News & Views Archives - Page 18 of 22

It was great to host our second event on ‘Emotional Intelligence For Business Success’ at Alfreton Golf Club. With over 30 local professional businessmen and women in attendance it proved to be a great morning. Here are some of the photos… Our thanks to Lisa Spencer-Arnell, and to everyone who attended on St Patricks Day!

It’s important to all of us here that our events are useful, engaging and enjoyable so we took feedback from everyone who came. …. Some of their comments are below…

“I found the event very informative and gave me some good ideas to use with my current team”

“Very interesting topic. Thanks for the invite!”

“A very relaxed and interactive session – I found it to be quite inspiring”

“It was a great event with a really interesting speaker”

Our next event will be on 21st July at Pride Park with guest speaker Neale Lewis, business scale up expert, high growth business coach, leadership trainer and international strategic planning consultant. Neale will be talking about how to scale up your business and career for financial success. We will announce more details on this event in the next few days.

Neale Lewis, International Business Coach, Trainer and Speaker

A brand new networking group – Derby’s Finest – aiming to celebrate and support women who make a positive contribution to the city – was officially launched with a great event at Derby College’s Engine Shed restaurant at the Roundhouse in Pride Park.

This new group has been set up by Claire Twells from Smith Partnership, Bev Crighton from the University of Derby and Amanda Strong from Mercia Image Print in Little Eaton. Fifty women from a wide range of businesses and organisations attended the launch event to hear about plans for future events and about the chosen charity of the year – Prostate Cancer UK. This first event raised nearly £300 for the charity and the target is to grow this to thousands over the coming year.

Sarah-Louise Wykes and Mary Maguire went along as guests and look forward to supporting Derby’s Finest with their future events!

All of the team here at Astute are keeping our fingers crossed for Sarah-Louise Wykes. She is one of the very deserving finalists in the category for Best Female Employee. The awards evening is being hosted at the prestigious Colwick Hall Hotel in Nottingham to celebrate business women across the East Midlands region. We are taking the team and of course Sarah-Louise to enjoy what should be a fantastic night. It’s brilliant for Sarah-Louise to have been shortlisted for this category and while we are keeping our fingers crossed for her, we wish all the finalists the very best of luck.

Emotional Intelligence and mindfulness are both of interest for employers and employees alike. In a bid to help Midlands business gain a better understanding of these terms, consultant Lisa Spencer-Arnell will be speaking at a breakfast event (17 March) at Alfreton Golf Club.

The event is the third business breakfast event of its kind, organised by specialist accountancy recruitment agency Astute Recruitment. It aims to help professionals gain a better understanding of how emotional intelligence and mindfulness can impact work and leadership.

Recently, emotional intelligence and mindfulness have become recognised and acknowledged as key elements of business and personal success, outstanding performance, happiness and good health, with events like this in demand.

Managing director of Astute Recruitment, Mary Maguire said: “Due to popular demand, we are delighted to be hosting our second event on emotional intelligence with guest speaker, Lisa Spencer-Arnell. Our first event on this topic was so popular among attendees that we have booked Lisa again for another breakfast event.

“We are proud to be holding this event and hope it will benefit those in attendance to gain a better understanding of emotional intelligence and mindfulness in the workplace.”

Lisa Spencer-Arnell is ideally placed to explain emotional intelligence and wellness through her highly successful career as an international consultant, coach, speaker and author. Lisa’s extensive work on emotional intelligence has been widely praised and recognised.

Recruitment is a multi-award winning accountancy recruitment agency offering bespoke solutions to clients and helping candidates to find suitable positions. Astute is working to create events which inspire its clients and candidates across the East Midlands.

