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Top recruitment agency offers lifeline to SMEs
Press Release

Gloss Creative Recruitment has identified that sourcing top talent through the use of recruitment agencies should not simply be an option for large companies, but an opportunity open to smaller organisations.

The Leeds based agency has been focusing its efforts in the creative sector for 10 years, from design to blue chip companies, and is well aware of the costs that can be incurred by businesses using the services of recruitment agencies.

Ian Rigby, Managing Director of Gloss Creative Recruitment, said: “Recruitment agencies can offer a wide range of benefits to a client, although they come at a cost. We are all aware of how dire the economic climate is at the moment, and smaller organisations need to be catered for.”

The established team at Gloss have revised the service list that it offers its clients so that existing and new clients will see recruitment as an affordable, rather than a desirable option.

At £300 for a single job advert on one website for only 7 days, many companies can only imagine the rewards that online advertising would bring, but Gloss have created a simple solution to quash those financial worries.

“With 8 out of 10 candidates using online methods, we now offer our clients a package at a reduced rate that incorporates a range of top job sites for 28 days, including Reed and totaljobs. You also receive a personal account manager, who will write your advertisement for you.”

Not content with providing simple and cost effective advertising solutions, the innovative organisation created a sister company, Creative Protege, to help showcase graduate talent to clients. The result has been the creation of an outstanding portfolio of graduate work that allows clients to source their perfect candidate or gain extra creative resource for those that can't afford freelancers.

“We are committed to helping SMEs - we realise that the majority of creative businesses have less than 10 employees. Through what we offer, I hope that more businesses will realise the the benefits of having access to the best people out there and what Gloss can do for them.”

For more information check out http://www.glossrecruitment.com/ or http://www.creative-protege.com/

Awards time!

Gloss and Creative Protege are up for a couple of awards this month! Creative Protege has been shortlisted in the finals for the "Business of the Year - best link with education" in the Yorkshire Press. Click here for a link: http://tiny.cc/0YOz4

Both companies have also been shortlisted for a GoldenTwit award for the work which we have been doing via twitter (and our PR superstar, Adam Throndike). You can vote for us at http://www.goldentwits.com/

Gloss welcomes DINO

Gloss Creative Recruitment always strives for excellence, so what more could be expected with our new animated character?

The contemporary vector animation is the work of 28-year-old design graduate, Steve Jones, who used his creative energy to bring to Gloss' homepage, and the rest of the World, DINO (Designer In Need of Opportunity).

As you can see the little guy is extremely cute, and if you check out http://www.glossagency.co.uk/ you can see him in his debut animation.

DINO was by no means an easy feat to accomplish, Steve recalls that rendering some of the scenes in the animation were extremely fiddly, but well worth it.

Halifax born Steve Jones graduated from Norwich Royal College of the Arts, with a degree in Games Art & Design-you can check out his graduation project, Glide, that gained him a first at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCRTockQ9gY&feature=channel_page

Gloss Animation Draft

Take a look at the draft animation created for Gloss by the amazing up and coming animator Steve Jones! The completed version will be on the new Gloss website very soon and get in touch if you want to work with Steve as he would love to hear from you!

Social networking to build yourself as a brand

We have noticed a massive surge of online networking / social marketing where people are finding opportunities due to this form of communication. Get yourselves a Twitter and LinkedIn account and join up with the members of Gloss Creative Recruitment you know (if you haven't done already).

Lots of people use Linkedin half heartedly as a way to present themselves but LinkedIn recently celebrated their 45 millionth sign up so either people are fearing not being involved or this site has real substance. According to comScore (thanks Jude @ Turnkey), LinkedIn had 16mil unique visitors in June 2009 – up from 7.7 million a year ago. The majority of these users are business people looking to make work connections with other like-minded professionals.

By using sites such as LinkedIn and Tiwtter you can connect with a targeted group of people working in the same sector as you that you could possibly collaborate with in some way of another. Its another way of getting you and your work seen away from the sea of CVs on jobsites. Twitter allows you to meeting business and professionals that normally wouldn't be available simply by following them and offering some of your own expertise to the ethernet.

Give it a try if you haven't already as we have already noticed the benefits!

Latest design work for Gloss

Gloss is on a real drive to push its brand both online and offline and that means working with some fantastic talent to come up with creative designs that we can use for our marketing. Take a look at this fantastic illustration by Chris Jevs and his other great work at Chris Jevons www.jevsillustration.com.

Creative Protege is up for an award!

Check out this link to see how our sister company, Creative Protege Ltd, is making waves in helping out graduates get work experience...http://www.thepress.co.uk/search/4470313.Creative_Prot__g__/

Creative Protege's latest news

PRESS RELEASE

A company that was established to help design graduates get a foot on the career ladder reveals the secret to securing your dream job.

