This week’s news has been dominated by the tale of two departing football managers; Alex Ferguson and Roberto Mancini.

Football records apart, something that may get lost in the excitement and exasperation on the red and blue sides of Manchester are the contrasting management styles.

Ferguson was renowned for being a brilliant “man manager” and as kind, considerate and fair to the tea ladies as he was to the Glazier family, who own the club.

In contrast, Mancini, while a successful manager in his own right, had a human resource management deficit.  A quickly retracted tweet from his former kit man today described Mancini as arrogant, rude and barely able to muster a daily salutation to those he worked with.

I am not passing judgement, but do want to flag up an issue in contemporary leadership.  Leadership requires a complex range of skills, foresight, good decision making and the ability to improvise.  Surely good manners should never be exempt from good management?

What do you think, do manners matter or is success everything?

Carolyn Beckford is the Senior Risk Consultant across Retail Financial Services for BrightPool.

Over the past few weeks, both Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland have released some brilliant Q1 results. Lloyds have released pre-tax profits of £2.05 billion, up from 286 million this time last year, while RBS are also in the green by £826 million.

This is obviously fantastic news, and Lloyds CEO Antonio Horta-Osorio even said that despite the collapse of the Verde Project, LBG have made fantastic progress, coupled with a 6% cut in costs.

All of this (unusual) good news with the part-owned state banks has now sparked what the government are going to do with them, now that the share price is creeping up again. George Osborne is in full support of handing shares out to the general public once the Government have recouped the initial price paid per share, but is this really a good idea?

Would ‘giving away’ the shares really kick start trading again?

Would a brash move like this create instability and push these two banks back into the bad light they are so used to at the moment?

What are your thoughts? If you were given a few shares in RBS and/or Lloyds, what would you do with them?

All comments are greatly appreciated and I will reply to all comments on the blog.

I’ve just come back from a few days in Dublin – in a headline beautiful city, lovely people, even better Guinness.  There on business I was  visiting some of my Irish clients. The one thing that always surprises me more than anything is just how upbeat Irish bankers are; I met some truly lovely people.

Like most that work in the sector my understanding of what has happened in the Irish banking systems is pretty decent and this had always made me have a preconception that your stereotypical  Irish banker is the most repressed and downtrodden of bankers. The reality however – from the senior Irish bankers that I know – is that actually they are a bunch of individuals who couldn’t be more motivated and committed to address and fix the many problems that the Irish economy has.

The one thing that I did notice about the senior management of a lot of the Irish banks is the mix of permanent employees and interim managers – a majority of which are UK nationals. Whilst visiting clients I was briefed on a number of roles that I’m actively working on, however the one message that came back from hiring managers was that because it’s an Irish problem an Irish solution is needed. This got me thinking  – does an Irish problem need an Irish solution? I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

Tom Arnall is the Retail Banking – Permanent Positions – consultant for BrightPool.

For the second year in a row, BrightPool consultants will be running 10km in aid of the British Heart Foundation.  This is being held on the 22^nd May at Canary Wharf from 6pm onwards.

This fun event has a solid purpose that is likely to touch all of our lives.  Last year proved hugely successful even though we were running around in 29 degrees – we are aiming to beat our previous recorded times this year.

Our target is just £1000 so please click on the link below and sponsor us for any amount – every pound counts!

http://www.justgiving.com/BrightPool-Ltd

Please ensure you put a name and a short note on the donation so we can thank you personally, and we would welcome any cheers of encouragement on the day!

Natalie Fennell is the Senior Account Manager for BrightPool.

I recently met with a Financial Services contractor who presented me with a ten page CV, which when I read closely contained over 40 short assignments.

Although he had listed a number of projects by name there was little detail about how he delivered them or what the projects were.

I asked why this was the case, bearing in mind he possesses a significant number of practitioner qualifications yet there was no evidence of him utilising them.

After a lengthy discussion about his approach to managing the projects we soon drew out the key areas of interest, such as how he dealt with very tight deadlines and cultural differences in project management.

Regarding his CV, we discussed the importance of listing all assignments but the need to focus on the most recent. We also covered the need to take a more traditional format whilst ensuring we highlight the factors that set him apart from other project managers in his field.

