A new year and a fresh start for many, as we have been reassured by the Government that we are now officially out of the recession. For some businesses based within the region, it has been a struggle to cope with the repercussions of the economic downturn.
Take for example iconic Stoke-on-Trent chinaware brand Royal Doulton, which has been through the turmoil of financial debts and resulted in being sold to American speech technology firm Nuance Communications, paying a grand total of $102.5 million (£64 million).
Often, when we see such well-known brands as this having to deal with the pressures of running a business in financially difficult times, immediately it’s assumed that smaller companies must also be feeling the effects and having to compensate.
Grad Central is delighted to see the opposite despite recent research by the Centre For Excellence (CFE) regarding small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the lack of interest in graduate employees.
The survey claimed that almost 90 per cent of SMEs are uninterested in hiring such individuals. However, Grad Central has been encouraged by an increased uptake of these businesses from the region signed up to its fee-free service and keen to select the best in graduate talent.
The West Midlands is truly bucking the trend and proving that despite the doom and gloom of last year, 2010 is looking up and we are slowly but surely getting there.