Creative Protege, based in York St. John’s University, acts as a virtual agency, supplying work from top agencies to budding graduates, securing them three months work experience; what they believe is key to future employment.

As a sister company to Gloss Recruitment, there are no shortages of large design agencies willing to hand out work to graduates in the chance of unearthing the next generation of real talent, including Hallmark, The Salvation Army and MTV.

Ian Rigby, Managing Director of Gloss Recruitment, said: “Every person that registers with us is guaranteed three months work experience. Being able to state they have worked on campaigns for MTV, for example, certainly enhances their CV as well as their portfolio of work. This makes them far more appealing to an employer.”

Despite the Higher Education Statistics Agency publishing figures this month, that suggest design graduates are one set of individuals that face an uncertain employment future, Creative Protege is celebrating the success of one of its graduates, James Holtom, who jets of to his dream design job for William Hill on-line, in Gibraltar.

From an independent survey carried out by Creative Protege, 88% of those applying for jobs had been turned down due to lack of experience; with 100% interviewed agreeing that work experience could secure them a job, many commented actually achieving a placement was difficult, especially in this economic climate.

James Holtom, a registered user of Creative Protege, said: “It’s a catch 22 situation really, employers want to employ you, but they ask for specific experience, and if you haven’t got it, then how can you apply for the job? That’s why I opted for work experience, it may mean working for free, but I know it’s what secured me a job.”

End

Creative Protege goes to some recruitment fairs

Our sister company, Creative Protege, took part in a number of graduate recruitment fairs this year most notably being York St John’s University where their offices are based. The Graduate turn out to these events was on the whole very poor ………. It leads us to question the organisation timing of June/July when most of them have already gone home!

At Gloss and CP, we are not just here to give you job opportunities and design work experience but we can also help you where perhaps your careers services cant….. a career in design needs a totally different strategic approach and cannot be generalised like on a lot of websites – we can give you the specific careers advice that you need to help taylor your CV and job applications in relation to design.

New website coming for Gloss!

Gloss Creative Recruitment's little Sis - Creative Protege have been creating an image overutilising the talents of their fabulous designers. The new website will be launching shortly featuring some great work from some of our CP candidates. The industry news is looking much more positive from our end and the new look comes at a great time………..Take a look at the video created by one of the Creative Protege Graduates, James Holtom (who recently got a job with William Hill in Gibralter thanks to the experience he got via CP). Good luck James and well done - talent always prevails!

Rise of the machines! Digital designers are in demand

You may have already noticed that the there are less and less Print roles around at the moment but a hell of a lot of web design ones. The markets are evolving and a lot of companies are belatedly starting to recognise the benefits of using the web for their market presence. Compare advertising in a magazine with advertising online and it soon becomes obvious that the net is the way ahead (its almost impossible to know how many people have looked on your offline advert where as modern day analytics will tell you everything with your online stuff). This, added with the residual benefits of SEO, means that if you dont keep up with technology then you will soon become another victim of commercial natural selection!

My advice to you is start getting digital as its still the tip of the iceberg and there's still so much opportunity out there. Take a look at most websites and you'll see that a lot of them still dont look great (because coders arent necessarily creative) and a designer with a great eye can make a big dent in the market if they are willing to pick up the technical aspects....

Can't figure out how to get into the sector? Give us a call or get some work experience via our sister company, Creative Protege: www.creative-protege.com

Are you a recent graduate struggling to get into the industry?

We are now linked with a new design agency called Creative Protege. They are a new concept in the way graduates are now entering the industry. Creative Protege is sponsored by a number of companies/design agencies across the UK who realise the importance of harvesting fresh new talent. They provide CP with design briefs for young designers to work on voluntarily and virtually, at home, alongside their own design teams. This benefits both parties - the clients use CP as a design ‘think tank’ providing them with fresh design ideas and concepts whilst the graduate’s are gaining work experience to develop strong commercially viable portfolios with brand names to die for, prospective employers are seeing your work, all greatly increasing your chance of interviews and most importantly work. Want to design work for MTV? Might be worth getting in touch...

A Funny Thing Happened The Day After I Got Laid Off from Anthony Ferraro on Vimeo.

Belated Happy New Year!

I hope everyone managed to get a good rest over the break in order to tackle what 2009 has to throw at us. Its already been an incredibly busy start for us with an awful lot of people stepping onto the job market.

The worst hit seems to be the print sector with a lot of the larger companies holding back on reinvestment / advertising and are trimming down quickly. The middle size companies seem to be just concentrating on their core business until the January fog clears there is some clarity with the economy. On the flip side, the smaller companies that have less overheads are finding it a great time to recruit some great talent and this is where most of our vacancies are at the moment.

The digital sector seems very strong as companies more and more start to realise the advantages of the ethernet. Because digital advertising and marketing can be traced and monitored for ROI / cost, the demand has gone up and so have the job opportunities. Time to add another string to the bow if you haven't already started?