The announcement of the appointment of Darren Montagu to the Board of Morgan Hunt as the newly appointed Chief Strategy Officer comes at a time when Morgan Hunt’s core markets face the challenge of an increasingly competitive environment for attracting the best talent.
 
Darren joined Morgan Hunt on 3rd April 2019, having already been engaged on an interim basis, providing support to the senior leadership team.

Prior to this appointment, Darren spent 27 years working for Hays plc. His career at Hays saw him starting as a trainee recruiter, eventually joining the Hays board as Managing Director of Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as the South East of England. Other highlights of his career include the opening of a Hays business in Holland and building their offering to the Energy markets more broadly.

Daniel Taylor, Managing Director of Morgan Hunt, commented “I am delighted to have Darren on board. All those who have worked with him will know of his acute knowledge of recruitment businesses and his ability to inspire and drive exceptional performance. His arrival builds on a very positive 18 months for the company and will apply focus to the ambitious goals we have set for the business to achieve over the next four years.”

Darren Montagu said “After a long and rewarding career with Hays, it’s a big personal decision for me to move to Morgan Hunt. I am fortunate to have worked at Hays and been part of an outstanding group of professionals with a shared belief that it’s the people we employ that are the most important element of a successful recruitment company.”

“My new colleagues at Morgan Hunt remind me of exactly why I invested my career in recruitment. They have the vision, ambition and talent to leverage an already trusted brand to explore growth opportunities from existing operations and through acquisition, as well as attracting like-minded individuals to join us.” added Montagu.

Morgan Hunt hosts forum for NUS members to find out how volunteering can help

Morgan Hunt played host to a number of NUS (National Union Students) members who were given CV, application and interview training by their in house training manager. This was followed by three guest speakers, who talked around how volunteering had helped them into work, how being a trustee had benefitted their career and what it means to volunteer in the charity sector.

Voluntary working can help to gain valuable experience for a career. We’re not talking about internships here, where employers have been accused of exploiting youth, but the Third Sector; a sector of the economy that has been growing steadily for the last 10 years.

A seismic shift in moving public services previously delivered by Councils or by quasi government funded bodies, into charitable organisations, has transformed this sector into a chosen career option for many.

Voluntary work can provide young people graduating from university valuable experience across a number of disciplines, whether its project management, training, or simply the execution of duties in the field.
 

I did it for the experience

Georgia works with the Princes Trust and is an Executive Director of a voluntary organisation called Tenteleni. Getting into voluntary work was much harder than she had first anticipated; a lot of hoops to go through despite her previous background. Internship in London was not an option so volunteering seemed to be the next best thing.

“I did it for the experience” said Georgia, yet knowing that a lot of the job description she had read needed very specific skillsets. Her first assignment in South Africa gave her the confidence and hands on experience that would lead her to realise her own potential and to get a clearer picture of what she wanted to do in people development.

More importantly, post volunteering, all those job advertisements were starting to make much more sense. Having done the volunteering overseas Georgia then committed to a trustee role.

During her volunteer work Georgia had the benefit of many mentoring relationships and was given support in going for other jobs.  “Once you get that foothold within a charity it’s quite easy to develop within it”, says Georgia. It’s a competitive sector so her advice was to keep volunteer work recent. Georgia now mentors herself at other trusts.

What did Georgia learn? Volunteering allowed Georgia to experience much more responsibility than she might otherwise have had elsewhere.

It also enabled her to acquire skills in project management, monitoring and evaluation, volunteer management, managing a budget, managing stakeholder relationships, logistics, risk assessment, health and safety and impact assessment.
 

Volunteering opens your eyes

Damian is Director of Fundraising at City Gateway, and a trustee of both the Calthorpe Project and Ashford Place. He says that he would not be in the career, or have achieved the progression he has to date had it not been for his volunteering as a trustee at different charities.
 
Whilst at University, Damian was heavily involved in volunteering with RAG, student committees and sat on University Senate, but never became a Sabbatical Officer, instead deciding to enter the world of business. He was also a charity trustee throughout University, and loved every minute of it. There were difficult decisions and challenges along the way, but he developed key strategic skills that he wasn't able to do at work. So when it came time to look at his long-term career ambitions, he decided that charity work was the way forward, and fell into a career in Fundraising - one he has become successful at.

Although his career has continued within the charity sector, Damian strongly encourages those from the business world to become trustees because they are the same skillsets and experience that successful charities need – and maintains that in return for your time and skills as a trustee, charities offer you experiences and opportunities that you could not dream about so early in your career.

Damien says that volunteering can be formal or informal and can provide work-skills. But being a trustee offers so much more – you can use the knowledge of what it takes to run an organisation, the responsibility and the leadership to make a real difference to your community. This is what a trusteeship offers, and there are plenty of opportunities to consider.
 

What’s in it for the Volunteer?

Liane is the Head of Volunteering at the NSPCC, a charity that has 1500 volunteers alone in ChildLine.

The NSPCC work with universities and give students training on how to talk to young people to help them develop more professional communication skills. The NSPCC also acquire volunteers from people who are training to be social workers and school teachers, or in similar social or community professions.

The training and development opportunities are really good for CV enhancing. The NSPCC recognise that the market for volunteers is competitive and that they need to talk about what people will get from the experience and training, rather than focus on the cause. Their training leads to a very different skill to counselling, and at the end, the volunteer becomes a ChildLine Counsellor.

Liane says that they’ve enabled volunteers to have access to a lot of training including their corporate partners who want opportunities for their staff as part of their CSR programmes.

In summary working as a volunteer not only gives a memorable life experience but also provides valuable skills that are transferable for later employment, whether that is in the Third Sector or in commercial business.

Graduates can test out what they want to do and what experience they want to develop. From the speakers it was apparent that once bitten, they were hooked, remaining within the sector. But they all stressed that the sector is competitive to get into and surprisingly difficult, but once in, there is plenty of support to be had.

For more information on charity jobs email us.

An activity-packed, fun-filled day at work raises £3,000 for charity partner YoungMinds.

Morgan Hunters proved yesterday that working and giving doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive, raising £3,000 for charity partner YoungMinds.

An early gathering in all regions outlining all the day’s activities set the momentum for the day which included raffle ticket sales, director auctions, Bid2Win on quality items and a good old-fashioned ‘car booty’.

Morgan Hunt employees dug deep and wide with every penny raised going towards helping improve the emotional and mental wellbeing of children and young people. 

You can donate too. Just text 70070 with MHYM55 and your donation amount or donate online at www.justgiving.com/morgan-hunt-uk.

To keep teams focused and on track, a midday visit from YoungMinds to talk about their work definitely raised the bar on what was needed to get to the desired goal for the remainder of the afternoon.

“We’re thrilled with the outcome which exceeded all expectations and had all our regions participating. Big thank you to our suppliers for their auction item donations helping make our 1^st #GivingTuesday a roaring success and our future charity legacy event”, says Lauren McLeod, Marketing Director, Morgan Hunt

Raising money for YoungMinds is good for business too. The sales ‘power hour’ saw Morgan Hunt fund-matching various business activity with fantastic results.

“For us, #GivingTuesday was an all-day employee event so we wanted to combine our work with having fun while doing good. It was fantastic that we could achieve these results and raise this money for our charity partner YoungMinds” says Sue Cooper, MD, Morgan Hunt.

Cooper was seen in the afternoon making tea (and calls) after being ‘sold’ to the highest bidder for her services in the directors’ auction.

Morgan Hunt who announced its new charity partner, YoungMinds in October this year after three months of research and voted for by employees, was delighted to have kicked off the relationship with this successful event.