John Cridland’s message was that the UK economy should neither be relying on other economies to pull ourselves out of recession, nor be waiting for someone else to do something. The word he kept repeating was “confidence” – individual businesses need to inject confidence into their markets and everything will be alright.

Interesting theory, flawed in only a couple of minor areas. You cannot tell me that managing directors and chief executives do not believe that their products and services are not the best in the marketplace, so how much more confidence can they have? The banks certainly don’t inspire confidence; rather than lending to, investing in and inspiring confidence in growing businesses, they are busy making money from money. The tax man lets huge companies get away with paying minimal corporation tax but charges individuals £100 for late self-assessment returns, even if they owe no tax. And water companies impose drought restrictions on farmers rather than invest some of their outrageous profits in improving the pipe system in this country, much of which was laid down the last time a reigning monarch celebrated a Diamond Jubilee.

The UK economy at a micro level does not lack confidence; most of us just don’t believe that the people who wield power in this country know what they are doing. The other thing about confidence, and planning for the future, is that you need to know what your market is going to be like for the coming months. We are quick to stereotype our European counterparts (Germans are efficient, French angry, Mediterraneans lazy etc) but we gloss over the fact that in the UK, we seek out any opportunity not to work.

Remember all the furore over the extra Bank Holiday for the Jubilee? Not having it was seen as some kind of abuse of our human rights. The challenge for the UK economy over the coming months does not come from Europe, but the fact that the country’s focus is on non-economic events – the Jubilee celebrations, Euro 2012, the London Olympics. How much time has been wasted on people looking for Olympic tickets on line? How much money has been wasted on the Jubilee celebrations?

Mr Cridland, the confidence is there, and business leaders want to seize every opportunity they can. It’s just that we’re all a bit busy until the middle of August, and then there’s the last summer Bank Holiday to consider as well. Can we get back to you in September?

The website also provides a central point for recruiters to purchase and upload their own video CVs to promote both vacancies and candidates online. Apparently, it has been developed because even the best written CV can lack personality, and the video technology allows recruitment consultants to really get a feel for the person, including both their skills and their ability to communicate. The developers want to make life easier for recruiters so that filing through paper CVs will soon be a thing of the past.

It appears that these developers have missed the last ten years or so; no-one sends “paper CVs” anymore. And as for getting a feel for the person, you could always use that 19th century invention, the telephone, or an even older invention, the space between your ears.

As a profession, recruitment consultants have a deservedly bad press at the best of times, so it is impossible to see how something like this, coupled with the word search programmes that most recruitment consultancies now use to assess CVs, can lead to raising the standards within the sector. Most candidate applications now include LinkedIn links, and there are still those who believe that a photograph on a CV is a good thing.

All that this technology will do is make the lazy recruitment consultants even more lazy, and the industry more and more like internet dating. Conversely, the reputations of those recruitment agencies who believe in old fashioned principles like reading CVs and meeting candidates face to face will only be enhanced by everyone else’s headlong rush towards technological Nirvana.

Two out of five small business bosses continue to work from their sick beds when they are off ill, according to research. A study of 250 business owners by health firm Bupa showed that a third believed their company would collapse if they took time off.

Bupa said the findings showed that a “significant proportion” of bosses were risking burnout and ill health by continuing to work while they were ill. Tony Wood, sales and marketing director at Bupa, said: “Small business bosses are real troupers; they are totally committed to running their firms in sickness as well as health. “However they need to think about how to take care of their health needs and those of their staff, as working through sickness isn’t a long-term solution for anyone.”

So there you are, please spare a thought for those hard-pressed small business owners. I am going to take positive action to combat this – I’m off to the “boardroom” for a restorative tonic (and gin…………..)

It is now easier for a Taliban insurgent to get a job as a security guard than for any one individual or company to borrow money from a bank If you want to buy a house, you have to take both great grandparents with you as collateral on the loan, and only then if they were both members of the upper class before the First World War. The “cheapest” loan on the market now means that by the time you have finished completing the paperwork you already owe them more money than Greece.

And yet, I find myself in the extremely odd position of complimenting our bank for one of their services. Yes they charge us every time we use online banking and for writing to me to tell me that they are no longer going to write to me, but without them, we would be significantly worse off. One of our clients, thinking they could bully us by virtue of being a much bigger company than us, decided they were only going to pay half the money they owed us. No reason, we hadn’t done anything wrong or not provided the correct service, they just decided not to pay us.

Reason didn’t work, and without the help of our bank we wouldn’t have got anywhere. However, for a monthly fee (obviously), we have access to a credit tracking system whereby we get information on our customers’ creditworthiness. It’s quite useful, but the best bit of it is that if you follow all the guidelines, you are able to have free advice from a firm of commercial lawyers, which includes all the legal action letters and prospective court action. We received part of the money quite quickly, but the client was still messing us around, so we stepped up to the next level, and were within thirty minutes of issuing a CVA, which would have closed their business down.

We got all the money we were owed, which in this day and age is probably more important than new business. As they say, cash is king, but without this service, we could have gone to the wall ourselves. My advice on this beautiful spring day is this – ask your bank if they have such a service, because frankly it is one monthly bank charge I would advise everyone to pay.

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The highly qualified and experienced team can support your business from recruiting your first employee right through to managing the HR function for a large team of employees.

They offer the best integrated solution for your business from telephone advice, delivering your specific project requirements or alternatively, attending on site, on a regular basis to support and deliver your Human Resources function.

