Bill Ingram, BlueGlue CEO (blue glasses – you can’t miss him!) and Jonny Summers (Head of Sales) arrived at Moonfruit, Zoopla and IMD with their torpedos. The stars represent the number of people we’ve placed into these businesses. More torpedos coming – watch out – literally!

We’re keen to source candidates who will jump right in, live our values and
grow and develop with us. BlueGlue gets that and we really look forward to
working together.“
                                                      Cassie Lloyd Perrin, HR Manager, The Beans Group

The Beans Group is the online marketing company behind studentbeans.com and morebeans.com. Just like beans on toast, these sites have become the staple diet of student and graduate life. studentbeans.com is the leading UK site for marketing to 16-24 year olds. Large brands can understand, access and then engage with millions of young people across The Beans Group’s ever expending web, mobile and experimental platforms. 

This is a young, fun team building exciting stuff. We look forward to being a part of its growth in all areas.  www.thebeansgroup.com

Tell us something that your colleagues don’t know about you.
     I started a boy band with my mates from the Devon Track & Field Athletics Team. We
     called ourselves Westcountry, a bit like Westlife but from the South West. Didn’t last
     long though. We didn’t want to commit so split up at the end of the day after the
     4x100m relay.

Most dangerous thing you have ever done?
     I once stayed out till 9pm one night when my mum told me I had to be in by 7. If you
     knew my mum you would know the true level of danger I am talking about. Other than
     that I’ve played it pretty safe up till now.

Life moment you wish you could forget?
     How drunk I got at my first BlueGlue Christmas party! Steve & Becky know what I’m
     talking about!

Dream job?
     Easy – Professional Sportsman.

What motivates you?
     I always want to exceed and better anything I have achieved before.

Most frustrating and most rewarding thing about working for BlueGlue?
     I am very easily frustrated so best to leave that one. I do find seeing the team and our
     candidates achieving success really rewarding.

If you could only achieve one thing in life what would it be?
     To get to a point in life where I have no real stresses to worry about day to day.

What would you do with a huge lottery win?
     I don’t like to think about it too much as I’m just left disappointed every weekend. I am
     pretty sensible with my money though so would probably think things through
     thoroughly before blowing a hefty chunk of it. I would definitely set my mum and dad up
     first of all, I at least owe them that.

Any fears you want to get over?
No. I’d rather keep my fears locked away and simply avoid them for the rest of my life.

To find out more Connect with Paul on Linkedin 

The software empowers the entire firm to connect and engage with clients and prospects through the whole sales cycle. Client-facing teams across the globe use intuitive digital tools and mobile apps to share content with clients whilst encouraging engagement and delivering insight. All data and workflow is controlled centrally, so that these teams are engaged with central corporate marketing and CRM strategy.

Concep has exciting plans to expand its base of products and build out its international teams. We look forward to working with COO Rob Clegg and the team. www.concep.com

We talk to the successful candidate, Juanjo, and hope his experience will help others…

Describe the challenge…
At Zoopla they really meant the “we need someone to hit the ground running”.
I’ve been busy since the first week at the office, so I’m really glad for that. I
left my previous job after 6 weeks on the role because of boredom. At Zoopla
there’s always something to do. Either fixing bugs, tweaking existing content
or adding new functionality to their website.

How have you found the first few months?
I’m about to hit the beginning of my third month now. It’s a nice place to work at;
being a developer I’m glad to be part of the technical team, as they have really
skilled people to learn from and they really invest in the technical aspect of the
business.

Why were you the successful candidate?
I don’t know. I was told I gave back the best test they had seen recently, 
so that was a good start ahead of the interviews. After that, I guess I gave
the right answers to their questions! Being also a freelancer and having done
some back-end developing, a bit of system administration and some graphic
design also adds up, so I’d say that helped towards convincing them I wouldn’t
get lost on their code, or Photoshop.

Do you have any top tips for developers looking for a similar role?
I’d say “tinker with anything web”, although front-end developers tend to do
this anyway. Do a bit of back-end, be a bit of a jack of all trades keeping
front-end technologies your speciality (but again, this is what being a
front-end developer is).

Thanks Juanjo – all the best! 

Bill – Times have certainly changed since the dotcom boom – all kinds of capital is harder to come by, there are fewer IPOs and the time from start-up to exit is much longer now.

However competition among start-ups to attract and retain the best people is as fierce as ever and we are seeing businesses use all sorts of incentives to tempt the best candidates towards them.

