Category: Events

It was a great night at Colwick Hall celebrating the success of EMC – East Midlands Enterprising Women. Everyone who was recongised as a finalist are winners in their own right – including our very own Sarah-Louise Wykes who we are all really proud of.

The list of winners and their categories: –  

• Sharon Redrobe OBE & CEO of Twycross Zoo –  East Midlands Zoological Society awarded Inspirational Woman of the Year.

Dr Redrobe was one of six women and a team presented with awards at the dinner. Six more and another team were highly commended. The awards recognise the achievements of women in business, many of whom have to balance running families and households to achieve their success.

The other winners included:

• Business Woman of the Year – Suzanne Smith of Soteria Asbestos
• Community Champion of the Year – Barbara Cathcart of Nottingham Hospitals Charity
• Enterprising New Business Woman of the Year – Mital Thanki of Spark Academy
• Team of the Year – Geldards Family Team
• Female Employee of the Year – Min Rose, of The University of Nottingham

The event was co-Chaired by Jean Mountain, a Director and Immediate Past President of East Midlands Chamber (Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire), and Eileen Richards, business owner and former Chair of Integra for Women in Business in Leicestershire, which merged with Enterprising Women.

Eileen said: “We were very impressed with the quality of the applications this year and level of support for women in business.”

The gala dinner was hosted by freelance presenter Emma Jesson, who was GMTV’s first weathergirl, later working for ITV Central and ITV Granada.

Each of the awards was sponsored with the event’s headline sponsor, Cambridge & Counties Bank, coordinating a ‘Women in Business mentoring scheme’, which is supported by Enterprising Women.

Eleven mentees were shortlisted to take part in an assessment day. The successful mentees, which were also announced last night, were Amanda Overend of Books & Pieces, Jade Patel of Cambridge & Counties Bank, Neha Kadiwar of Hastings Direct, Sarah Wilkins of Lumbers and Lynsey Hyslop of The Rugby Players Association.

Jean, who launched Enterprising Women 20 years ago, said: “Congratulations to all the winners of this year’s Enterprising Women Awards. These awards are all about acknowledging and celebrating their achievements.

“There are some very talented and hard-working businesswomen in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire who play a massive part in the success of their business but are often not recognised for their hard work and determination.

“These enterprising women make an important contribution to the local economy and their success stories will hopefully inspire other women to pursue their business dreams.”

The team here at Astute Recruitment are keeping their fingers crossed for Sarah and Mary attending as finalists of Forward Ladies National Women In Business Awards (WIBA). These awards are dedicated to recognising the achievements of leading women in business in the Midlands Region.

As one of the UK’s largest gatherings of businesswomen and leaders, this event is one of four regional heats from which the winners will be entered into the Forward Ladies Women in Business UK Final in Leeds on Thursday, 1st December 2016. The event itself is a celebratory lunch with business speakers of the highest calibre held in Birmingham City Centre at The Hyatt Regency Hotel.

We are keeping our fingers crossed for ourselves but also wish the very best of luck to all the deserved finalists in their categories!

We recently held our first business breakfast event on strategies to win in business and what the world of sport can teach the world of business. It was a great success with over 50 business people including HR and finance professionals as well as business owners from the local Derby area attending. Everyone provided wonderful feedback on our very first quarterly event. We’d like to share below just a few of the super images from the morning.

All of the team here at Astute would like to thank Geldards and their marvellous marketing department for hosting the event, Shawn Ryder, photographer, and of course Neil Back, MBE and Damon Blakey of Fortius who were very generous with their time and shared some amazing (and funny) anecdotes from the world of sport!

We are looking forward to our next event on “Emotional Intelligence For Business Success“. Click the link to read more and confirm your attendance on 13th October.

Our successful year at Astute continues with us being named as 2016’s Best Small Business Recruitment Company by CV Magazine!

With a global network of 130,000 CEO’s, directors and other top-level decision makers, investors across the worlds of IT, training, manufacturing, marketing, design, retail and more, it is amazing for all of us here at Astute to have received this recognition as the best at what we do!

