Diary of... Adam Gordon, head of client engagement, Rise Group

14-Jan-2009

Monday

Visit the head of resourcing at a large asset management company that is seeking a recruitment strategy for hiring people with skills in disciplines they haven’t sourced before. Many of the technology-driven solutions we recommend go down well — a good start to the week. Nice to find out that social networks and YouTube have a part to play in our digital strategy. We’ve got some innovative ideas, but at the same time we already have four websites and are soon to have more — plenty for me to do as I’m responsible for consolidating our web presence.

Tuesday

Meet HR and marketing professionals at various law firms, along with the head of our legal division, to talk to them about a new candidate-generation portal we’re creating with a major advertising utility. We’re confident this will make a big difference to employers, allowing them to differentiate their brand from others in a way that hasn’t been possible until now.

Wednesday

Press coverage of Rise Group has interested the manager from another recruitment business who wants to join us along with his team — very gratifying! As we are private equity-backed, I’m very pleased I was able to offer him the opportunity to grow his division much more quickly than at his existing employer, where there are cash-flow restrictions.

Thursday

Visit the HR director of a large bank in Edinburgh to discover how they retain staff in their various contact centres. Now have enough information to put forward an intelligent proposal on how we should tackle employee attrition — a subject on which we’ve expended a great deal of energy. We assess more than 20,000 candidates and place around 4,500 people per year, so we need to know how they feel. Various websites have quoted me in connection with research in contact centres I carried out on Valentine’s Day last year — the phrase ‘a little loving can be good for morale’ gave my mum a laugh!

Friday

End of week round-up with Hammond Resources’ accountancy team [part of the Rise Group]. I find out the key challenges and opportunities they’ve faced recently, and we share some of the lessons we’ve taken on board from them. From my perspective the past four days alone have yielded plenty of leads guaranteed to deliver new growth. Altogether a frenetic but very positive week.

Would you like to be a contributor to Diary of… ?

Email vanessa.townsend@centaur.co.uk