What we’re listening to……….

It would be great if this was a post about us listening to regular economic podcasts straight from CNN or listening to some self improvement tapes, but it isn’t. Here’s a selection of bands getting playtime in the Capital2 Solutions offices:

Kings of Leon

The Cribs

Chalatans

Radiohead

Vanessa Paradis

Joy Division

The Jam

IndoChine

The Ramones

The Streets

Happy Mondays

LTJ Bukem

Arctic Monkeys

Oasis

Air

Cocoon

Feist

Killers

Libertines

Capital2 bosses speak at HEC Paris

February 12th, Capital2 Solutions founder Sam Kirby gave a talk to the 2009 MBA class at  HEC Paris (France’s top business school). The subject was the Hiring Markets for 2009 / 2010 and the hour long presentation gave rise to some healthy questions and debate at the end of the talk.

Recruitment Market 2009

So how are things shaping up for 2009?

Well, there’s overwhelming consensus that hiring will slow down across the board. Profits are down, therefore budgets are down therefore hiring slows….. logical. Our core markets of banking and high technology are broad enough to enable us to react effectively to this, but we’d be stupid to think that next year will be easy.

How does this affect the way we work?

Well generally in tough economic periods, there are a lot of candidates on the market (redundancies etc), and fewer new jobs being created. The inverse is roughly true in boom times, where there are lots of jobs compared to the number of suitable candidates. This means we as a company have to do 3 main things:

1. We work harder to find new roles to fill, and try to keep tight hold of our existing (hiring) client base.
2. We have to ensure that the ratio between being asked to hire a role and actually filling it is as close as possible to perfection.
3. We need to maintain an accurate and large database of active candidates to ensure we react quickly in the event of being retained by a client. This can even take the form of partnerships with 3rd party researchers or RPO companies.

So we will be affected. We service the banking and technology markets, both of which will be squeezing suppliers (ie us) hard over 2009. That said, our management team have already come through one serious recession – no reason they can’t come out the other side of this one smiling too!!!!

Update on Capital2’s progress

So, here we are at the end of July 2008, and given our ambitious growth plans outlined in an earlier blog, it would seem a good idea to have a check as to how we are performing against expectation.

The company began trading in February 08, although the first few months involved more administrative work and preparation than actual hiring!! The French SARL came into being in April 08 and this is really when we were able to shut the door on the bureaucracy and focus more on our clients.

Since then we have sourced candidates for roles in: France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Germany and the UK. We have received job offers in Germany, Portugal, France, Spain and Italy…. not bad going considering!

These first few months have also been extremely useful in teaching us how to run a business, and we have extended our international network massively… 6 months in and we are much better prepared to take on executive search assignments and multiple job assignments anywhere in Europe. Our business is much more robust and better established.

Billing: Things are on track although we are behind out initial (ambitious) forecast… hopefully a strong second half to the year will get us back on track.

Growth: on track for 2009, nothing major planned for the rest of 2008, which is to be used to consolidate.

So things are looking positive, in a period of economic instability, we are performing to expectation. Our low overheads enable us to be flexible to meet the needs of various clients and the future is looking extremely positive.

www.capital2solutions.com

Euro 2008

No England, but our French offices are rooting for les bleus!!!

Viera’s potential loss through injury is a worry though, as playing with Makelele + one other defensive midfielder leaves France with only 3 attackers on the field. Not to mention the group of DEATH!

New Look Website!

OK so it isn’t a massive change, but still…………………

1. The spinning musical brain has been taken off. Although we liked the concept, a lot of people on WANs or with limited memory PCs found it took a long time to load.
2. Improved search capability….. we were previously limited to 3 jobs per search…. not enough. You can now search our entire live job database worldwide.
3. Link to french version… our home page is in english, with a link through to the version française

Visit us and feel free to give us your comments: www.capital2solutions.com

Paris office up and running……..

Well finally we have sorted our offices out in Paris and have opened the HQ of our french operation in the über-trendy 18th Arrondissement, Montmartre.

We are therefore within easy striking distance of La Défense and the 8th Arrondissement where the vast majority of our french clients are based, but we’re still able to situate ourselves in a building with ‘cachet’ and in an area in which we can put down roots i.e. not being based in 25m² of charmless business suites somewhere!

Next stop Germany on our way to global domination (cue maniacal laghter) mwa ha ha ha haaaaaaa!

 

Environmental Issues / Carbon Footprints / Green Stuff

We here at Capital2 Solutions are a fairly committed bunch; committed to success and committed to delivering to our clients and candidates. We are also committed to running our business ethically and in an environmentally friendly way, here’s a list of some of the ways in which we try to limit the impact we have on the world around us:

1) Travel. Our international markets mean that staff often have to travel to meetings in other countries across Europe. Sometimes these meetings are called at short notice which necessitates the use of air travel. However every trip on the plane is off set by the next one being done via public transport… train usually.

2) Company car policy….. all company vehicles are to be as low on emmissions as possible. No 4X4s or Ferraris unfortunately.

3) All waste paper products are re-cycled and printing is kept to a minimum, all our paper products come from sustainable forests.

4) Any hardware is sent to specialists in order to be re-configured and sold on, rather than dumped.

5) Our research team use the internet extensively. However instead of the ubiquitous Google we endeavour to use Blackle.com which is comparatively more energy efficient.

6) We endeavour to use suppliers with a similar level of commitment to the environment as we have.

These are small steps, but every little helps and whilst we are far from being activists, we feel that everyone and every company has a duty to minimise the negative physical impact they have on the world.

Félicitations

Congratulations from all associated with Capital2 Solutions to Mathieu Bruckert and his partner Sabrina who have recently had a baby boy called Lucas.

All well wishers feel free to email Mathieu direct as he will be picking up emails whilst on parental leave….. that’s dedication for you! However given the fact he will be surviving on little sleep, we take no responsibility for the sanity of his replies.

Capital2’s Growth Plans

Capital2 Solutions currently comprises a group of two companies, based respectively in London and Paris, with a branch office in Sophia Antipolis. Our aim for 2008 is consolidation in France with added growth in the UK.

Although we have existing colleagues in the UK office and future senior collaborators already ‘earmarked’ for when they become available, we are still on the look out for talented UK based recruiters who wish to help build our business.

2009 is a year in which we aim to continue our international expansion and open a German division in order to cover Central and Eastern Europe more effectively. We will also look to expand our core French operation.

Once this structure is in place we will aggressively grow the business throughout 2010 both in terms of headcount and in terms of turnover / profit.

Our 5 year objective is to be at a headcount of 20+ fee earning staff and £5 million turnover spread through 4 countries by end 2012.

Our forecast shows that the growth curve will rapidly accelerate from 2010, when the company will be able to build quickly and sustainably on the solid foundations laid over the next 2.5 years.

How will we achieve this growth……… through a mixture of hard work and careful planning. Our aim is not to over-reach our capabilities or to take on unnecessary risk. Each Director (or Partner) is a fee earner. We are a lean, efficient organisation that is committed to best working practices and to client delivery. 

Our growth plans are directly linked to our ability to attract the best people in the market, their capacity to develop a market and their belief in our long term goals. If we cannot get the people we want to move our business forward, then we will simply wait until they become available because we believe in what we can achieve with the correct people on board.