The Broadbean blog

Welcome to the broadbean blog

Hello and welcome. The broadbean blog is the place to catch up with the thoughts and opinions of our ever growing Broadbean team. We hope to bring you informative and entertaining views on the recruitment industry as well as any fun we come across on the way.We hope you enjoy our blog spot and please let us know what you think. Ricky Wheeler, BB Blog Master General the 1st

Kids are scarier than Directors!

Ever since I was a teacher and football coach at St Mary’s Kibabii High School in Kenya for 5 months in 1998, I have always harboured an ambition to find a similarly rewarding project to engage with in the UK. In the Young Enterprise scheme, I have found an initiative which has reignited that sense of passion and excitement that I have not felt for a decade.

Dan McGuire has been involved with Young Enterprise for a few years now, and has used his reputation as fine young entrepreneur to inspire groups of teenagers to focus on building the skills and experience which will help them plan for a future career in business. The scheme is essentially a competition where teenagers from a variety of schools and colleges are put into groups and are challenged to set up and run their own business, funded by selling shares to friends and family. They can also seek sponsorship from local businesses and maybe some free product or service if they have the gumption to ask!

With a wide range of opportunitites to get involved with YE, Dan has enlisted me to assist with this year’s new businesses. Now I may not have the kudos that comes with Dan’s reputation but I believe I have enough confidence and experience to make an impact in my new role as a YE Ambassador.

My first task was to give four 20 minute presentations on a Saturday morning to groups of 50-80 kids about delivering quality customer service. I have NEVER been so nervous in my life! I swear that teenagers can smell your fear! I am used to presenting to groups at all levels of the hierarchy, but nothing cuts through you quite like the look of a slightly disinterested youngster. The session was a great success and I have now moved on to mentoring two businesses every Tuesday evening.

I have bought shares in both businesses so my interest is now financial as well as emotional. The board meetings are a great opportunity to witness the staggering development of their teamwork skills and business acumen. They are also utterly hilarious, as building a business together really brings out their sense of humour, especially when trying to control who talks next at the table.

From a selfish point of view, I find the whole experience massively rewarding and it feel satisfying to know that I’m giving something back to a community and could be mentoring the next Richard Branson. So if you get the chance to do something similar, I would leap at the chance!

To find out more about Young Enterprise, or sponsorship opportunities, drop me an email – andyh@broadbean.com.

The Week of the Deal...

So my next blog. Even though I commented on only writing one, here I am sitting at my PC on the Monday after the sale contemplating the whirlwind that was the final week leading up to the close of the deal.

You would think that for a man who has been making deals all his working life, selling a business would be just another tick in the box. That’s what I thought, but it has been such an emotional ride, it’s difficult to articulate.

The final week goes something like this:

Hopes, rejection and lessons of the graduate

It’s scary to see how competitive graduate recruitment has become, 40 applications per advert is six times more than average so I feel for the Grads of 08; it was tough enough when I was a bright eyed jobseeker:

As a student you’re told that getting a degree (any subject) will fast track you to the good life. Naive and keen, I started planning what marina I’d dock the yacht at before I’d even passed my first module.

A day in the life of Jack

I was delighted to hear on Friday morning about the company’s acquisition by AND, the digital media division of The Daily Mail group.

I’ve worked for companies in the past that have been acquired and generally it’s been a positive move. I think with Broadbean it’s unquestionably a huge step in the right direction. If we can get new products to market quicker then it improves our competitive edge and that keeps everyone (me and the sales team in particular) very happy.

The Recruiters Network - Manchester, London and plans for 2009

The marketing team is buzzing this week in preparation for the Recruiters Network, which is going to  Manchester this Thursday.  This is the third regional event that we’ve held, but the first one that I’ve organised so I’m really excited about it.

Word about our networking events must be spreading faster than we are because we’ve got the biggest amount of signups we’ve ever had outside of London. September’s London event was the first one that I worked on, and I must say that I was really impressed with the amount and variety of people that turned up, and I hoping for the same vibe in Manchester.

Word about our networking events must be spreading faster than we are because we’ve got the biggest amount of signups we’ve ever had outside of London. September’s London event was the first one that I worked on, and I must say that I was really impressed with the amount and variety of people that turned up, and I hoping for the same vibe in Manchester.

New website allows employees to rate their boss - good or bad?

I was reading an article on onrec a few weeks ago about this website: www.workrewired.com, and I can't decide whether it's a good or bad idea. See what you think...

Work Rewired is a forum/blogging site where people can rate their workplaces and bosses for all the world to see. Working at BB with bosses like Dan and Kel, I and most employees would have nothing but great things to say about them, so a site like this could work in their favour. However, an employee who has had a bad day could also (but probably wouldn't) write bad things about them just to vent some steam. This wouldn't be a true representation of the company as experienced by most of the people that work here. Yet, if this concept takes off, people are going to decide whether to accept a job or not based on ratings or posts like these.  As I see it, there are positives and negatives to this website:

Setting up a PHP file to handle requests from Broadbean (Basically, how to integrate with us using a form!)

Over in integrations we are often asked how the data goes
from our system to the job board/clients site’s database, I’m hoping I can explain the simplest form of this and maybe answer some questions along the way! To begin with you would create a new file with the extension of .php, for this example I’m going to call it broadbean.php. But, before we start to write the file you need to decide a few things:

A Bean by any other name

My first, and probably only one …

We are often asked where the name Broadbean came from, so I thought that was a good enough subject to discuss in my inaugural bean blog. It’s been six or so years since I started this business, or planted the first seeds of our beandom, and a lot has happened since then. But this same question is always asked, as if expecting some mystic answer.  The truth is...

I’ll be back...and I am – A Monkey Blog

Yes, I never thought I would utter those words once said by the famous Arnie!

Having been with The Bean since its early days (just under 5 years), I thought it was time for a change. I therefore took the journey of self discovery and found myself at Zubka.com, a great company with a fantastic concept and great people.

Triple whammy

Here at Broadbean we like to do things in threes, so this month we bring you the launch of Broadcast, the launch of our company blog and the relaunch of www.broadbean.com

Safe to say the marketing dept has been very busy over the past few months.

For any suppliers that are working with us we have a new website section that lists your services. If you work with us and we have left you out please contact us right away.

We have also pulled together loads of client testimonials old and new that really show how much we are loved here at Bean HQ. If you would like to contribute, once again please contact us