After a great deal of collaborative working we managed to reduce his CV down to four pages and ensure that we are presenting key elements expected by hiring managers.

Here are a few tips for writing a CV to include a lot of jobs:

• Place emphasis on your most recent roles, talk about the project, any problems (remember a contractor is often a firefighter and required to hit the ground running) and how you delivered it.
• Reduce the detail of the remits as you work down the CV but ensure all roles with a difference have sufficient detail which will demonstrate your ability to work on varied assignments.
• Do list all the roles but for those over 10 years old and certainly when you are listing over 20 jobs, you need to reduce the detail to a line stating job title, dates and company. In this case a table was required due to the sheer volume of assignments.
• If you, like my client, have not been working to formal structures; think about how you deliver and add the detail in. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s wrong, in fact it demonstrates other skills and abilities to work in fast-paced, often demanding environments.
• To save space, you may look to add in achievements entwined in the project detail rather than separating out at the top of the CV.
• Learn to articulate detail in a clear and very concise manner – not like a job description but reducing the paragraph down so the reader gets enough information to know what it is you were tasked with and difficulties faced – just avoid waffling!

What are your tips for a good, multi-assignment CV?

Elaine Serjeant is the Senior Retail Banking Change Consultant for BrightPool.

When companies look to hire a contractor, they are usually paying a not insignificant rate – but if you factor in the costs associated with a permanent employee, what works out the best, and does the extra cost counteract the risk?

First of all, you have to take into account the extra costs involved in hiring someone permanently – and amongst others the main ones are as follows;

• Employer’s National Insurance contribution
• Benefits package (free healthcare, pension contribution, gym membership etc)
• Holiday
• Expenses
• Bonus scheme
• Training courses
• A lump sum recruitment fee cost (unless sourced in-house)

When you start adding these up, the original day rate to the contractor starts to look less daunting – people neglect to realise that contractors pay their own national insurance and, unless agreed before the contract starts, all expenses, and don’t get paid for any holiday / sick days.

A contractor also  knows that when they sign a three or six month contract there is no promise of an extension at the end, and if they don’t perform and / or deliver, they can be out on a weeks’ notice, with no way of contesting unless in exceptional circumstances.

This gives the employer great flexibility, especially in the Financial Services industry where there is so much change. It provides a margin for error if the person is not quite right and employers don’t need to pay the month’s wages of a notice period.

I appreciate that contracting and permanent positions have a different purposes within the industry, but when organisations have big culls on the number of contractors you have to question how much it’s really going to save them – especially if they are all being replaced by permanent staff with hidden costs.

What are your thoughts and perceptions of contractors in the work place?

Do you think that, although sometimes paid more, the expense of contracting  it is offset by the risks that you don’t have as a permanent employee?

Charlie Cooper is the Retail Banking consultant for BrightPool.

My name is Carolyn Beckford, and I joined Brightpool in April 2013 as the specialist recruiter for contract Risk roles within Retail Banking.

My approach to recruitment is inspired partly by my academic background in psychology and my employment experience in marketing.  I believe that good recruitment is holistic, catering for the full needs of both the candidate and employer.  Also, having spent several years in marketing, I have come to understand the importance of maintaining a healthy balance between honesty and integrity and also the need to put the candidate’s best points forward in the presentation of information – I’ve always put the former before the latter!

I have a long and successful career in recruitment spending over 15 years in recruiting finance professionals into Financial Services, Technology and Media sectors.

Prior to Brightpool, I spent five years recruiting into Financial Services and developed a specialism in recruiting Market Risk, Operational Risk, Credit Risk and Quantitative Analyst contracting professionals into Investment and Retail Banking, Custodians and Asset Management companies.

When I’m not at work, I like to go to the theatre, cinema and do as much as I can for women’s and cancer charities – I am currently trying to get in shape for a 10k charity run!!  No gifts of cakes or chocolates please!  I ove travelling and have trekked across Asia and the Far East.

If you are interested in Risk roles within Retail finance I would love to hear from you – please connect with me on Linkedin by clicking the following link:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/carolynbeckford

Carolyn Beckford is the Senior Risk Consultant across Retail Financial Services for BrightPool.

