Well what a first month of being operational we’ve had here at Liberty HR Recruitment! It’s been fun, fraught at times and so fulfilling on many levels since we crossed the ‘Start’ line, and ultimately has been a whole month of ‘firsts’ for us all.
On our very first day we had our first member of staff (Lucy) starting her new job; we received our first telephone call (you’ve never seen SO much excitement at the sound of a telephone ringing) and our very first office visitor dropped by (Jo Burfitt who, incidentally, hand-delivered our very first gifts of an office plant, good-luck card and delicious cookies too!). We’ve had our very first volunteer helper when, last Friday, Nikki Crowhurst (previously a Head of HR and now unlocking leadership potential at HOW 2 HR) spent some time with us in the Liberty HR office. And next week we’ll have our very first temporary member of staff joining us for a month, owing to the volume of work we’ve had coming in! We also met the first of our office neighbours (David) who is a recruiter in the care sector.
Within a day or two we had registered our first candidate; given our first CV advice and heard from our first potential client. Soon we would be hearing from an old contact for the first time at our new company and it wasn’t long before we were given our first job to work on (which also meant writing our first job advert, selecting our first image and getting them posted on our website and social media platforms!). With the volume of calls and messages coming in, we didn’t have to wait too long before we had our first candidate interview date, our first job offer and our very first placement – how amazing we felt! So we’ve also sent off our very first invoice. We have also had our first candidate turn down an offer, but it was good news as their current employer offered them permanent hours and a pay rise, so we still felt a sense of pride in playing a part in that particular success story.
We’ve now been asked to work on a role exclusively for a new client for the first time; and we’ve started opening the Liberty HR office on a Saturday morning, which has gone down a storm with the many people who really don’t get time to concentrate on their own career during the week.
Since then we’ve paid our first bills; had our very first canine visitor (it’s brilliant working on a dog-friendly site); we’ve attended our first networking event (and handed out our first new business cards) and posted our very first exclusive (and out-of-area) job vacancy…and we’re still waiting to make our first sales call!
Jane has met with the Shaping Portsmouth Business Leaders after we became an Associate of the Shaping Portsmouth organisation (our first of course!) and she has also had her first meeting as Chair of the Wessex CIPD branch with all of the Wessex group Chairs.
We have had our first experiences of forward planning by having a conversation with someone who, we hope, will be joining Liberty HR in the first quarter of 2020 to start working with us. We also are in conversations with someone with another skillset to add to the existing set of skills of the team. Jane is the HR expert, Lucy is our L&D guru and our new associate has bundles of talent experience and will hopefully join us on an ad hoc basis to help us with our role and seniority reach, so watch this (very exciting) space. It will also necessitate us going out and buying a new desk and office chair…our first new office furniture purchases!
We have been so very lucky to have received so much support and encouragement in our first month and, joking aside, we know how little we would have achieved without our extended – and fantastic – HR family. Although it’s only been a month, we already feel like we’ve been here for so much longer (in a good way!) and have loads of work coming in. It’s been such a pleasure to be able to help so many people whilst we are still in our infancy as a company, and we look forward to doing more of the same for as long as you’ll allow us.
With so many exciting things in the pipeline (such as our first Inspiring HR Leaders Event next week) we feel like we’ve only just started to scratch the surface and have many more milestones to pass for the first time. We have a long way to go but, after such a great start, we are feeling positive and energised by our success during our first month at Liberty HR Recruitment Ltd! ?
