At the end of January, the Projects team extended an invitation to all of our Associates to join us at the South-West APM Event around ‘Sustainability in Project Management’ with guest speaker Will Masters.

APM is the only chartered membership organisation representing the project profession in the world, so we’re really excited to be a part of their events. In true Sanderson style, APM also believe that project delivery is all about achieving our clients desired outcomes but is also about so much more than process alone. They challenge the status quo and champion the new to help the project profession deliver better.

At this event, speaker Will Masters was incredibly engaging and provided a clear and insightful approach to layering sustainability into Project Delivery. It was a stark reminder that Climate Change is happening all around us, and we all have a responsibility to flatten the steep curve, both in our day to day lives and through the project lifecycle.

What did we learn about sustainability?

The biggest take home for us as a team was around culture, and that being the biggest driver in positive change.

Following the event, we as a team have been exploring ways we can reduce our carbon footprint, personally and professionally with an initial focus on travel to work.

We are collating data from within our Community and will be taking travel impacts into account for new Associates throughout 2024.

Coming up next

Over the course of the year, we’ll be offering more APM events out to our Projects Associate Community, so keep an eye out and let us know if you would like to join us!

As ever, if you would like to chat more about our Associate Community, or about our Projects offering, please do reach out at [email protected]

In conjunction with TechBlast, we hosted a Tech Breakfast meet-up event at our Manchester office.

Raising investment is one of the biggest catch-22 scenarios facing many businesses. Hiring the best teams and building game-changing products all costs money, so how can a bootstrapped business be expected to navigate the investment minefield? Choosing the right investor is a good place to start, but what if you pick the wrong one?

On the 18th April, we welcomed Senior Tech founders, Advisors, NEDs and Angel Investors to our Manchester Office. 

• Our panel of founders and a panel of investors shared their own stories of dealing with different types of investment. It sparked some really insightful debates and discussions looking at both sides of the investment process.
• It was a a great opportunity to understand what a good investment looks like, and the type of approach to take when taking your company to market for investment. 

Thank you to everyone who joined us, it was a great morning of networking and listening to people’s personal experiences. We are looking forward to hosting more events like this in the future. 

We are delighted to have been awarded a Vendor Neutral Managed Service into two key divisions of the Cabinet Office, namely Government Digital Services (GDS) and the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO).

Our service, launched in April this year, is branded as Extended Talent and Services (ETS) reflecting the programme ambitions to capture a wide-ranging pool of DDaT and Commercial talent to augment civil service and partner delivered resources.

The key aims for the programme are:

• Implementation of an ambitious sourcing strategy providing multiple routes to market. To deliver a talent partner solution that helps GDS and CDDO remain competitive in the market and to make improved strategic sourcing decisions.
• Reductions in time-to-fill rates, whilst increasing and improving engagement with key strategic suppliers who specialise in the supply of workers across DDaT and Commercial areas.
• Access to quality market research, talent market trends and accurate pricing data to support more informed decision making and offer choice.
• Implement market leading technology to reduce the admin and contractual burden, ensure all processes are transparent, and offer real-time and supportive reporting

Commenting on this latest win, Nick Walrond, Managing Director of Sanderson Government & Defence said;

“We look forward to forging a long term and successful partnership with the GDS and CDDO teams, whilst building trusted and effective relationships with the critical supply chain. Our aim is to offer a route for new suppliers to be able to be onboarded quickly and easily in alignment with the future skills challenges faced by these key areas of government.”

Our Government and Defence team are going to be at the Security Cleared Expo in Bristol later this month.

As the leading innovative government and defence talent specialist, we are recognised for delivering exceptional teams into a wide range of clients.

We only recruit for the UK government and their critical supply chains, including: Ministry of Defence (MOD) and areas of National Security; Central Government and Arm’s Length Bodies; National Policing and Justice; and the broader Public Sector.

Come and meet our team

If you are looking for a new challenge and have security clearance, come and meet our talent solutions specialists at the forthcoming SC Expo to be held in Bristol on 25th April.

The event takes place from 10-3pm at Aerospace Bristol under the last Concorde aircraft to fly. Registration to the event is free – click here to secure your ticket.

National Interview Week is an incredibly important initiative which has been launched to address the urgent development gap in schools across the UK.

In collaboration with YourGamePlan and Oppidan Education, National Interview Week aims to foster pupil confidence and arm students with the skills and tools they need as they get ready to take the next steps in their education or career.

Over the last few months, the scheme has been inviting schools and colleges nationwide and students in Year 12 and above to sign up as they gear up to provide up to 5000 free interview sessions during the Autumn term, and Sanderson has been helping.

21 of our brilliant colleagues across our Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Manchester offices volunteered for an amazing 66 hours to interview 126 students.

An incredibly worthwhile initiative and the team were inspired by the individual stories and career aspirations of the students they got to work with.

The Sanderson team were delighted to be a part of the South Gloucestershire Council’s International Communities Employment Programme (ICEP) to help deliver employability workshops.

Set up by the council, the programme offers re-settled communities in South Gloucestershire employment support such as:

• Job hunting
• Free ESOL courses
• Free employability courses
• 1-2-1 mentoring support
• CVs and cover letters
• Job applications

Getting involved with the programme, Lewis Snell from Sanderson Government and Defence Group joined Neil Giddens and Conor Hillier from Sanderson’s Insights team to deliver an employability workshop at the Kingswood Skills Hub.

