From day 1 to day 365+
When Kerry and I set up HRLife we started the business with a mix of excitement, hope and a very open mind; we listened to everyone’s ideas, suggestions and thoughts but genuinely didn’t quite know where we’d end up at the one year mark. Looking back, we can honestly say we never thought we’d have achieved so much in 12 months. We have loved every minute and haven’t yet had to come home and hide under the duvet… (you’ve read our ‘one day’ blog, right?), a sneaky last-minute day working from home in the sun during the heatwave maybe! We are so excited to have just celebrated our one year birthday and want to say thank you to each and every one of you who has supported our journey so far.
Like with anything, there were a lot of ‘what if’ questions; the funniest one now when we look back is what if no-one wanted to work with us… a few people laughed when we suggested this might happen, but when setting up something so new there was always going to be some risk attached. Although in hindsight this was probably a bit extreme! Many reassured us and told us that with our network and track record this was just not going to happen, and thankfully they proved us right.
It’s been a flurry of Heads of, Business Partners and Shared Service roles through to helping our close network of HRD’s find a couple of high potential HR Advisors and TA specialists for their team. Virtually all of our clients have come via our network or from referrals, many of whom we’ve worked with over the years. So, we’ve found ourselves recruiting across an array of sectors, start-ups looking for their first HR Manager through to Global businesses. Geography has taken us far and wide and whilst our base has been traditionally Thames Valley and London, we’ve ventured up as far as Newcastle!
We’ve both learnt tons on the way, met some incredible HR people and found amazing opportunities for some truly talented individuals. We’ve loved being able to be flexible and come up with an individual resourcing plan for each assignment which has often seen us working exclusively and able to provide a really high-touch service.
Many of you reading this are probably desperate to hear what was our biggest hiccup in the last 12 months – deleting the database was not our finest moment – probably a good thing we still don’t know how it happened or which one of us did it! But we moved on from that quite quickly as we were knee deep in GDPR stuff at the same time and both had holidays looming so it turned out to be a busy few weeks working with our IT team to get everything restored and back on track…. a few sangrias were definitely drunk when we each landed in the sun!
Day one seems quite a distant memory but for now, day 365+ we are celebrating and reflecting on what we have achieved and what the next 12 months might look like. Many people have asked when we plan to build our empire, but that was never our goal. We’ve also been asked where our office is, but we are truly embracing the ‘coffice’ and love rocking up somewhere different every day and offering the flex to candidates and clients! One of our proudest achievements so far is bringing Justine Abri-Hodder into the team as our Candidate Engagement Manager. For us right now – 3 is the magic number!