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A)We see ourselves more closely aligned with the nursing industry than the job board industry. I think about what our recruiters expect and I think about providing an intuitive site for nursing job seekers. The time we spend looking at how we can deliver nursing recruiters and nursing job seekers a better experience is what has helped us do well, I think. I’m not really that interested in generalist online recruitment. I just couldn’t get excited about doing that each day. I’ve always preferred getting really stuck in to one subject. It makes life and work more interesting and enjoyable. Success follows that. When I worked at Future Publishing we use to take the piss out of the CEO’s proselytising “narrow and deep”. But he was dead right. Find your narrow sector and plough it deep. I attend events (nursing career fairs, clinical seminars, healthcare conferences). It’s a perfectly good way to meet the people who are our clients and our users, and the issues they face. I learn a lot from these events. I never see any other job boards at them. I think that’s why we’re standing out. A) There’s not really been an increase in applications. And certainly, there’s as much of a shortage of RMNs, midwives, critical care nurses and ODPs now as there was in 2008. Sure, with some of the roles that require fewer skills there are more job seekers. But we’re listing less of those jobs anyway. In that respect, we probably would have seen an increase, were the jobs still being posted. But there’s been no sudden increase in qualified, registered nurses looking for jobs. If only! In terms of the movement of already skilled and experience nursing staff, the recession has made them more reluctant to jump into a new role. Better the devil you know etc. Cautious and prudent job seekers have frustrated all of us in recruitment this year. High drop-off levels throughout the whole recruitment process affect us as well as each billing consultant. Gone are the days when job boards were judged on delivering CVs. If placements aren’t made (for whatever reason) we don’t win renewal business. There are more advertisers, for sure. And that’s a good thing generally. But with any crowd comes a few bad apples. Some agencies, to put it mildly, don’t follow the REC’s best practice advice. I’m just hoping that the unchecked actions of a minority of less scrupulous consultants doesn’t lead to the wrong person being employed to provide care. The recession has been used as an excuse to try to drive down prices. Agencies have seen margins slashed due to increased competition and some money-oriented clients. The squeeze is then passed on to us too. I’m with Alan Sugar – let’s just stop talking about it. A) Is this where I get the chance to sound high-minded and liberal? Where I should say how much I respect my team and love the industry. I do of course. I also love Fridays and I love making money. I like knowing quite a lot about something but also feeling that there’s lots left to learn and opportunities to grab. My commute’s good too. I live on Dartmoor and drive 20mins to the edge of it to our office. On a clear morning I can see over south Devon to the sea and I don’t pass many cars at all. A) I also thought I had a path of teaching laid out in front of me. Right up until funding for my proposed MA in the poetry of Northern Ireland was rejected. Instead I started work in publishing, voluntarily at first. That helped me get a paid admin job in London (on the Internet). I then taught myself HTML which got me a job at Future Publishing. Redundancy hit when the internet bubble burst. I moved then to work with the very young Aviationjobsearch.com in 2001. I helped grow that, and a few other job boards, for 6 years before. 3 years ago I decided to strike out on my own (with my co-director). A) We’ve just launched Carehomejobs.com and we’ve acquired and re-launched the leading healthcare jobs web site in Ireland, Healthcarejobs.ie. We have our hands full now I think. A) The ‘not in the public domain bit’ makes the ‘interesting’ part very hard. A) I’m a bit wary of people who are able to have just one favourite song, or food or film. For me, today, I’d love to have: smoke salmon starter, coque au vin with mash potato, salad with lots of dressing, and the cherry flavoured one of those Fruit Corner things. A) When considering that most of her peers have now passed away, and that she has painful joints, my Nan’s still ready to remind me: ‘well, if you can’t smile about it then what can you do’. I reckon her approach works wonders every year, including 2010. Harry starts his new job at the zoo and he is given three tasks, the first is to clear the exotic fish pool of weeds. Harry starts on this when suddenly a bloody great fish leaps out and bites him. Harry is not going to let a fish have a go so he beats the offending fish to death. Upon doing so he realises that his boss is not going to be best pleased, so Harry tries to think of a way to hide the dead fish. He hits on the brilliant idea of giving the fish to the lions as lions will eat anything, so Harry feeds the fish to the lions. Harry then moves on to his second job, which is to clearout the monkey house. Harry gets stuck in and a couple of chimps starts throwing sh*t at him. Harry is not amused and bashes the chimps with his spade, killing them instantly. Harry is shitting himself, so what does he do? He feeds the chimps to the lions, because lions eat anything. Anyway, Harry moves on to his last job, which is to collect honey from some South American bees. Harry starts on this and gets attacked by the bees, as you can guess Harry mashes the swarm of bees. By this point he is not too worried about the death of bees as he knows what to do, you guessed it, feed them to the lions, because lions eat anything. Later that day a new lion arrives at the zoo, it wanders up to another lion and asks, 'what's the food like here?' The other lion responds, 'absolutely brilliant, today I had fish and chimps with mushy bees.'