Blog

This month’s blog gives a true insight into how we have found starting up our own business – for those who haven’t done it, read this and feel inspired to do so; those who haven’t done it, read this and think ‘rather you than me’; and let’s not forget those that have done it, read this and empathise with us!  It’s a whole different ball game when it’s your own and for us, like having ‘another’ child.  You wake up thinking about it, live and breathe it during the day, go to sleep thinking about it and then have dreams/nightmares about it or insomnia when you can’t switch off from it!  Not that it’s a surprise, because having spent a long time planning this and taking the biggest leap of faith in ourselves and each other, we are now actually doing this and it is our new, manic and exciting reality.

 

We are pinching ourselves daily…clients now know us and want us to support them and candidates are taking the time to share their positive experience.  Even the novelty of answering the phone as ‘Pear Tree Recruitment’ and receiving feedback from a client that we are ‘less high street and more boutique recruiter’ hasn’t worn off yet!  Not to look at it through purely rose-tinted glasses though, because this is without a doubt the biggest learning experience of our lives.  We were worried when we started that by not having a known brand behind us, clients wouldn’t take a leap of faith to work with us (tick #1, they are) and that candidates wouldn’t apply for our jobs because we are still a relative unknown in a saturated market of recruitment agencies (tick #2, they are).  Who knew that we would suddenly have to know (and care/worry) about things like hashtags, social media, what insurance we need, when we need to file our first VAT return (the first one is due at the end of this month apparently…thank goodness for our accountant), corporation tax (yawn!)…and the list goes on…and on!  Let’s not forget that in addition to all of this, we still have to do the actual day-to-day job of recruitment.  Not that we’re modest, but we’re having to prove ourselves to be the perfect job share – we know exactly what each other’s strengths and weaknesses are, who has done what and what needs to be done, and pick up the slack where the other is looking after a poorly child or doing the nursery/school run etc.

 

Speaking of children…there has been more than one occasion where our small humans have tried to give us away.  We’ve had to stand roadside to take the details of a new job because they were kicking off in the car, using the only piece of paper to hand (one of their drawings, #badmum); we’ve hidden in the conservatory seemingly unnoticed to take interview feedback (and had them find us and shout through the cat flap); and we’ve succumbed to food/TV related-bribery in order to talk through a job application, which failed when they started playing the recorder (the recorder that’s lived in the toy box and never been played with…until that perfectly inappropriate moment)!  Thankfully, everyone seems to find this to be most endearing and down-to-earth…and long may that remain because take us or leave us, this is who we are!

 

And so comes the next challenge for one of us (the other one sympathises as will be in the same position in a couple of years) – the looming summer holidays and logistical childcare headache that this brings every year #workingmums #wouldnthaveitanyotherway!

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