We have moved!

Our new website, launched in July 2014,

now has a ‘latest news’ page.

So it is time to say a fond farewell to this blog and redirect you to

You can also follow Abenefit2u on Twitter

& why not join our LinkedIn Discussion and Jobs Group

With over 50 years of industry and recruitment experience

between all our consultants,

we always have something interesting & helpful to tell you.

Planning to attend the Pensions & Benefits Show 2013? So are Abenefit2u!

However you plan to get to the show this year, make sure we are one stop on your travels.

As one of the show sponsors, the Abenefit2u team will be at the show on both days and we will be delighted if you come and say “hello”.

We are also running a competition, entering could not be easier and you can find out immediately if you are one of ten lucky winners.

Whether you are an employer seeking market insight, if you have a recruitment need, or if you are considering a career move yourself, we can help.

Dianne Beer 07747 800740
Craig English 07884 493361
Tasha Davidson 07958 958626

The natural choice… Working in partnership with employer and employee

This blog is to say the most ENORMOUS THANK YOU to everyone who sponsored me and helped better my target of £350, and raise £400 for Cancer Research UK.

It was an eventful run, but as always I loved every second of it. My day started at 5:30am when I got up and thought I would just check the website again for any weather updates as snow had been forecast! To my horror I read, ‘please ensure you are at the race start at 8:30am’. As the race did not start until 9:30am I had only planned to arrive into Cambridge at 8:30am, find the Park & Ride and get to the event circa 9:00am so I did not get too cold standing waiting for the start. How did I miss this! I had, so it was panic stations and white knuckle driving from 7 – 8:30am to try and make up time and reach Cambridge earlier than 8.30am.

The weather was not on my side and snow en route slowed my progress, so I finally reached Cambridge at 8:30am, as first planned and the race at 9:00am. Taking only a very warm fleece as ‘race extras’ I started to queue for the ladies and queued and queued, finally at 9:27am I leapt from the ladies and sprinted across a very large muddy field to find the baggage area. As I reluctantly handed my pre-tagged very warm fleece over I heard the race begin. I charged off back across the field to find the start. Once there I leapt over the railings and into the floods of runners pouring across the start line, to ensure I too went across the start line and my timing chip was activated.

As a recruiter and in life my motto is ‘never judge a book by its cover’, but there are some things you can see immediately by just glancing at someone, like who are the ‘hard core’ runners as opposed to the ‘fun runners’, with Club vests, not sponsorship T-shirts. It took only a few seconds, as I was being dragged along at a very fast pace to realise I had jumped right into the sub 2 hours section of runners, not the over 2 hours section I was meant to start in. Already puffing and panting from my charge across the field, I was now being forced to run at a start pace way above my comfort zone. I did not want to be one of those annoying runners everyone has to run around at the start so until everyone started to thin out, I kept with the faster pace.

After a few miles I was able to slow up and not surprisingly after such a frantic start, at mile 8 I hit my wall, hard! With each stride I felt I was going slower and slower, moving in slow motion, soon to grind to a halt. I have sworn never to walk in a race in my life, but I am sure at one point I could have been walking faster than I was running.

At mile 10, like a cat on a mouse, I pounced on the drinks station and grabbed an ISO drink and two energy gels. They did the trick and gave me the little kick I needed to speed up and head for home.

The last mile whizzed by and glancing at my watch I could see I might just beat my previous time, so this incentive gave me an additional kick. I crossed the finish line on my second ever half-marathon in 2 hours 3 minutes, so shaving 3 minutes of last time, hurrah!

I watched other runners come in, and I noted the runners further back were the real heroes. These were the people with charity t-shirts and little slogans, running for good causes and either in celebration or memory of a loved one, or for other admirable charities. I always feel a little lump in my throat when I see on someone’s t-shirt ‘in memory of……’ so today I was even more delighted than ever to be running in celebration of my mother beating cancer and being able to drive home wet and exhausted after this event and give her a giant hug for Mother’s Day.

Thank you everyone once again for sponsoring me and raising funds to beat cancer and help save lives.

Hi Everyone

I hope you have all had a productive week and now have some nice plans for the weekend. Can you believe March is here already, the year is flying by, but this does mean that spring and summer are not far around the corner, and after another cold and grey week we all deserve some warm weather and sunny skies, so roll on summer…

In the meantime, after vowing I would never run in the cold weather again, a moment of madness grabbed me this week, and I signed up for the Cambridge Half Marathon in just one week’s time. The event is on Mothers’ Day and I have signed up to run for Cancer Research UK, a charity very close to my heart after a worrying time in 2011 when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I have pledged to try and raise £350 in sponsorship if I complete the event, and have asked if they could put ‘for Mum’ on my t-shirt in celebration of my incredibly brave mother beating cancer and now getting on with life despite the after effects of her treatment and ongoing medication and sometimes painful days.

