Bright Purple's highlights of 2021
Adding eleven new people to the team
After a hard time for us all in 2020, we were delighted to welcome lots of new purple people this year, particularly in the second half of the year where we have made nine new hires! One of our most recent hires is the third person to return to Bright Purple in the last year or two (following Craig and Gary's return in 2020); Chris Murphy joined us at the start of December as Director of Testing and Projects, almost ten years after he worked for us previously for three years at the start of his recruitment career.
Our shiny new office!
After 15 wonderful years in our Rose Street office, we made the decision to downsize to a smaller office just five minutes around the corner on North St David Street. With new hybrid and remote working policies in place, our new home still gives us everything we need from an office space, while saving us a little income to invest in other areas of the business. Check out a video of our new office below!
Launching our new website
In May we finally took the plunge and moved to our new website and CRM system with Firefish. As a dedicated platform provider for recruitment agencies like ourselves, Firefish has enabled us to integrate and streamline our processes, saving our recruiters valuable time.
Our old website was *cough* dated and in need of some TLC, so we are delighted to come flying (or swimming?) back into the 21st century with Firefish and have a website and candidate portal that provides a much better experience for our customers.
Celebrating internal promotions
As a team we celebrated a few promotions throughout the year. Craig Bradley successfully completed his trainee consultant period and is now a fully fledged consultant! Naomi Gibson continued to smash her targets and became a Senior Consultant, and Senior Resourcer Renate was promoted to Head of Remote Resourcing. Ethan Buddie has continued to smash targets and will become a Senior Consultant in the New Year, with Chris Scullion earning a well-deserved promotion from Senior Resourcer to Consultant.
Raised £2500 for Cyrenians
In July, 11 of our Purple People took on the Edinburgh 7 Hills Challenge - a popular 18 mile trek around the Edinburgh's 7 peaks - to raise money for homeless charity Cyrenians. After a gruelling seven hours we made it to our finish point at Calton Hill, where we quickly celebrated with some beers!
Thanks to our friends at Zonal who matched our fundraising efforts, the final total donated to Cyrenians was £2504. In September we managed to visit the Cyrenians farm to do some volunteering and hand over the final cheque!
Implementing our new flexible working policy
The pandemic forced many businesses to adapt to a new way of working, and it was no different for us. This turn of events led us to re-evaluate what a normal working day is at Bright Purple, and how this is different for all of us based on our circumstances, commitments, dependents and so on.
We were proud to introduce a new fully-flexible working policy, which gives our team the trust and freedom to start or finish earlier/later, or take time out throughout the day for commitments or simply get some fresh air etc, and work back the hours in the evenings or when it suits their schedule. We also implemented our hybrid working policy where our Edinburgh based team are only required in the office 1-2 days per week depending on their position.
Hosted a virtual comedy night for the Edinburgh Festival
Unable to host our usual in-person night out to celebrate the end of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, we took our event virtual this year and hosted an online comedy night!
We enjoyed an hour of fantastic comedy from three top comedians, organised by our friends at PopUp Comedy Shop. Our clients, candidates, family and friends all thoroughly enjoyed the evening!
Our first face to face meetings in over a year
While we are all now masters of Microsoft Teams and Zoom, nothing quite beats a face to face meeting, and we were excited to get back out and have our first meetings with clients and candidates in over a year! We've also enjoyed returning to a few in-person events, including Startup Summit, Digit Expo and more.
Our fully remote resourcing team
2021 was the year that the pieces fell into place for us to finally launch an official, fully-remote resourcing division in the business.
With one of our top resourcers Renate deciding to move down South, we took the opportunity to give her a well earned promotion to Head of Remote Resourcing, where she quickly hired Umar and Stewart to join the remote team.
Only three months later and the team has proven so successful that we have hired another resourcer, Holly and are still recruiting for the team!
Nick Price appointed honorary consul for Lithuania
Following 11 years of providing business services, consulting, support and friendship across Lithuania, our CEO Nick was appointed Honorary Consul for Lithuania in Scotland. This is an incredible achievement for Nick and very well deserved as he will now officially act as conduit for business, cultural and political ties between our two great countries.
Organised a Hackathon for Climate Change
With COP26 on our doorstep, we were determined to do something meaningful to mark the occasion and provide an opportunity for those in our community to make an impact against climate change. We were delighted to team up with local hackathon and tech event specialists Product Forge to host our very own hackathon, Products for the Planet which aimed to educate, empower and inspire public action for climate change.
Watch the extended highlights of the event below!
Having an in-person Christmas party!
Last but not least, we were excited to have an in-person Christmas party again! It was great to all be together properly after so long, and there were definitely some sore heads the next day..!
A note from Nick...
Bright Purple’s CEO, Nick Price shared some words looking back over the year:
“Where do I start? It’s been a year full of highlights, with many already mentioned and given we continue to operate in the pandemic years, where uncertainty still dominates, I’d like to say how proud I am of our amazing team. We’ve seen everyone across our business play their part, from finance and back office to marketing and sales, delivering successful financial growth through incredible service levels. Our strong customer base has continued to grow as we learn to live in the new hybrid world of work, hiring levels in tech are off the scale, demand is driving shortages however we are evolving new offerings to meet that demand in 2022 and beyond.
I am a 31-year recruitment veteran and for 26 years Bright Purple have provided resources to an array of customers, I’ve seen highs and plenty of lows including 3 recessions during that period, but I feel that today I am working with one of the finest teams I’ve ever worked with in my time at the helm. In the last year we’ve seen three senior people re-join the business, after spells away and I am delighted to see so much talent return home and bring even more capability back in to our business. I believe that we’ll continue to make many more great memories in the year ahead and as CEO of Bright Purple, I’d like to thank our customers, candidates and suppliers for your support over this last year.”
What's coming up in 2022...
2022 is set to be another big year for Bright Purple. With our Remote Resourcing team going from strength to strength we expect to at least double that team in the next few months as we gain more business South of the border.
With our recent hire of Chris Murphy, expect to see more from our Testing vertical as well as a very exciting new project or two! The third of three important hires for the business starts in January, which will see us put a larger focus on a certain part of the UK..so keep your eyes peeled!
We will look to continue to be more involved in local community meetups and events, strengthen our commitments towards being an environmentally conscious business, as well re-focusing our learning and development with our new hire Zane at the helm.
We hope you have a healthy and happy New Year. See you in 2022!
The Bright Purple team x
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