Breakfast will be served to attendees from 7:30 am, with speakers commencing at 7:45 am and the event closing for 9:00 am

The event, which is free to attend has limited spaces and can be booked online at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/emotional-intelligence-for-business-success-tickets-31964190755

Roger & Joanna sharing top tips at NTU’s Employability Workshop

Deborah Labatte Giving Tips To IoD Student Members

Simon & Dean Sharing Their Wisdom on Interview Tips With IoD Student Members at NTU

Graham & Mary Sharing Tips On Assessment Centres & Psychometric Testing

It was a great evening working working with NTU’s Employability Team to provide support to the IoD’s Student Members. Splitting into 4 teams each led by a business owner and member of NTU, we each advised groups of IoD Student Members on tips and how to prepare for interviews, assessment centres, psychometric tests and more. The evening was a great success with really positive feedback from the students who attended. Thanks to the team at Nottingham Trent University, Deborah, Simon, Roger, Mary and of course the IoD Students!

Astute Recruitment hosting 2nd event on Emotional Intelligence for business success

Due to popular demand, Astute Recruitment are delighted to announce our second event with guest speaker Lisa Spencer-Arnell. Our first event at the end of last year in Branston on Emotional Intelligence was so popular amongst attendees with those who couldn’t make it saying that they would definitely attend another event if it was to the north of Derby closer to Junction 28 of the M1. So we are all delighted to announce we have booked Lisa again!

Our event will be held at Alfreton Golf Club, Wingfield Road, Oakerthorpe, Alfreton, DE55 7LH on Friday 17th March 2017 and will commence from 7.30am with complimentary teas/ coffees and breakfast cobs. Emotional intelligence and wellness at work have become key topics of importance to business professionals.

What is more important to your financial success? IQ or Emotional Intelligence (EI)?
What has the biggest impact on achieving extraordinary results, building great relationships and being fulfilled in life?

Over recent years Emotional Intelligence and mindfulness have become recognised and acknowledged as key elements of business and personal success, outstanding performance, happiness and good health.

In this interactive session, you’ll hear about and experience the positive difference EI can make in your  business and team, including: –
·      What EI really is and the role it plays in work & leadership.
·      What the research tells us about IQ & EI.
·      How our amazing brain works and what we can learn from neuroscience to get the best out of ourselves and others?
·      How you can increase your self-awareness through EI.
·      Mindfulness and the impact on your focus, clarity, and effectiveness.
·      The most important question you can ask yourself.
·      3 ways to raise your game and impact your results.

Lisa Spencer-Arnell is ideally placed to explain Emotional Intelligence and Wellness at work through her highly successful career as an International Consultant & Coach – Inspirational Speaker and Published Author. Her work on Emotional Intelligence has been widely praised and recognised.
This is the third breakfast business event hosted by Astute Recruitment and follows on from the great success of our previous events: –
“Emotional Intelligence For Business Success with Lisa Spencer-Arnell” at Branston Golf Club
“Strategies to win in business” at Geldards on Pride Park with Neil Back MBE.

Again we only have a limited number of spaces to attend our forthcoming breakfast on emotional intelligence so please register HERE to register and confirm your place on our dedicated Eventbrite Page.

Lisa Spencer-Arnell speaking at Astute Recruitment’s first business breakfast event on Emotional Intelligence at Branston Golf Club

Lisa Spencer-Arnell: – Treasure Seeker, Leadership Consultant & Coach, Author, Speaker

Programme: –
7:30             Registration, complimentary tea / coffee and breakfast
7:45             Introduction
7:50             Lisa Spencer-Arnell
8:45             Opportunity for Q & A/ Networking
9:00             Close

Free car parking is available and if you have any special dietary requirements please contact Mary Maguire by email: – [email protected]

EMC – Enterprising Women Awards 2017 – THE WINNERS!

Our team at Astute enjoying the evening including our finalist Sarah-Louise Wykes

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.”

Sarah-Louise Wykes Finalist of the EMC Enterprising Women of the Year awards – Female Employee Of The Year 2017

As MD of a successful accountancy recruitment business covering the East Midlands, I wanted to share these tips, which I hope will inspire you.

1/ Be Positive.

Have courage in your convictions; Do not simply put your business idea down on paper and leave it, always see how it can be pursued. Ask “How can I make this happen?”
Be a doer not a watcher. When we were made redundant I was devastated for one day and then asked myself: What am I going to do now? I knew I was skilled in my sector, sought after with a great reputation. It seemed clear to me that I should set up on my own and so I approached my now business partner, who I’d worked with for several years and trusted. She agreed to move forward and here we are seven years later with an award-winning business.

