In May 2022 we finally held our first team meetup! (And it only took two years of restrictions followed by months of planning…) We are a fully-remote company, but we were born as a recruitment agency in Norwich. So it made sense for us to hold our first meet up in our home city.

Remote working is now more popular than ever, but we still regularly ask our staff what else they want from us as a company. In a recent survey, the team demanded that we get to meet up (not virtually). They asked – so we delivered!

Team company meetups are an excellent forum for open communication, relationship building and cross-team collaboration. They are immensely valuable for many members of your team, especially if you are a remote business. They allow time for colleagues to be connected, reducing the feelings of isolation that can often pop up when working from home.

Our meetup was also a great way to say thank you to our headhunters and recruiters for all their hard work. We wanted to keep a relaxed vibe for the day, and to treat them to a day of fun (without staring into a laptop screen for once). 

A big thank you goes to our core team, who were super busy organising venues, creating awards, designing RecruitmentJunky inspired cocktails (and more) to ensure the day went smoothly.

Ain’t we a handsome bunch!

Where did we go for our first team meetup?

When we visited Erpingham House in Norwich, we knew it was the perfect venue for us.

On Tuesday 24th May, we spent the afternoon at Erpingham House doing team activities, giving some key business updates and handing out our brand new swag boxes – and we were well looked after with some fantastic vegan food and drinks.

After this we headed to Cuba Revolutions to really relax and have more food and plenty of drinks! 

What did we discuss at our first team meetup?

Okay, okay, we’ll hold our hands up – we like to have fun and consume large amounts of alcohol. But we did talk business too!

We believe in transparency here at RecruitmentJunky, so we wanted to continue to be open and honest with the team. On Tuesday, this included talking about: 

• The importance of growing a personal brand for our recruiters.
  (This was especially relevant to the current success of our CEO, Rosanna, on her LinkedIn personal brand posts.)
• Our recent survey results.
  (We wanted our team to understand why we asked the questions, and how we are making improvements in our company on the back of their answers.)
• Redefining our team mission and goals
• Our current targets
• The future of RecruitmentJunky
• Getting the team involved in the plans for our next team meetup

It was a lot to get through in a first team meetup, but it was invaluable for all of us to learn from each other.

Team awards. 

We are so proud of our team and we like to show our appreciation to them. We produced a series of silly and serious awards to celebrate who they are.

Winners:

• The High Flyer – Terry Myers, Sales and Service Lead

This was awarded to Terry Myers for his outstanding results during April and May 2022. Terry proves time and time again that his hard work and dedication pays off. Well done Terry!

• The “You’re on mute” Award – Lisa Hollis, Senior Headhunter 

Lisa has kept this saying alive at RecruitmentJunky – team calls just aren’t complete without it. Even on her first day back, Lisa didn’t disappoint us. She’s a recruiting boss, but is still most likely to forget to press unmute…oops.

• #1 RJ Fan –  Joe Grimmer, Senior Headhunter 

Joe is ALWAYS the first to like our company LinkedIn posts. In fact, he’s so proud to be a RecruitmentJunky, he messaged us weekly for company swag. Here’s to you Joe. We’re definitely a #1 fan of our #1 fan!

• Biggest Impact, Smallest Wordcount – Chris Hirst, Operations Director 

“Yep”, “done”, “cheers”. Chris uses very few words (and sometimes needs to translate his Northern jokes to us), but does he manage to hold it all together through thick and thin? Definitely!

Here are a few other highlights from our first team meetup…

Cocktails! Our marketing team had lots of fun creating these RecruitmentJunky style cocktails, served throughout the event at Erpingham House.

• The RecruitmentJunky
• WFH – Work for Huns (A cocktail made specifically for Terry)
• 5* Recruitment Martini 

Swag Boxes! After much demand, we finally got some RecruitmentJunky goodies made. You’ll probably find us all wearing our hoodies on our next team video call.

Prizes! You may have seen many of our team posting on their LinkedIn accounts during the team meetup. We had several prizes in store (such as best social media post about the day, and “guess who’s desk”), to get a bit of friendly competition going. Here’s one of our winning posts from the day from Joe:

Here’s to our next team event – we can’t wait!