The solutions they offer are practical and workable, in plain speaking terms on all client issues; this can be anything from dealing with one off ad hoc queries such as discipline or absence control to coaching and supporting managers through the human resource processes. They also endeavour to transfer their skill and knowledge base to your supervisors and managers giving them the confidence to deal with the human resource issues as they arise.

The aim of HR Integrated Solutions is to provide the perfect integrated solution that match your current and future needs at a fraction of the cost involved in employing a HR team directly.

The price on an advertisement is exactly what it says; it is what you will have to pay to acquire that product. So why do candidates applying for jobs online believe that the salary advertised is a starting point for negotiation? When applying for a role, there are a number of matters you would probably consider – job title, job content, location and salary. You wouldn’t apply for a job and then turn round and ask for the job to be based somewhere other than the company’s offices, or ask that it is called something else.

Titles, content and salary are all things that clients and recruitment consultants discuss in depth and agree on so that there is a good response to the advertisement to increase the chances of filling the role. If the salary states negotiable, then fine; if there is a monetary trade off for non-provided benefits, then fine. In exceptional circumstances, and only at the very end of the recruitment process, you may find that the salary package changes due to a change in scope of the role.

But to apply for a job at a stated salary and then immediately demand more money smacks of greed and a lack of understanding of how the recruitment market works. Decide what salary you need or want and apply for jobs at or above that salary; there are plenty of people out there who will work for the salary advertised, so please do us all a favour and stop wasting both yours and our time. That way, you will get the job you want at the salary you want and us recruitment consultants won’t have to stand screaming in darkened rooms.

December is traditionally the month where recruitment grinds to a halt as everyone looks forward to their Christmas Party (remember them?) and puts any career plans on hold until the New Year. However, we are in the extremely fortunate position to be recruiting for a number of clients who are already planning for next year. It does mean that I have spent quite some time in hotels, assessing the quality of the Christmas decorations in between meetings. Most have been extremely tasteful, but I have noticed one major thing – every hotel has the same Christmas CD playing over the sound system. Seriously, I am waking up in the middle of the night with “Another Rock ‘n’ Roll Xmas” going through my head, and it’s beginning to drive me mad.

So, in this season of goodwill to all men, if you see someone rocking gently on a comfy sofa in a hotel of a major chain, probably near a motorway, weeping as Shakin’ Stevens plays in the background, please spare me a thought. And buy me a drink………………..

According to this article in Insider, Chancellor George Osborne is set to unveil credit easing schemes which could release £40bn in loans to small businesses.

It is speculated that the government could underwrite banks’ borrowing with loans of £20bn involved at first – though this could double. The small business scheme is said to be focused on companies turning over under £50m.  It is also reported that Osborne is set to announce a multibillion-pound infrastructure investment programme with cash coming from British pension funds and Chinese investment though up to £5bn could be paid for from further public spending cuts.

John Longworth, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said: “The credit easing package is a big shot in the arm for Britain’s real economy.  As the BCC’s latest economic forecast shows, the UK’s prospects for growth remain shaky, and measures of this size and scale are urgently needed to sustain a credible recovery.  Credit easing measures must be implemented quickly in order to boost business confidence and increase the flow of finance to viable and growing companies.”

My problem with this is pretty straightforward – where has this money suddenly come from and why wasn’t it available earlier?  Why have small businesses had to suffer for the mistakes of the banks and the unwillingness of government to get involved?  If, as Margaret Thatcher once said, Britain is a nation of shopkeepers, surely those people, the lifeblood of the UK economy, should have been protected and supported before the fat cats in the city.

I fear that this is not the answer, but merely an attempt by an unpopular, unelected Chancellor to prove that he is taking positive action on the economy; worst of all, how can we be sure that this money exists?

It claims that “the UK labour market faces a “slow, painful contraction” with firms delaying recruitment of more staff”. Furthermore, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) predicted the jobs market would worsen in the medium term amid global economic “turmoil”, and that employers were adopting a “wait and see” policy towards the economy, which involved reduced recruitment as well as fewer redundancies.

The problem with any report such as this is the length of time it takes to compile. Let’s be fair, the CIPD apparently contacted 1,000 employers, but the chances are it took a month to target the clients, a month to get the results back and a month to put the report together. So the chances are, the views reported are probably three months old and not representative of what is actually happening.

Our take on the market is that clients have decided that they need to take control of their own destiny, and are recruiting now to prepare themselves for the challenges that lie ahead. The CIPD report is a snapshot of the mood some months ago, not now.

We should be encouraging entrepreneurship, carpe diem, whatever you want to call it, not spreading doom and gloom. My advice – don’t believe everything you hear on the news!

The last few months had seen a lot of clients deferring recruitment until the future was clearer, but it now seems that these same clients are taking control of their own destiny and seeking to strengthen their staffing to take advantage of the opportunities that are being presented to them. Regardless of how long this “crisis” continues, and let’s be fair we have been living under a cloud for nearly four years now, there are good businesses out there, making stuff, selling stuff and making profits. There also seems to be a willingness on behalf of some banks, though not all, to invest in really good opportunities.

All this should be positive for candidates and clients alike. There are more, better candidates looking for new roles; previously, many had been wary of leaping into new challenges, fearful of leaving “the devil you know”. Candidates in work looking for new jobs creates its own momentum; after all the jobs they leave will need filling.

Most importantly there seems to a collective lifting of the gloom, almost a Dunkirk spirit emerging whereby business leaders are not wringing their hands in despair, but instead shoving two fingers up at the naysayers and European doom mongerers, and getting on with the matter in hand, namely growing their companies and making money.