I'm delighted to say that Austin Rose is now a decade old. It has been a fantastic journey filled with lots of hard work, plenty of fun and only a few difficult moments. I am not sure how Austin Rose has aged only 10 years whilst I seem to have aged 20 – maybe Director years are similar to dog years!
Start-up
As a particularly risk averse individual, starting up my own company was naturally going to give me a few grey hairs (cue the comments about having none left) and running your own business was once described to me as “being the most free you can be in your career whilst being in the largest cage you will ever live in”. That has resonated with me a great deal over the last 10 years. Starting your own business is all encompassing and there have been many times when I have craved a job where I could clock in and clock out whilst leaving work at the door.
Would I do it again? Not without time off to recover first. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely!
Proud
I am genuinely proud of what we have achieved at Austin Rose. In an industry that doesn’t always have the best reputation for service levels we have strived to add value to both our clients and candidates. I have never wanted Austin Rose to be the biggest firm but I wanted it to be the most trusted and valued. I hope we are some way along the road in achieving that.
My pride is in what we have achieved. There are far too many people to thank who have greatly added to the success of Austin Rose. Those members of the team who have been with me since the very early days and both those present and past who have worked so hard and shown such commitment to the ethos of Austin Rose.
Thanks
To those clients who have backed Austin Rose both in terms of continually trusting us with their recruitment needs as well as having the confidence to recommend us to their clients and contacts – thank you! I class many of you as friends and even when you leave the practice market I love the fact that we stay in touch. The past 6 months have been the toughest many of us have had to face. To receive calls from many of our clients during lockdown to make sure we were okay and to reiterate your support for us means more than you know.
Vision
Our salary survey this year was titled 2020 vision. I think it is safe to say that my predictions for the year won’t win any clairvoyance awards! We won’t be celebrating our decade long milestone with the planned champagne extravaganza and some of our growth plans are on ice. More importantly though, we’ve kept our team together and have taken the hiatus as a chance to upgrade many of our systems and processes. Our CRM is the tidiest it has ever been and those that have ever worked with me will know how happy that makes me!
I am treating the first decade as a training ground in preparation for the next 10 years. We have been just warming up and now are finding our stride. We’ve got a great team, exceptional clients and some of the best candidates in the market. The next 10 years should be a breeze…….
