second but just now I want to give you my views on the week that has just passed and ‘The Reinvestment Task’.   I think this is something I would have relished – going out there selling, trying to get as much profit as you can and then actually reinvesting that when you can see what is actually happening.

Natasha put herself forward as PM and she was a brilliant manager and the other Project Manager was Melody.  Now some people have been a bit critical of Melody since weeks 7/ 8/ 9, but I’ve liked her all the way through.  It’s the first time she’s been the PM since week 1 but she put herself forward – here I’d like to dispel a myth really – everyone gets really het up on who puts themselves forward! I know Lord Sugar asks you about that every week but by week 10 that doesn’t really make any difference, so I personally believe that by week 10 everybody should be comfortable with and understand the process and know what to expect and now they know each other.  This is why anyone who’s PM should get the plot by now – if we work together as a team, then we win the task, therefore none of us will be fired! 

Because you’re worth it!

Recently re tweeted, Greg’s views on his blog ‘Kill off the bikers. Fire unprofitable clients now! ‘ posted earlier this year on The Savage Truth, put me in mind of my own experiences working with customers that  made me no money and worse still actually harmed my business.

Leap of faith

Building a business of choice is the name given to one of my business development programmes. But this was more a statement of intent than a snappy course title. Many years ago, when I first took that leap of faith to start my own business along with my small team of trainers, I was excited, full of enthusiasm and believed that what we had to offer was the best thing since sliced bread - if only I could get people to see that too! As a young (er!) entrepreneur I had every confidence that we would be successful – but paradoxically lacked confidence in the very same! When our first few customers took their leap of faith in us and put their managers on our (then, as we believed,) cutting edge leadership programme and sent their recruitment consultants to develop their key skills with us, I was thrilled but more than that grateful! Appreciative of the belief these early customers showed in our abilities, thankful that they were actually giving us money to do what we loved to do anyway! To be truthful, our first few clients were people we knew really well and those who were already advocates of our work, so it was the second wave of customers we were actively seeking, in other words the nirvana that is new business!

Ignorance seemed like bliss

How good is your CSR policy…REALLY?

It was a truly enlightening APSCo meeting last week with the main theme being around CSR in it’s many forms.  CSR is often treated as a cynical add-on by organisations but the speakers really highlighted the commercial, moral and social benefits of proactively “doing” CSR in our individual organisations. What was really great was the feeling you got that every little counts however you did it , and that it didn’t matter if you tried something and it didn’t work out; you could always try something else.

Jacquelyn Collins from Slaughter and May was refreshingly frank about how their policy had evolved and changed as they had experimented and sought to find how different people internally could be involved, whilst Natasha Honan from the Heart of the City Programme showed us the huge range of initiatives that organisations had discovered they could get involved with; some you would never think of.

Finally we heard from APSCo’s own preferred charity Childline where Annette and Derek gave us the shocking fact that because of a lack of resources they are unable to take all the calls from children that come in. This fact alone should inspire us as APSCo members to go that further step in order to support Childline.

It was an inspiring meeting and judging by the conversation over drinks afterwards, many of us were moved to action!

Here at Lander Associates we are dedicated to our CSR policy and have been fund-raising for Childline for a number of years. The whole team get involved and we are always looking for new ways to contribute more, watch this space!

Posted by Julian Evans - Julian, an acknowledged recruitment industry training expert in both the UK and Europe,  recently joined the award winning team at Lander Associates. With over 20 years experience and an award winning head of learning and development, he is currently completing his masters in management learning and leadership.

The 3 mistakes NOT to make at networking events!

We’ve had a busy couple of months of networking here at Lander Associates (see the pictures at our Facebook page) and even with the increase in virtual networking, attending relevant, (physical) business networking events still remains invaluable for meeting new potential customers. We’ve been to some fantastic events recently and it has given us the opportunity to meet contacts old and new. That being said one of my pet hates is when someone is talking to you but is looking over your shoulder for their next target. You know they are not really listening to you and are just looking for an opportunity to move on.

Here are three major mistakes often made at networking events and how to avoid them, if you want your investment of your time to really pay dividend.

Happy St George’s Day!

Beyond Social Resourcing

     

The Recruitment Society launches in the Midlands!

The inaugural Recruitment Society meeting for the Midlands was held this week with a full panel discussion on ‘Beyond Social Resourcing – What next?’ Discussions centered around Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Whilst the first two were seen as a way of building your brand and establishing relationships, all members of the panel believed caution was required when approaching candidates for the first time via these sites.

Fast Track Induction (Recruitment 101) course review

Sam Woodward of BlueSky PR recently sat in on our Fast Track Induction course, here is her review that was featured on Louise Triance’s UK Recruiter blog:

Although my work is focused on recruitment, I’m a PR person, not a recruiter. So when I went along to a recent training course for recruiters I didn’t really know what to expect.

Lander Associates is a client of ours and specialise in training and development for the professional recruitment sector, so last month I went along to their Fast Track Induction…with a 2010 twist to observe and see what it was all about. All the delegates were new to the recruitment game – some had a few months of experience, others as little as eight days! So in effect it was “Recruitment 101” – all the basics taught over a two day period. It was a full course but even that meant only ten recruiters – a good number for an effective and interactive experience.

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

Take a look at what we’ve been up to

 

It’s been a busy few weeks for the team at Lander, with the many things we have been up to including the Raising the Bar event in Oxford.Started last year by two ex-candidates of the Apprentice, Raising the Bar is an opportunity for businesses to meet, talk and improve business performance. After two of our trainers attended last year’s event, this year organiser Jen Celerier offered Lander a speaking slot – so we decided to go for it and take the whole team along to learn from the other delegates and get some new ideas from outside of the recruitment sector.