Many of you will have seen the Andrew Marr show on Sunday morning or the write ups in the media since about Boris Johnson’s “often fumbling and occasionally excruciating” interview by Eddie Mair (who was standing in for Andrew Marr).

Eddie delivered the killer questions and has been described by some as “soft spoken and deadly”. It turns out that Eddie may have been auditioning to replace Jeremy Paxman – the front man of BBC 2′s Newsnight – so put on a good show of grilling Boris.

Eddie was recently heard to say – “Is Newsnight toast?” – and is keen to position himself as a new anchor for a relaunched show. So – plenty of comings and goings at the Beeb as presenters jostle for position and showcase their interview technique. Whilst Eddie did ask the tough questions – it was his interview style that interested me.

As a professional recruiter, I interview people daily.  I would not describe my style as soft spoken and deadly however I do think I can deliver the odd killer question!

Our clients are pretty demanding and they expect us to get to the bottom of any issues by asking the important questions. We are certainly not here to make our candidates feel uncomfortable – we want a long term relationship with them so it’s important to have a friendly and open style but also get to the important information.

Many of my candidates ask me about interview technique. I suggest to them to put themselves in our shoes and ask themselves some tough questions. Then to rehearse the answers to demonstrate that they are prepared and have given plenty of thought prior to the interview. In short I would say practise your interview technique, be yourself and be honest. Make sure your CV is a true reflection of you and your career story to date. Therefore if you are grilled by a tenacious recruiter – you won’t end up as “toast”.

Have you been subjected to a really tough interview and did you succeed?

What would you have done differently and did you get the role?

Natalie Fennell is the Senior Account Manager for BrightPool.

Sheryl Sandberg – the hugely successful American businesswoman – has been all over the media recently.

If you have managed to avoid all the attention she has been receiving then I have noted a few of her impressive credentials:

* A graduate from Harvard in 1991 where she studied economics and received the John H.Williams Prize for getting the highest marks in her year
* Four years later she gained her MBA from Harvard Business School with the highest distinction
* Has climbed the career ladder with positions at McKinsey and Company, United States Secretary of the Treasury and Google
* She is the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook and is credited with making the social network site profitable
* She was named in Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world
* An author who released her first book in 2013
* A mother of two children (aged five and seven years old)

It is the release of her first book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead which explores business leadership and the lack of women in leadership positions which has catapulted her into the limelight. It has caused a healthy debate about whether women can balance the role of motherhood whilst pursuing a thriving career.

In her book Sandberg suggests changes that women should and can make so that they do not hold themselves back in business. It is based on detailed research and draws upon experiences from her career. Her advice for women includes: “sit at the table”: believing in your own abilities and reaching for opportunities; “make your partner a real partner”: finding a life mate who shares laundry duties and “don’t leave before you leave”: not opting out of opportunities to plan for a family down the road.

Whether you have read her book or not, most people have an opinion on this topic.

The Co-operative Group has recently set new targets for increasing the number of women on its board. The company has published an ethical plan which commits to ensuring 40% of its Co-operative Group and Co-operative Bank board members will be women by 2018. It is great to see the company set some milestones to address any imbalances on its board.

From a personal perspective, I do not have any children – yet! My focus is on developing my career at BrightPool and contributing towards the success and growth of the company. I feel confident that should I ever wish to start a family I will be supported by BrightPool and it will not prohibit me in developing my career here. After all, 37.5% of the board at New Street Group (the parent company of BrightPool, Interim Partners and New Street Search) are women.

Do you believe that women are given enough flexibility in the workplace to raise a family and advance in their careers?

Mellissa Brown is the Senior Retail Consultant for BrightPool.

With the UK Financial Services market still relatively uncertain across a number of organisations, there is always a niggling fear factor of moving on to pastures new.

The industry has been swamped with cutbacks and redundancies over the last few years and although this has eased of late, you never know when the next scandal will hit and it all kicks off again.

With that in mind, if you have survived a couple of rounds of redundancies then you are obviously highly thought of in your current firm.

Would you then jeopardise that s0-called security to move into unknown territory, where your skills and experience are untested and your inter-company relationships are at their weakest?

I am – as ever – keen to hear your thoughts.

Ian Filmer is the Managing Consultant for BrightPool.