Start-ups need to continually ask themselves “what will really motivate someone to join my business over a competitor?”

Candidates we speak to are motivated by different financial rewards depending generally on their seniority. Those entering a company as a key stakeholder will be more interested in equity, and a less senior hire generally finds cash bonuses more appealing.

All start-ups we work with however still use stock-based compensation on some level – for 2 reasons.

1.    To incentivise their executives and employees. I still think they provide a great opportunity for staff to share in the growth of the company and, if structured properly, can align their interests with the interests of the company’s shareholders and investors, without burning the company’s cash on hand. Some more established start-ups have set up a bonus scheme, alongside the option of shares which is obviously the best of both worlds.

2.    As a very useful negotiating tool to secure that person they really want to work with them.

Many start-ups offer Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) share options. Specifically designed to help small, higher risk companies attract and reward staff, it’s pretty simple to understand. Joy to the ears of a candidate!

Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) share options are UK specific, and need to be approved by HMRC prior to issuing options.  The prices that options are granted also need to be approved by HMRC.  Once this is done,  the employee is not taxed on the notional benefit of those options and only becomes liable to tax if those options are exercised.  Assuming that the shares are immediately sold then the employee becomes liable to capital gains tax but this currently has a £10,600 exemption threshold and a maximum rate of 28%, well below the maximum income tax rates.  Costs of setting up an EMI scheme are not high, one client recently set up a very standard scheme for £1,500 of legal fees.

I have seen some companies recently offer differed or delayed compensation to employees. There are different ways to do it but the best is either offering an increased salary when the employee hits performance milestones or the end of a probationary period.

In addition to share option schemes, some interesting incentives are being successfully used by our clients to further tease candidates towards them. Many are to do with promoting a team environment. A true team, comprised of individuals who are each critically important to each other and to the overall success of the company, and who know their importance and take pride in themselves and each other, is a powerful incentive. Telrock do this by offering staff weekend trips away, and at 4.30pm every Friday you’ll find OVO Energy staff at a drinks and food evening, like a BBQ. hostelbookers.com does things a little differently and offers its employees massages. It’s these subtle benefits, while not directly monetary, that can have a big impact on the depth of commitment expressed by employees.   

There is no denying that the opportunity for a financial windfall is a powerful employee incentive. Even with the changing business environment, stock options, direct equity ownership, profit sharing plans, and/or bonus employee incentives should be part of the incentive package provided to your team, but don’t underestimate the more subtle ideas that I know are working for some of our clients.

For a thorough introduction to stock and options for high growth tech businesses check out – http://blog.dweek.ly/introduction-to-stock-options-startup-founder-entrepreneur-employee/ 

Hope that’s useful, kindly, Bill 

PhotoBox is Europe’s leading online digital photo service with over 22 million members. They share, print and store images and make personalised mugs, T-shirts, calendars and everything else on which you’d want to put a photo, to keep a memory. A whopping 8 million photos a day are uploaded.

This is a high traffic, big data business packed with ambitious minds, ultra passionate about what they do. Technical development innovations are at its heart, with PhotoBox launching a Facebook app last year. We look forward to working with CTO Graham Hobson to build out the tech team.  www.photobox.co.uk

1         What is top management’s experience and track record?

2         Have they successfully led a start-up before? If so, what was the outcome?

3         How much financial backing do you have, who is it through and what “round” of
           funding are you on?

4         What is your stock plan? How many outstanding shares of stock are there? What
           percentage of the company does my stock represent?

5         What is your exit strategy?

6         What is your current financial status, are you showing profit yet? If not, when? How
           big are any losses? What is your current market value?

7         Why should I join you rather than someone else?

8         What makes your technology different?

9         What is the size of the global market?

10       Who are your competitors, if any, and how well are they doing? What edge, if any,
           do you have over them?

Andrei Bernovski tells us about getting the job…

I am usually quite picky when it comes to a new role – it’s really important for me to have the right mix of responsibilities in the new role as well as find a company which I would fit in well culturally. I have quite extensive experience working for big international players in the digital marketing field and when an opportunity to work at Cognifide came up – it was too good to miss. It was a change which I was very excited about. BlueGlue were particularly helpful facilitating the process.

What are your key responsibilities as Programme Manager at Cognifide?

A Programme Manager at Cognifide is what you would expect a senior delivery role to be in a digital marketing company – responsibility for the level and standards of delivery across one or multiple accounts by overseeing Project Managers working on individual projects. This is a client-facing role, very much so. It’s the people you work with that make or break the role – and Cognifide have dedicated and passionate professionals, a surprising rarety nowadays.

