Friday Update 13

Well let’s hope it’s not unlucky number 13 as everything has been going so well. LinkedIn milestones, Blog highs, another Three Month Induction finished, sales course marketed, APSCo firsts, a football charity tournament, finding a wardrobe of fitting clothes and actually working out!

I don’t usually cover my weekends on these updates but last Sunday my partner, daughter, nephew, dad and our 3 dogs headed off to Hackney Marshes to support APSCo in their charity tournament. Over 45 teams were playing at this inaugural cup. It was a great day, the sun shined, the dogs loved the walk by the river and Mo turned out to be a whizz with kids. Definitely one for the diary again next year.

Here’s my nephew Brandon, with the face-painting stand behind him. He’s a goalie for THFC and is trying to get the ball past my daughter’s dog Ruby. She got it off him everytime!

Since the launch of my company, Connemara UK back in February, this is the first  week that I have been able to work from home. Luckily a client that wants a 12 month management development programme was unable to launch it this week and were really apologetic that they needed to put it back until the first week of June. They felt better when I told them that this worked perfectly for me too. It would have meant another two days staying away (which I would have been happy to do as I know I have my holiday coming up), and I’m in need of a little sunshine after the 16 hour days.

On Monday I focussed back on my LinkedIn connections as my strategy in the first month of adding 100 connections per week had given me all of this business in the first place. Overnight my connections went past the 2,000 mark and within another 24 hours I had added another 42. I’m so glad I’m in an industry that in just the UK over 100,000 people work… there will always be more relevant connections.

Tuesday I got up and went to the gym… and Wednesday… and Thurday… and Friday! I haven’t been for over 2 months, so I thought I’d take advantage of the week at home. I’ve lost nearly 2 stone in the last 6 months, so it actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Wednesday I got woken up really early, so decided to get my blog up online early in the day. By lunchtime it had reached nearly 100 hits and by end of play at 6pm over 200 people from 13 countries had read The Key Competencies of a Recruitment Consultant. Now take into account that the highest number of hits before this had been 77 and I guess that this was a topic that people really wanted the information on. The blog has now reached 41 countries and comments such as “I love your articles angela! They are really useful thank you :)”  and “Could’nt stop reading your blogs” from a guy in the Netherlands means they are worth the effort.

The evening was spent sending out emails to potential APSCo members in the Midlands.

Thursday I’d completed a second Three Month Induction for a company, so it was time to go through all of the paperwork. It was a follow on from an original programme I did in March for their new starters coming into the company. They initially work as Telesales Consultants and after 3 months they move on to become Trainee Recruitment Consultants and once they pass their assessments throughout the next 3 months, they are promoted to Recruitment Consultants. I think it’s a great way of getting people into the industry, trained up over 6 months and with 2 promotions.

Most of the day was dedicated to APSCo, following up the 400 emails. It’s the inaugural meeting for the Midlands on 20th June and it would be nice if we have both current members as well as potential members coming along. I’ve possibly got 19 people coming already and 1 meeting booked from a company that definitely can’t make it. Here’s the scarf that we all wore on Sunday.

Friday was more APSCo calls and I finally got to arrange a face to face meeting with a client I’ve been chasing for over 6 months. They’ll make a great addition to the APSCo family, so fingers crossed. I also needed to get my VAT return done, pay my accountant, monthly invoicing and expenses sorted; as well as being amazed by the amount of people that were interested in the competencies post. At the time of publishing this, it’s had 383 hits. My highest hits on a post before had been 77 for Utilising LinkedIn in your Sales Strategy.

My 13 week series of “So you’ve become a recruitment consultant…” will be finishing at the end of June, so I think I’ll focus on the Recruitment Consultant Competencies throughout the summer. I also drafted next weeks post on Analysing & Monitoring, as I’m going to be away on holiday in Crete. I’ve tried the publish delay function on here before… and it didn’t work, so I’m not too optimistic; I may have to drop in from Crete… just for a moment!

Angela Cripps, Connemara UK

P.S. Next weeks Friday Update is likely be late… and pretty short! It’ll probably be solely related to holiday pursuits, so sorry to those of you that haven’t had a break yet this year.