east midlands

Free funding for new staff for your creative business

Future Jobs Fund

If you’re growing your business, or bouncing back after the recession, you could probably do with an extra pair of helping hands right now.

The Future Jobs Fund programme is great scheme to bring new talent into your organisation. It’s a government scheme to create 17,000 jobs for 18-24 years old which provides 100% funding for your business to recruit a young person for 6 months, working 25 hours a week at the National Minimum Wage. To recruit a full time person or to pay a higher salary, just pay your own top-up.

Who can benefit

Digital Consultant is working with Gecko Programmes to create jobs in the East Midlands, West Midlands and South West for creative, digital and cultural businesses. We will help you recruit if your business is in:

- Advertising
- Computer games
- Design
- Events
- Fashion design
- Product and furniture design
- Film and television
- Heritage
- Jewellery and antiques
- Marketing and promotion
- Music – promotions, studios and manufacture
- Performing and visual arts
- Radio
- Video production
- Web and software development

For us to help, you need to have a registered office in:

- East Midlands (see map)
- West Midlands (see map)
- South West – (ONLY the counties of Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Bath and Bristol)

How we can help you recruit

Gecko will manage all of your recruitment working with the Job Centre and our existing database, or helping you to recruit from your own network. If you are not established as a business (e.g. a voluntary group), Gecko may also be able to employ someone on your behalf.

Future Jobs Fund is not an apprenticeship scheme – you have no obligation to offer training, but if you want to skill your new employee, Gecko Programmes can offer advice about accessing Train To Gain and other funding for skills.

We can help you hire someone for any kind of job, including graduate or specialist roles. We’ve recently helped to recruit roles for organisations including:

Birmingham Royal Ballet
New Vic Theatre
Aston FM

Start you recruitment

To find out more and get started with your recruitment contact:

Susi O’Neill, Digital Consultant tel: 07981 222799
Email: susi@digitalconsultant.co.uk

Independent businesses need a digital strategy to compete in the global economy

Below is a press release I’m using it to promote my digital strategy service, with funding from Business Link to offer up to £1,000 of free consultancy. It’s probably a bit basic for many regular blog subscribers, but for others gives an idea of what the hell digital strategy is, what I do, and why it could benefit your business…

As the internet becomes the dominant way to acquire customers, it’s crucial that independent business owners understand the importance of the internet and take a strategic approach to growing their business online.

One business owner wants to ensure businesses have the right knowledge and skills to succeed. Susi O’Neill, Director of Digital Consultant, is an expert in digital strategy and digital marketing, delivering services designed to meet the needs of small and growing businesses. Through a Business Link programme, businesses in the Midlands with 5-249 staff can access up to £1,000 of support towards developing their digital strategy.

O’Neill advises: “The facts speak loudly: the internet is doubling in size every five years; by 2010 £39 billion will be spend globally online. But it’s a crowded marketplace and East Midlands businesses are jostling for position against other regions and lower-cost international competitors.

“Deciding what to do online confuses many business owners, who understand their market but struggle to keep on top of frequent changes in web technologies, and the cost of implementing web marketing or design can be daunting. This is where a digital strategist can help: by showing you how your existing website and e-marketing can be improved and what methods and tactics should be used, whilst measuring your return on investment.

“Getting your web presence right is critical: bad website design can lose 50% of potential sales but using the right words can direct thousands of prospects to your website for free. Email marketing is an area many businesses overlook: a successful campaign grows your customer database, consistently trumping all other types of marketing for sales conversion – 63% of people respond to an offer by email.

“But uptake in online marketing tools by independent business is low: just 2% of UK businesses use Twitter and 6% have blogs – two powerful ways of reaching customers for free.”

O’Neill believes using social media is vital for independent businesses: “The days of Yellow Pages ads are over: the new ‘Generation Y’ graduates are active creators, contributing to discussions on channels like Facebook – which has a membership including a staggering three in four of all internet users. If Facebook were a country, its population would be the fourth largest in the world.

“Social media for business is about actively engaging in the conversations people are already having online about problems and needs which your business could solve. It can lead to smart wins and increased customer engagement and retention, reducing the cost of acquisition and leading to better customer satisfaction too – all crucial ways for independent businesses to beat the recession.”

For more information and to access the Business Link funded programme, contact me.

Going Apprentice at High Growth Coaching weekend

Last weekend I had an intensive time on a training course. I’m doing a Chartered Management Institute High Growth Coaching Diploma, which is being run by Exponential as part of a programme sponsored by the East Midlands Development Agency’s High Growth Programme to support regional businesses with potential. I was hoping for a bit of a jolly in a nice hotel in Northamptonshire, but of course our public-funded sponsors duly put us to our paces in a 48-hour workathon not unlike an episode of “The Apprentice”.

Placed in a five-person team, we had a series of challenging business modelling exercises to grow a telecoms company, competing with three other teams for market domination. That in itself was a spreadsheet-from-hell exercise, but as the Board of Directors we had to set our code of conduct and strategy. Sesssions were fast-placed and taxing, but half-way through John the course leader announced that as this was a coaching programme, we’d be tested on how true we were to our strategy and conduct – not solely on the bottom-line. The challenge was keeping our nerve and balancing strategic and human relationships with operational ‘get it out the door’ delivery.

Fortunately, my team got on very well – we were blessed with a wealth of experience in marketing, operations and technology from Diane, Mike, John and Adrian – quite literally, as one of the team was a Reverend. As the least skilled member of the team, I was duly elected MD and it put me through my paces (as the youngest coach on the course by the best part of a decade), and tested my mettle in establishing collaborative leadership and focusing on our goals.

We actually had a lot of fun. And we came back with the booty – we won the greatest market share, greatest profit (*grins smugly*). And we were voted the top team who stuck to our conduct and strategy. Woop! I think the key to our success was having shared goals – and I learnt a lot from the course as to how clients need to have a shraed focus, values and to continual evaluate what they are trying to achieve and measuring performance. Having a good sense of humour and fun, being amendable and flexible in attitude, also helped a lot. We benefited from diversity in experiences within our team and it made me recognise that in this context, very much away from the creative industries bubble I work in, my approach was actual quite innovative, risk-taking and radical compared to my peers from more steady-state industries. The yin-yang combination in this kind of bootstrapping environment is a lot stronger than mono-cultures many businesses (especially creative ones) envelope themselves in.

I enjoyed our winning bottle of wine at home, after two crashed wedding parties, a muddy walk thorugh the country and sauna later. Shame to let those lovely facilities go to waste…