How have you found the first few months? What have been the main challenges?

It’s always much more efficient for me to be thrown “into the deep end” straight away rather than have long induction processes. This is exactly what happened here – challenging account, complex projects, tricky client to deal with. However, it’s all worth it when you hear that you are bringing a lot of value to the accounts you work on.

In your opinion, what makes a great Programme Manager?

A Programme Manager needs to have the ability to predict the bigger picture reasoning from some project-related metrics. Programme Manager is a bit further away from the day to day project work, yet needs to be in a position to troubleshoot individual projects and help a PM put it back on track. A Programme Manager also needs to wear different “hats” – balance client and company needs and be a trusted advisor for both.

Tech recruitment is a strange thing.
There are loads of great tech jobs in the UK market right now, especially with the recent developments around “Tech-City” and “Silicon Roundabout” really pushing UK start-ups in the news. But on top of that, there are loads of great developers, again with the rise of UK start-ups it is almost cool to be a nerd!.

But why is it so hard to find a tech job? And why is it so hard for companies to recruit for tech jobs? Demand is high. Supply is high. So why this disconnect? 
In my opinion, it stems from the fact that it revolves around trying to identify truly talented individuals, individuals with a combination of logical/analytical skills, an understanding of maths, a knowledge of core CS concepts/patterns and with a touch of creativity.  And what means do we have to try and asses/convey these skills? A few pieces of A4 paper (or whatever form your CV is in)? A 60 minute telephone call? At best maybe a 1 day assessment of problems, puzzles and presentations – but really, how can an employer possibly asses a potential candidate from just that? These processes can only offer tiny insights into a candidate’s skill and as tech is so often the life blood of so many companies it’s not surprising to find potential candidates struggling to really convey their abilities and employers airing on the side of caution when making these decisions.

Thankfully times are better than ever for us nerds, and there are many means to make your selection all the easier! 
These days, the online footprint for us tech folk is often pretty large – GitHub, Stackoverflow, WordPress, BitBucket – many of us probably have profiles across the web that would be perfect for helping demonstrate the depth of our expertise and show we are actually much more than just the sum of our CV.

GitHub could be used to provide real examples of code, to show technologies you are interested in and show a proactive interest in tech. StackOverflow could also show your knowledge and expertise. Even if your only contribution is asking questions it can show communication skills and a pro-activity to engage with the tech community. WordPress/Blogger (or any blog) could be used to show off your communication skills, your domain expertise or just about anything else you wanted to brag about!

So really the only question is do you have links to these profiles on your CV? 
When I changed roles last year, I decided to include links to my GitHub profile, my blog and my personal website in my CV and was pretty amazed at the response. I received a surprising number of responses along the lines of “we checked your project on GitHub, it looks really interesting – would you be available for a phone call?”, as well as in one particular tech phone interview (that hadn’t gone very well!), the call ended with the interviewer telling me he would recommend I progress to the next round anyway as he had read my blog and was confident of my level of ability – that process actually ended in a job offer as well, so it’s fair to say this stuff can make a very real difference to your chances!

Following this experience and having seen the difference it can make to me as a tech candidate, and to employers attempting to asses my abilities I went on to setup and co-found nerdability.com - a site dedicated to letting developers create truly representative CVs, linking mobile app portfolios, GitHub, BitBucket, Google Code, StackOverflow, blogs and more. The goal of nerdability.com is to let developers have a profile that stays in-sync with their online footprint and demonstrates real life examples of code, communication skills and domain expertise.

I mean, we are all techies, why would I want to submit a Word document when I could submit a dynamic profile that really shows what I am all about?

                    _______________________________________________________

Guest Blog by Rob Hinds. With over six years working at a leading tech consultancy and now working in a tech startup in London, Rob recently founded online tech recruitment site Nerdability.com

“BlueGlue look forward to aiding and abetting the expansion plans
laid out by JUST EAT in 2013 and beyond.”
                                                                                Bill Ingram, Founder and CEO, BlueGlue

JUST EAT (@JustEatNews), launched in Denmark in 2001, is based in London and is now active in 13 countries around the globe. JUST EAT is currently generating over £400m in revenue per year for the restaurant industry and has received more than 50m orders since the site launched with well over 1,000,000 Facebook fans around the world. There are currently over 29,000 takeaway restaurants signed up to JUST EAT’s site which uses proprietary technology to offer an efficient on-line ordering service. JUST EAT was listed in the TechCrunch Europe Top 100 Index 2010 and was also recently ranked number 31 in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100, winning the Best Brand award.

