From Koh Phi Phi to future IT

Firstly, I owe a lot of people an apology. This time last year I seemed to drop off the face of the earth and cut all communication, so I thought it worthwhile explaining what’s been going on and what’s happening next.

A little over a year ago I exited T4S with a heavy heart. It was never my intention to leave the business I started. The company was on an upward curve and moving to fantastic new offices with a very bright future however circumstances out of my control made it impossible for me to continue as a Director in the business. I had the opportunity to sell my shares and move on which all happened relatively quickly. I had contractual obligations to adhere to hence the lack of communication.

I lost my mojo and fell out of love with recruitment, I decided it was a good idea to take some time out (the longest holiday I’d had in almost 8 years was 10 days!) and went to visit friends in Australia and Thailand for a couple of months (picture above is from the stunning phi phi islands). It was great to get away and clear my head, not think about work or check my emails every 10 minutes. It also gave me the time to analyse the past 8 years, what we did well and what we could have done better. I started reading books from Simon Sinek to Matthew Syed that started to open my eyes what was really important when starting and scaling a business.

Upon my return from travelling I didn’t feel ready to jump back into agency recruitment and wanted to gain some client side experience. I was put in contact with a start-up business in the Blockchain space and helped them build a team from scratch. I have really been interested in Blockchain technology for some time now. We started recruiting in this space at T4S a couple of years back and it was clear this was a growing market. Despite extreme price volatility and regulatory uncertainty, the number of jobs in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector rose 300% in 2018. It was great to sit the other side of the fence and help implement a hiring strategy, a structured interview process and staff retention plan. This also allowed me to attend numerous networking events that I learnt so much from while connecting with some of the brightest professionals in the industry.

In fact, over the past year I attended 16 different networking events. A few of which were with James Osborne and The Recruitment Network. I cannot speak highly enough of James and his fantastic team, particularly their summer retreat. It was fascinating to network with over 150 business leaders over the two day event.

One thing clear was established, successful leaders had built environments built on trust and mutual respect. I’ve never been a fan of micro-management and phone stats, more results driven ownership, and with more start up recruitment businesses than ever in 2018 (8,488 in fact) this is vitally important when creating your company culture and values.

I think I was always destined to be involved in another agency start up and the opportunity came around to join forces with a former colleague from my Penta days, James Peachey. The timing was right, and we had the same idea of building a proactive (rather than reactive) recruitment consultancy focusing on the future technology market in London. Our vision is to build a candidate focused consultancy offering services other than recruitment back to the technical community.

It is our aim is to support a number of like-minded businesses in their search for the market’s top technology talent, becoming a trusted adviser into such businesses and becoming an integral part of their growth strategies.

This summer we will be hosting a number of different events within our five key verticals:- Blockchain, AI, Digital, Data and Cyber. All without a job spec in site. We want to bring our network and contacts together with the simple aim of sharing experiences and enhancing knowledge.

I’m also really excited about our Managed Service offering we have set up in Sofia, Bulgaria. Tech Intellect Services is a support partner to companies across the UK offering alternatives to traditional onsite Service Desk teams that can often become a time consuming and an expensive overhead. Our low-cost model that can be tailored to your business demands as well as scaling and evolving as businesses grow and develop. Our remote IT support team can either be based on a pay as you go model offering as little as two hours support a day through to a complete 24*7*365 cover with ticketing, triage, escalations and full reporting. Popular with young businesses looking to offer a support service for the first time, either internally or with their customer base, as well as companies looking to outsource their current IT support model.

Anyhow, I’ve got the fire back in my belly and really excited to see what 2019 brings. I still believe London has the best technical talent in the world and I’m back hands on doing what I do best and enjoy the most.

Please feel free to reach out for any information on the new business, our technical communities or managed service desk... or just to say hello! [email protected]