2/ Surround yourself with talented people and keep hold of them!

Staff recruitment, retention, training and motivation are all absolutely key to a successful business. Any organisation is only as strong as the people it employs. Everyone in a business is important, need to feel fully engaged, on board and valued by their firm. Of course, you need to have some fun too and always reward success!

3/ Remember, “cash is king”.

- It is a brutal fact that even if you have the best business, product or service in the world, without money in your bank account you are unable to pay your suppliers, creditors or staff – let alone yourself.
- You need to have a firm but fair approach to cash flow management and a constant eye on your bottom line. All of the time, not just at the end of the month or quarter!
Scrutinise your debtor
Maintain strong and clear lines of communication with your creditors to ensure you and any business partners, are always on top of your current cash position.

4/ Truly understand your business:

You have to know what makes your business unique and why people should pay for your specific service or product.
You should have USPs which set you apart from your competition such as our unique Triple-Point Guarantee. Consider new USPs you can offer.
Constantly ask yourself: “How is what I am doing now benefiting my business? Is what I am doing now the best use of my time?”

5/ Don’t stay stuck in a bubble!

Take yourself out of the day to day and run your business without letting it run you! You should endeavour to take yourself out of your comfort zone.
Always be prepared to try and learn new things.
Social media is constantly evolving alongside all methods of communication, branding and marketing. To support your company you need to constantly engage with your target audience in a meaningful, educational and non-confrontational way – your business needs to be synonymous with quality and professionalism.
Think about the message you, your team and your social media channels are communicating about your brand and business.
Your customers are rightly becoming more discerning. Help them to understand your specific business and what you can do for them. They need to appreciate that your company is an expert in it’s field as the result of clever communications rather than through shouting the loudest and incessant sales calls!

6/ If you don’t know something always ask!

Seek out people who are experts in their field who will benefit your business – you will learn from them!

7/ Always be yourself and be proud of what you have done!

It is easy to become so involved in the day to day that you fail to perceive your company’s standing in the wider business community and realise how far you have come.
The most successful entrepreneurs are passionate about their businesses, but also recognise their achievements too.

Set your three-year strategic business plan and be forward thinking. Never lose sight of why you started out in the first place!

Let me know if you found this post useful. Your comments and feedback are really welcome.

This week two moments made me ‘pause’ to reflect. At our event on emotional intelligence for business success. The speaker tried to cover lots of things on emotional intelligence but it’s such a huge topic she could only provide key insights.

One of these was on confidence. Not on the confidence we can gain – she mentioned how our individual reaction to something as simple as accepting a compliment can impact the compliment giver as much as the receiver of the compliment.

If someone says “What a great outfit/speech/ meal you cooked” How do you respond? Most people would mumble or shrug. How many would smile and confidently say “Thank you” straight out? Very few it would seem. This was from a room full of confident assertive business men and women who have achieved phenomenal success in their own chosen professions.

Why is this?

As a parent myself with a son and daughter under 10 it would be amazing to inspire each of them to achieve their full potential. I’m an aunty to nieces and nephews again in their formative years. I’m also a mentor and part of various networking groups. How can I, as an adult, help all of these people achieve their potential? What underpins the success achieved by the most prodigious entrepreneurs? These questions leapt to my mind during the business breakfast and embedded themselves in my subconscious so that I’m now putting pen to paper. I want to share a very powerful simple secret that I learned that Thursday morning.

reach-your-potential-astute-recruitment

Every one of us CAN achieve our potential. Yes, that’s right. The “How” lies in the way we train our brains to respond to life’s quirks, including something as simple as a compliment. Let us think about that.

If we stumble, mumble and yes even apologise to a compliment we’re given, we are not only sending a negative message to the compliment giver, we are also re-affirming and internalising a message to our own brain that we are not ‘worth’ that compliment. This is like a seed of doubt, an acorn of worthlessness that will grow into a sapling every time we shrug off or fail to acknowledge that compliment. What we need to do is stop and imagine that sapling in our head and visualise snapping it into two, before it becomes a towering oak tree in our mind. The effort to break that tree will require more than just our hands and fingers, it would need an axe at the very least.