A fantastic initiative, we caught up with Conor to hear his reflections on the day:

“We had a really successful day, terrific to spend time with people of such different backgrounds and to help a handful of talented people find their feet in UK employment and get ready for their futures“.

Well done to Kingswood Skills Hub for organising such a brilliant session!

At Sanderson, we believe it’s important to give back to the communities where we all live and work, and to put time and energy into our chosen charities and the vital work they do.

That’s why this week we were all super excited to get into the festive spirit, don our Christmas jumpers for annual Christmas Jumper Day and host our charity raffle event.

We are proud to say we raised more than £700 for Little Hero, an organisation close to Sanderson’s heart as it is inspired by John Rainsbury’s son, Will and his fight with a Childhood Brain Tumour – Medulloblastoma. Little Hero is continuing his fight by supporting others experiencing childhood cancer with stays at Will’s Woodland, an opportunity for families to escape and take a break away from a hospital setting in safety and seclusion as well as funding critically needed research into new treatments for the most aggressive paediatric brain tumours.

Thanks to the support of Sanderson, the £700 raised will send 4 children and their families to Will’s Woodland for a much-deserved respite break.

You can find out more about the fantastic work Little Hero does here.

How early on should you be writing your CV? Well as the pupils of Redland Green Secondary School in Bristol found out earlier this week, it’s never too early!

CVs are a great tool to have when students start looking to secure work experience and think about the next steps after school. As the first contact you have with potential placements and employers, it’s your chance to make a great first impression, demonstrate your skills and interests, what you’ve been up to at school and let a bit of your personality shine through.

Some of the Sanderson team headed over to Redland Green Secondary School to talk to their Year 10 pupils who are starting to look at securing work experience placements for later in the academic year. We walked the students through the basics of CV writing and got hands on in workshops to help the students get a head start in their CV writing.

One of our consultants Ben Pratten was part of the team on the day and his key takeaways were:

“Back to school we go! By the end, everyone had made a great start on their CVs with a personal statement sketched out, and their key skills and attributes identified. 

It’s the sort of thing I wish I had at school. We all really enjoyed getting away from our desks and giving back by inspiring the youth of tomorrow! Looking forward to coming back next week for the second half of the year group“

We look forward to the next session!

Sanderson and Sanderson-iKas, a joint venture between our UK recruitment business Sanderson and our international team iKas, have been fully immersed in all things Mission to Hong Kong over the last few weeks.

Hong Kong has a thriving tech scene, and Mission to Hong Kong aims to get the message out there that Hong Kong is the perfect gateway to the tech scene in the Asia-Pacific as well as being a dynamic start-up destination.

To kick things off, it was great to welcome Chris Woodward, Director of General Trade & Investment in Hong Kong, as well as the team from Mission to Hong Kong to our Bristol HQ offices in the beginning of November. We were able to catch up with team as well as some of the tech founders as we all prepared for the launch in HK later in the month.

When all the tech founders and mission delegates were safely back on home soil, we caught up with Adam Kennedy, our Sales Director in Hong Kong to share his thoughts from the week:

“I’d like to start by thanking Tech West England Advocates, and in particular Richard Lowe for putting together an amazing week of events. The week included a reception at the British Consulate, tours of Cyberport and the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, a VC reverse pitch event and a Tech Founders showcase event that Sanderson iKas were happy to sponsor, as well as the opportunity to attend events as part of the wider StartmeupHK festival.

My main takeaways from the week are:

• Hong Kong has an amazing, vibrant tech scene, the people I have had the pleasure of meeting this week have ranged from the latest fintech startups to Google. There was such as buzz throughout Hong Kong during StartmeupHK and it has been inspiring to see the size, quality, diversity, and ambition of our tech community.
• There is an incredible infrastructure in place to support tech companies scaling in Hong Kong, including InvestHK, Cyberport and the Hong Kong Science & Technology Park.
• People are as important as ever. It was lovely to tell my story, share market insights and talk about Sanderson iKas’ experience of recruiting in Hong Kong during one of the panel discussions.

The feedback I received both at the events and on LinkedIn afterwards has confirmed our belief that the quality of people has such an impact on business success, we look forward to helping the tech community grow into the new year.”

All in all, an amazing event and a fantastic way for UK businesses to explore Hong Kong.

If you would like to find out more about Sanderson iKas please follow the link below or get in touch with Adam to have a chat.

https://www.sanderson-ikas.hk/

How important are employability skills in the cyber sector job market? Well, they’re invaluable! These essential skills, personal attributes and values set you up to thrive in any workplace and the Sanderson team were thrilled to join the recent SANS Institute UpSkill event to deliver an Employability Skills training session for the cyber sector.

Established in 1979, the SANS Institute is a cooperative for information security thought leadership and have an ongoing mission to empower cyber security professionals with the practical skills and knowledge they need to make our world a safer place – a great partner for the Sanderson team to get involved with.

During our training session we had the opportunity to engage with a whole host of inspiring cyber professionals and provide them with a toolkit and top tips to help them transition into the industry.

Joining the training was Sanderson Managing Consultant for Cyber & Information Security Mary Pearson. Her key takeaways from the day were:

“I feel passionate about supporting anyone who is looking to start a career in cyber security. Partnering with the SANS program has allowed us to impart our knowledge to work towards the common goal of reducing the skills gap in security, with schemes like this I am positive we will get there!”

There is a cyber security talent pool ready and waiting to be tapped into, so if you’re an employer looking to hire entry-level cyber security professionals into your organisation, or offer any internships in this area, then please do get in touch with Mary Pearson for more details and how Sanderson could help you find your next hire.