Just-Eat UK launched in March 2006 and is now the UKs leading online takeaway ordering service with over 12,000 restaurants for hungry web surfers to choose from. www.just-eat.co.uk

The business was looking to expand with a Pre-Sales Business Specialist to work with sales teams on all new account and global sales activity.

Alan Gordon tells us about getting the job…

What attracted you to a startup business?

There are a number of aspects of working for a startup that are appealing, e.g.:
Dynamism : Things tend to move at a pace in this environment. This makes life very challenging at times but also very interesting.  You make multiple decisions on a daily basis that would take days and weeks to agree in a larger company/more slow-moving environment.

Innovation : We are constantly innovating on both the business/proposition and technology side.  As I have my feet firmly in both camps this is really good fun.

Quality and mind-set of my colleagues :  People who work for startups are ambitious and want to get things done – and are tenacious.  It’s refreshing and infectious working with such people.

Variety and ability to make a real difference : There’s constant variety working for a start-up as we tap in to new markets and expand in to new geographies.  It also makes a big difference working at the HQ location where all the key decisions are made and people sit, as apposed to a subsidiary/satellite operation.

What has the first month been like? 
Very busy ! The main difference from my previous role is that Telrock are in a hyper-growth phase.  We are scaling as a business, recruiting at all levels and are seeing an unprecedented demand for our services.  The business is having to adapt and evolve at a significant pace.  In my previous role the rate of growth was much more gradual.

I have worked for startups before so it’s like ‘coming home’ !!  I am doing a lot of work on servicing prospective customers whilst putting in place best practise and repeatable processes that will help the business as it scales.  It’s a careful balancing act between bringing in best practice to enable us to do more things more efficiently whilst not detracting from the fast-pace/dynamic nature of the business.  We are also evolving the platform as well so I’m bringing my expertise to bare in areas such as solution-selling, Product Marketing etc 

Do you have any tips for other people wanting a similar role in a startup business?
You have to be willing to embrace change and see a lack of defined processes and structure as an opportunity.  Working for a startup typically means long hours – everything you do gets noticed and will make a difference to the business, which is great.  You also are very visible and accountable from day one so you need to be prepared to get stuck in, learn fast and contribute to the business.  The nature of a small and growing business means you have to be flexible by nature. If you have a very prescriptive view of what you want to do then a startup might not be for you.

There are no HR departments in startups, so the rules for applying for a job are very different to those in corporate land.  If you haven’t worked for a startup before, you need to spend a lot more time on these applications than you would a traditional one.

Treat the application as a project.  Work out which startups you really, really want to join. They will become your family, and you’ve got a chance this time to choose your family, so do your homework first. Check out startups websites, blogs, Twitters and find the founder’s blog, Twitter, etc.. Find out everything there is to know about these businesses. It is always flattering and attention grabbing for a startup founder when someone takes the time to think in depth about their relatively unknown business. 

Now you’ve got your startup wish list, you need to get NOTICED by them. Here are our top tips…

Stuff you can do online…
Use the product - startups like to create their own user communities and reach within them to recruit those that are passionate about their product

Engage with the startup as much as possible – leave insightful comments on their blog, talk about them on twitter. Ask some friends what they think about the product and give the startup some valuable feedback

Create your own blog – form an opinion and use the platform to become a thought leader in your area of expertise

Get active on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and participate in groups relevant to you

Compete in coding competitions – developers should check out Google Code Jam,  TopCoder.com and Facebook’s Engineering Puzzles.  The other main competitions are here

Design something yourself – it doesn’t matter if it’s basic, it differentiates you from the crowd and shows initiative, something you’ll need in bucket loads to work in a startup

Showcase your work – developers can use platforms such as GitHub, Stack Overflow, BitBucket and Masterbranch to showcase their projects

Create a Living CV – developers can use nerdability.com to create an online CV which showcases various projects you have worked on and links all your profiles, from the sites mentioned above, in one handy loaction

Tailor your CV – if you work in a corporate you’ll need to demonstrate/emphasise your ability to work in a small team.  We’ve seen candidates make the leap from corporate to startup by starting a ‘Digital Group’ of people interested in tech within large organisations

“Go big or go home” – these ideas have sure got people noticed in the past
Create a website – highly personalised to the startup you want to work for, proving how much you want to work for them. Check out lorenburton.com 

Create a slideshow – explaining why you should be hired. Again, it only works if it’s highly personalised to the startup you want to join. Great example here dearinstagram.byalicelee.com

Think outside all boxes – for a master class in getting NOTICED you need to know Alec Brownstein’s story of getting interviews and job offers with startup CEO’s using Google AdWords. Inspired.

