Does anyone else have two conflicting feelings – one feels that you blinked and suddenly, somehow, it’s May. The other feels like New Year’s festivities were a thousand years ago?

That’s certainly the feeling over here – 2018 feels like it’s flying by but, at the same time, a lot has happened in the first third of the year. As ever, we’ve got huge plans for the next eight months but before we get into that, we wanted to take a quick look back at the year so far.

LA Challenge

For the last couple of years, we’ve been proud to be a part of LA Challenges across the country – initially as assessors and then, more recently, as sponsors. In March 2018, it was our pleasure to sponsor the LA Challenge South East – held in Winchester.

The LA Challenge puts teams representing local authorities in that region to the test during a full day of role-play challenges and problem-solving. As sponsors, we set our own recruitment-based tasks, this time we tasked the participants with devising a strategy for replacing their Planning team, who’ve staged a mass walk out.

As ever, we were blown away by the nous and guile of those taking part and the responses to our challenge were incredible. Unfortunately, there can only be one winner and Surrey County Council took the trophy for Best Sponsor Interaction. Brighton and Hove City Council were the overall winners on the day but congratulations to everyone involved in what was an incredible day.

Inhouse

Our breakfast events, hosted in partnership with In-House Recruitment Network, have always aimed to cover the key challenges faced by employers and spark discussion on different approaches and best practice.

Our latest session in February ‘New Recruitment Trends in the Public Sector’ received a fantastic turnout for talks by Kesh Ladwa from Warwickshire and West Mercia Police, Wyn Jones form Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and our own Fraser Chapman.

You can find out more about the key topics, discussion points and findings here.

We’re looking forward to the next event in Manchester in June. Sign up here.

PPMA

The annual PPMA Conference and Awards is always circled in the Jobsgopublic calendar as a date that we particularly look forward to. The event is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the incredible work taking place in the public sector, and discuss and share ideas.

We’ve been lucky enough in recent years to be able to celebrate the achievements of recruitment campaigns that we’ve been involved with, as we’ve helped a range of our clients connect with and recruit top talent to a massive range of opportunities.

This year was no different, as three of our clients were shortlisted and Buckinghamshire Fire and Rescue were presented with the award for Best Value for Money Recruitment Campaign for their Apprenticeship campaign. Find out more about that campaign here. Congratulations to all the winners on the night!

During the conference, we were also delighted to have the opportunity to present our latest research piece – done in partnership with the PPMA. ‘Your Future Workforce: A multigenerational research piece’ was an in-depth analysis of the differences and similarities between workers aged 16-24 and those over 50. The research uncovered some really interesting findings and it was fantastic to be able to share these with those attending the conference. You can find out more about the research piece here.

Smart Thinking from SmartSearch

We have always strived to offer far more than the services that you can pay us for – we want to do everything we can to support you in your recruitment, and your career.

Our new ‘Smart Thinking from SmartSearch’ blog series aims to provide insight and guidance for a wide range of topics – primarily for more senior candidates.

This blog series is specifically designed to cover some of the possibly more obscure or different subjects that other people may not be discussing. With new blogs posted every fortnight, stay tuned for new content coming regularly. In the meantime, you can find the whole series so far here.

Last, but certainly not least

Many of you will likely already have seen, but we are over-the-moon to be able to announce that we have launched our brand-new jobs board!

Since launching in 1999, Jobsgopublic.com has always aimed to provide the best possible jobs board experience for both candidates and employers. This most recent version marks a significant evolution and boasts, not only a fresh look but also, a number of exciting new features.

Find out all about what the new site has to offer here and head over to Jobsgopublic.com to see it for yourself.

So that’s 2018 so far! It’s been a really exciting year so far and we’re buzzing to see what the remaining eight months will bring. Needless to say, we’ve got a number of things in the pipeline that we can’t wait to share with you all

Until then, if there’s anything that we can help you with then, as always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.