Below is the article which appeared in AI Global’s CV Magazine celebrating the crop of this years business award winners…

“From redundancy in 2009 Sarah Stevenson and Mary Maguire set up and established Astute Recruitment Ltd as a unique, multi-award winning accountancy recruitment business and brand. Regionally acknowledged as the expert in their sector, their core business is the recruitment of all levels of accountancy and finance professionals from ledger staff to Financial Directors.
Astute works across the East Midlands from their head office in Derby.  Astute’s second office in Nottingham 2015 reflected a mounting demand from business owners and hiring managers for skilled accountancy professionals.
18 months ago after a period of record growth, Sarah & Mary appointed a Non-Executive Director to focus the business and establish firm strategic plans. This included a total re-brand with a new website, corporate logo, state of the art IT system, accounting software and transformational messaging. All of this has enabled the brand to reach a wider audience.
Astute were then able to promote and educate the wider business community about their story.
Astute Recruitment is a Midlands based recruitment firm specialising in supporting small businesses. We profile the firm and explore the secrets behind it’s success.
and the great services they offer. Astute and Sarah and Mary have been shortlisted for a number of awards, including Sarah being awarded SME Small Business Director of the Year at the 2015 Institute of Directors East Midlands Business Awards. Sarah was also awarded the coveted Entrepreneur of the Year award 2015, by the Derbyshire Times. 2016 followed this success with Astute being recognised at the ICAEW’s awards in March winning East Midlands Business of the Year and announced as finalists this year for the second year running for the national Women In Business Awards.
One of the hardest things to overcome for recruitment businesses is a lack of trust generally in the recruitment sector. Often Astute’s clients have never used a recruitment agency before or had a bad experience with an existing supplier that’s soured their view of what a recruiter can do.
To give those who have not worked with Astute before, they have created their “Triple Point Guarantee”. This gives new customers the confidence to try their services risk free, safe in the knowledge that in the unlikely event that the firm doesn’t manage to fill a position within an agreed timescale, Astute will pay £500!”

To view the full article in CV Magazine on all the winners please click here.

Rugby legend Neil Back will be asking Midlands businesses what they can learn from sporting success this month, during an exclusive breakfast event held and sponsored by Geldards at its Pride Park office in Derby on 29th June.

The event has been organised by specialist accountancy recruitment agency Astute Recruitment and aims to help local professionals to re-think their day-to-day approach to business.

During the breakfast event attendees will hear from Neil Back and co-director Damon Blakey of Fortius Broking as well as a representative of Geldards, who will be welcoming guests – sharing their experiences in both business and sport.
Mary Maguire, managing director of Astute Recruitment, said: “We are excited to be organising this event alongside Geldards, as it offers a great opportunity for our peers to learn more about business and sport from inspirational speakers.
“We are certain it will be an interesting morning and we hope everyone comes armed with questions for our expert speakers. We would like to thank Neil, Damon and Geldards in advance of the event – as we are delighted to have such a great panel”.

Breakfast will be served to attendees from 7.30am, with speakers commencing at 8.00am and the event closing at 9.15am.

A CELEBRATION event has been held in honour of the businesses nominated for the Derby Telegraph Business Awards.

Firms that have made the shortlist were last night given the chance to fete their success at a champagne reception evening at the Finesse Collection’s Cathedral Quarter Hotel, in St Mary’s Gate, Derby.

After weeks of poring over the entries, a shortlist of three finalists has been drawn up for each of the 13 categories.

Winners will be revealed at a gala awards ceremony at Derby College’s Roundhouse, on Pride Park, on June 9.

Last night’s event was thrown in the firms’ honour by Champions (UK) plc, which is staging the awards in partnership with the Derby Telegraph.

The finalists were welcomed to the venue by the Finesse Collection’s chief executive, James Blick.

The Cathedral Quarter Hotel, which is a historic Grade Two listed building, is one of the business awards’ key sponsors.

When it opened in 2008, following a £5 million refurbishment, it was Derby’s first independent boutique hotel and has received a number of high-profile guests – none more so than Her Majesty the Queen.

Today, it hosts meetings and conferences for a wide spectrum of Derby businesses and organisations.

Mr Blick said he was pleased to continue to support the Derby Telegraph Business Awards. He said: “It is only right to celebrate business success and this is the reason why we were keen to sponsor the awards.

“Derby has so many positives when it comes to doing business. It has excellent transport links, is centrally located and has the highest average salaries outside of London. It also has a strong leisure culture.

“These are just some of the reasons why major global brands have located to our thriving city.”

During last night’s event, the finalists had an opportunity to mingle with the sponsors, who have judged each category.

Several of the sponsors spoke on the night about how impressed they had been by the high standard of all the nominations.

The two headline sponsors of the awards are Derby College and Concur. The college is also sponsoring one of the most coveted awards – the Company of the Year category.

April Hayhurst, the college’s business development director, said: “Derby is the UK’s city of innovation and businesses today are continuing our proud heritage of breaking new ground across the industrial sectors and setting the bar high for the rest of the country to follow.

“The Derby Telegraph Business Awards are a vital part of that landscape. They celebrate success and encourage the whole business community to aim high.”

Derby Telegraph editor Neil White said: “It was great to see so many high-quality businesses come together at last night’s event.

“Looking ahead, the awards ceremony itself promises to be a fantastic event and a wonderful celebration of Derbyshire business excellence.”