Get out there and meet people
Meetup.com  – the world’s largest network of local groups has many tech/startup/job related groups you can participate in. Start your own Meetup group – be a leader! 

Recruitment events – you can meet the CEO’s of startups like SongKick, Mind Candy, Huddle and Funding Circle that are looking to hire tech and non tech talent. Check out Silicon Milk Roundabout 11-12 May 2013 siliconmilkroundabout.com and Tech City careers festival 28 March 2013 www.techcitycareers.co.uk

Find other events on Eventbrite.co.uk 

Compete in Hackathons – developers compete over a weekend to create amazing products. They are great places to meet lots of developers already working in startups. AngelHack.com is back in London May/June 2013. Last year’s global winners were from London.

Good luck in your search. It’s not easy getting noticed, but the rewards of working for a great startup are huge. 

Genie Ventures is a high-performance lead generation and internet marketing company working across a number of niche sectors, including telecoms, computing, and commercial property. It was founded in 2004 with the launch of Broadband Genie, the UK’s first comprehensive broadband comparison website. High quality traffic, leads and sales are generated via the range of web properties (including content-rich websites, price comparison engines and online marketplaces) through a mixture of SEO, PPC and email marketing.

This is a fast growing business and we’re very proud to be helping another great startup build out their team.  www.genieventures.co.uk 

The software provides an end-to-end event planning and management solution that is flexible, scalable, secure and completely modular – it can be designed to precisely match a clients requirements making it very cost effective.   www.eventsforce.com

                                                                            Andrew Davies, Co-Founder and CMO, idio

idio allows brands to become truly customer-centric, delivering personalised communications on every channel, with idio’s SaaS platform.  The platform allows large businesses such as banks, telco’s and FMCG’s to understand their customers better and target their marketing according to customers responses, reactions and comments to various content. It combines content aggregation, analytics and real-time decisioning to deliver content to the right person, at the right time, on the right channel, to continuously optimise customer experience. 

idio is a business in a growing marketplace, looking to scale up, and we are really looking forward to working with the team there.  www.idioplatform.com                                                                            

“Given our very rapid growth, we are keen to ensure an efficient
recruitment process whilst maintaining the quality of candidates
delivered into the business. We believe BlueGlue can deliver on
this and welcome the team as an extension of our own.”

                                                Alex Chesterman, Founder and CEO Zoopla Property Group

 About Zoopla Property Group

Zoopla Property Group owns and operates some of the UK’s leading online property brands including Zoopla.co.uk and Primelocation.com. Each brand has a distinct market position and the Zoopla Property Group websites attract over 30 million visitors per month, generating over 2 million enquiries per month for estate/letting agents and property developers across the UK.

Zoopla Property Group Ltd launched in 2008 and is a privately held company whose shareholders include A&N Media (a division of the Daily Mail and General Trust), leading venture capital firms Atlas Venture and Octopus Ventures and a handful of well-respected angel investors. The company has a highly-experienced management team, led by Founder & CEO, Alex Chesterman.

The team has many prestigious awards – including being named one of the Top 10 UK Tech Companies (Guardian), one of the Top 10 Most Innovative UK Companies (Smarta) and Alex Chesterman was named Best Startup Leader (Guardian).

www.zoopla.co.uk  www.primelocation.com

                                          Michael Nabarro, MD and Co-founder

Spektrix is a startup packed full of talented people with a real love of the arts. Their cloud based ticketing software is used by arts organisations around the UK – such as theatres, arts centres and concert halls. The team are determined to make it easier for arts organisations to set up their own box office systems, making the arts more accessible to people.

The software is super easy to use, and doesn’t follow conventions just for their own sake, but provides genuinely innovative solutions to long standing problems. We’re excited to work with Michael to find equally passionate and talented people to build out the team. www.spektrix.com

LOVEFiLM is a great example of a successful startup (remember their £200m exit to Amazon.com) that switched to using an ‘External Recruitment Department’ in 2007.

Many funded startups such as Moonfruit, Funding Circle and Madbid followed suit last year too.

We thought it would be interesting to show the results startups at different stages in their growth get by using an External Recruitment Department. So we’ve drilled down into LOVEFiLM and Funding Circle for you.
Don’t squint – bigger version of infographic here