I thought this would be a nice present for Mothers’ Day. Although going by what I experienced after my last run, complete exhaustion!, a daughter that falls asleep over Mothers’ Day lunch may not be the perfect present, but hopefully raising funds to find a cure for cancer, and I believe one day they will, in my view is a priceless gift.

So if this is a cause close to your heart or you are just feeling generous please do sponsor me for a pound to help me hit my £350 target. If 350 people read this and donate £1 my target will be achieved, so why not zip to http://www.justgiving.com/Dianne-Beer3 and ‘pop on a pound’!

Thank you in anticipation, and thank you as always to all the wonderful Clients and Candidates who read Abenefit2u’s blog and continue to work with and support us.

I would like to post a short blog to thank the SAUL running team for kick starting my love of ‘looooooong’ distance running again. Although at 5:30am on Sunday morning their ears must have been burning as I very, very reluctantly stepped out of my very warm toastie bed and up into a cold house, with a very, very grey view outside, with tiny flutters of snowflakes starting to fall. Excitedly I checked my phone for an e-mail cancellation notice, my heart sank at the notification the race was on and full steam ahead, so no escape! Tunbridge Wells Half Marathon here I come…

At 8:30am I was boarding a train to Tonbridge and by 9:55am, Ed Hopkins, Technical Project Manager at SAUL Trustee Company, was leaving me at the 2-hour start section and heading off to the 1-hour 45 minutes start point. I chatted to a lovely girl and as we crossed the start line we wished each other good luck. There is something lovely about the camaraderie of running, maybe not so much at the front, but for those a little further back in the starting line up like me, there was lots of chatter going on.

If 13 miles can fly by, they did, and I loved every minute, the good and the bad moments, the up and the down hills, the stitch, lack of breath, legs like jelly and of course the final mile, with good old Ed waiting and cheering me on, having been finished over 20 minutes before me. I crossed the line in 2 hours and 6 minutes, which for my first ever half-marathon, and on very little training, I was very proud of. I staggered off to find a place to draw breath and vowed never again!

As I sat on the train home, totally spent, barely able to keep my eyes open, I had at the same time an amazing feeling of achievement and ‘I want to do it again’ thoughts, so I am, but more about that in a later blog.

Today’s post is to enable to me to say a very special ‘thank you’ to the SAUL running team who invited me to join them for this event. They originally invited me last summer, when doing another run for charity. Abenefit2u were sponsoring their race entries and had also organised t-shirts for them all. Saying yes at this time seemed such a great idea in the warm summer sun, and an insane one in the early hours of a very cold Sunday morning in February, but by the end of the day it felt the best thing I have done in a long time!

Roll on my next loooooong race, which will be in two weeks time, and will be for a charity very close to my heart, so look out for Abenefit2u’s next blog on this event.

Complete our short survey and have the chance to win a new iPad mini. 

Your views are invaluable to Abenefit2u in helping us to better understand the current market.

 

This survey should take less than 5 minutes to complete. 

Your individual responses will remain confidential at all times and will form an important part of our research to monitor and review current employment and recruitment trends within our sector. The results of the survey will be published and shared within the pensions & employee benefits industry to assist all in understanding recruitment issues and current salary / remuneration options.

 

To thank you for your time, we’re giving you the opportunity to win a new iPad mini. Just leave your email address at the end of this survey and we’ll enter you into a prize draw. 

To complete the survey click the link below to join our LinkedIn Group. Once you application is validated and we have confirmed you work within one of the aforementioned industries, we will send you a link to our survey.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/AB2U-Recruitment-Specialists-Pensions-Employee-4780681/about?trk=anet_ug_grppro

Please click the link to join:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/AB2U-Recruitment-Specialists-Pensions-Employee-4780681/about?trk=anet_ug_grppro

Abenefit2u Recruitment with the very kind assistance of Pensions World Magazine have designed a FREE Professional diary dates 2013 desk calendar for industry professionals working within In-house, Third Party, Consultancy, Benefits and HR sectors. If you subscribe to Professional Pensions, our FREE desk calendar should have fallen out onto it’s new home, your desk in last weeks issue! We hope you like it, and find it a helpful reminder of all the important up and coming professional diary dates in 2013.

Working in partnership with Stephanie Hawthorne, Editor of Pensions World Magazine, Abenefit2u have listed some important professional diary dates for 2013, so you will be able to look across your desk, and at a glance see what events are coming up and when, or you might just want to know today’s date, after all, it is a full year desk calendar as well!

If you do not subscribe to Professional Pensions, but work within the In-house, Third Party, Consultancy, Benefits and HR sectors and would like a copy, or further copies of the calendar for colleagues/staff, we would be happy to oblige. Being an environmentally company, we have limited numbers, this offer is only available as long as our FREE supplies last and to related industry professionals. All requests are subject to verification.

For your FREE copy please email me, Dianne Beer, at Dianne@Abenefit2u.com with the following information:

Full name:

Job Title:

Company Name:

Department:

Company Address:

A very happy and green 2013 from all the team at Abenefit2u Recruitment.