So how to snap that sapling? We need to first say to ourselves EVERY DAY I am ok. I am fine. I am enough. From repeating this and allowing yourself just five minutes of ‘me time’ each day. Look at yourself in the mirror and say these words: – “I am a good person and I’m going to have a great day”.

This simple action, if allowed to become a habit, means your subconscious brain will eventually pour weed killer on that sapling of doubt in your mind. Picture that in your head. The sapling slowly withering then disappearing altogether. Got that? Good.

Back to compliments…

The next time you have someone say “well done” or “great work”, pause, smile and say “thank you”. I can just imagine that sapling withering as I write.

Have a great day!

I’ll be exploring this in further posts but would love to hear your comments. A journey to anywhere starts with a simple small step. I hope this post has given you that simple first step to achieving your true potential. Please let me know your thoughts as I always appreciate feedback.

Astute’s Mary Maguire is delighted to work with CIMA on their next employability workshop. She will be advising their members, students and non-members as to interview guidance, tips and practical things they can do to improve their success on interview. The event will be at the Village Club Hotel, Brailsford Way, Nottingham, NG9 6DL. Full details and bookings can be made by clicking here to access the booking page. CIMA have lined up three guest speakers including Mary to speak on a range of topics from how to build a personal brand to interview tips for career success.

AGENDA: – CIMA East Midlands & East Anglia Conference

TOPIC: – Is it time to create more of an impact?

WHERE: – Village Club Hotel, Brailsford Way Nottingham NG9 6DL

WHEN: – 16.00 – 20.00 Tuesday 24 January 2017

ITINERARY: –

16.00 Delegate registration – refreshments served

16.30 Welcome: CIMA Chairman (CIMA East Midlands Area Chairman and Member of Council)

16.35 How to build a personal brand for career and business success.

Simon Gray – founder of Career Codex

17.05 Personal presence for finance professionals

Sylvia Baldock – Regional Director – The Athena Network

18.15 Break – buffet and opportunity for networking

18.45 Interview tips for career success

Mary Maguire – Co-owner of Astute Recruitment Ltd

19.15 How to speak in public with confidence.

Simon Gray – founder of Career Codex

19.45 Thanks: CIMA Chairman

20.00 Event close

Attendees will receive a link to the speaker’s slides along with a feedback survey via email after the event.

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Mike

16:04 13 Mar 23

Highly recommended! Josh and Sarah have been fantastic at Astute. They've found and placed me in 2 jobs now between them, both really responsive and excellent at keeping you up to speed with things. Very knowledgable about the roles and happy to talk to companies with any queries you have.

C R.

10:45 27 Jan 23

Great agency one of the best ones I've worked with! Liz has been a great help and support in helping me towards a new direction in my career life. She is very attentive and keeps me in the loop at all times! She makes the extra effort to work with my preferred requirements for work and even if it isn't completely attainable she meets me in the middle and does as much as she can to help! Also Liz is very funny might I add 😂 and I'm happy that I can now put a face to the name after all these years! Thank you again Liz for all your help and support! 😊

Christine

10:32 20 Dec 22

Josh and the Astute team was very swift to help me to find roles that matched my profile. They are really reliable and will help through every step of the recruitment process going out of their way to assist and follow up when needed. Could not find a better recruitment agency!

Helen Pinegar

16:19 18 Dec 22

Fantastic recruitment agency.. Josh was extremely enthusiastic, encouraging and clearly knowledgeable about what was needed from both the employee and the employers point of view. Extremely supportive especially in regards to interview preparation and endeavoured to procure feedback promptly. Wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Astute in the future to both candidates and recruiting businesses particularly for the right fit for the role!!!

Lisa Leigh

11:56 30 Nov 22

I have worked as a candidate for Astute and they have been excellent. Super friendly service and professional agents keen to fit the right person to the right job. It has been a pleasure dealing with them and I would happily work for them again in the future. Highly recommend this agency.