January was also a wonderful month for us. We welcomed our son, Max on the 11th. I eventually took a few weeks off from work in January, to try and enjoy the doting dad experience. I still am doing, now back to work.

Max was born on a very special date: 110110 – something that looks very close to a binary code. No wonder their is talk of that date on here. That it is a little bit geeky. Time will tell.

Anyway, little Max is doing fine, and will be 1 month old very soon. It has been a great experience, having ‘another’ boy in the home, after raising our daughter close to 4 years now.

One week after he was born, we got a lovely picture of Max and Mia together. Quite a look on the big sister’s face, as she tries to figure out who is this new kid on the block, that everyone is now giving attention.

They have done well together, and his arrival has been a delight for us all.

Obviously, this is my last post for this year, after a week or more off active work, and fun with the family and holidays as expected. I have kept tabs with a few plans for next year, while reflecting on this year’s.

It has been a success with our ventures, especially the Executive Search service. While the recession has surely affected all businesses, and particularly the recruitment industry, I am quite pleased with the year’s outcome.

Sometihing else that has kept me busy is investing and growing some niche job boards. Unfortunately, one of the jobsites we created this year for the Oil & Gas industry didn’t work, and we did the natural thing – pack it in. We wont be the first nor the last to do so, but the wealth of experience learnt cannot be overemphasized.

I have also dabbled into Social Recruiting, and managed to complete a project for a major UK client a few months ago. This will be buzzing in 2010 and beyond, but its early days to track its wider acceptance.

So, 2010? What is it gonna be? For one, my passion seems to be flowing in the direction of Online Recruitment and Recruitment Media. Actual recruitment is fun, but then what does one do with one’s innate passions?

Expect a few announcements in early 2010 which will reflect an implementation of some of our future plans. Having said that, the journey has been the reward. See you on the flip side.

Exciting to be in the last Quarter of the year. Working a lot. Executive Search across African countries has sort of taking most of my time the last few months and the dark days and wet nights, no longer bother.

Currently working on a few CEO / CFO roles across East Africa and recently taking up some search assignments in FMCG and Financial Industries in West Africa.

Getting more involved in the Nigerian, Ghananian and Kenya recruitment industry, with a slight tilt to online recruitment projects.

For now, I am enjoying what I am doing.

Been working on several International recruitment projects the last month and also hired to consult for a major UK company on areas of implementing a Social Recruitment strategy for their entire HR unit. Hence, my rather silence on the blog for the last month.

August has seen us consolidate all our ventures and online portals under our Crexia brand. Crexia is now divided into several arms namely Advertising, Consulting, Technology and Social Media in Recruiting.

A few months ago, I challenged myself to have at least 5000 LinkedIn contacts. Unfortunately, I have just crossed the 3000 connections on my LinkedIn profile and am quite pleased with this.

Today, I took a few hours off my many projects to create a 1 page website that shows my professional profile and links to a few social media sites that I use. It is like an online business card, if you know what I mean. Check out vicokezie.co.uk

This month will see us launch a few add on projects on some of our portals in emerging markets, while in September – we will roll out some robust applications that has been in the works for a few months now.

On a lighter note, I am off for our family holidays tomorrow to experience some summer, and expect some silence for a short while. A bientot.

As I seem to find this subject quite fascinating, I have decided to spend some more time learning more about Social Recruiting and also assisting recruiters to take advantage of this trend, that could potentially change tha landscape of recruitment as we have it.

Job boards took the world by storm in the ’90s and then came the online recruitment industry, within Web 1.0. Now with the world feeling the full impact of web 2.0 and its produce (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc), information is now being obtained and managed in completely different ways.

Having followed web 2.0 since 2006, and attended a few events in the past, I am begining to see how it will be of value to the recruitment sector, as shown in more recruiters using social media tools to engage with candidates.

Hence, I have just founded Social Recruiter – to further explore Social Media Recruiting and assist Recruiters develop and implement a Social Media Recruitment Strategy.

We are starting an online marketing campaign for candidates and recruiters from next week, and generate enough prudent buzz in the early launch stages.

The site has started gaining some SEO grounds, getting indexed in search engines and growing in some rankings. Again, its early days.

We have experienced quite a few interests from major oil & gas recruiters and will further establish our offerings while also listening to them to better understand their needs.

There is competition – which only but makes things more interesting. Will write more updates on this and other endeavors in the days to come.

The old version will soon be seen on www.crexiaconsulting.com, which will continue to handle Executive Search assignments.

However, the new Crexia Limited will focus on developing online jobsite, job boards and recruitment portals for UK & International markets.

Having said that, its with pleasure that we have launched today a brand new site for the Oil & Gas industry called – CareersOilGas.com

We have been working on this for the last few months, and its currently in its Alpha stage.

I will write more about this in a few days, and will spend the rest of the week developing its beta version which will be available from July 2009. The new site is open for registration by International oil jobs seekers and oil recruiters.

Growing rapidly, especially with this current economic downtime, LinkedIn now attracts over 40 Million professionals in 200 countries.

Mostly used by web savvy recruiters and business owners, are now using LinkedIn to expand their networking and International appeal. The beauty of LinkedIn is, the more contacts you have, the more you can view specific kind of professionals. Hence, when I had 100 contacts, I might only see around 1000 results for some searches.

Somehow, I have exceeded the 500+ contacts and counting (connect with me on LinkedIn), and now get hundreds of thousands of profiles when I do searches related to current projects I am working on. Brilliant!

Current limit on LinkedIn is 30,000 contacts. I think my target for July 31st 2009, will be 5000 contacts, i.e 20 Million connections in my network. Catch me if you can …

Jimmy C, as he called himself stylishly built very successful recruitment companies and sold them, raking in millions of pounds, before starting a private equity firm, assist entrepreneurs build successful businesses.

The book, which was his autobiography, was quite a different from the books I have read recently.

Going from Barack Obama’s Dreams of my Father, which was a very detailed, deep, intelligently-written and heavily worded narrative to James Caan’s From Brick Lane to Dragons Den, I felt a Fresher and Gentler voice; Simplistic andHumanistic words – I found it quite refreshing adjusting to his style, even though I have been used to the more complex set of prose.

But what do you expect when one is the most prominent US polical figure and the later a renowned UK businessman.

The book is good, perfect for the business mind. I learnt how one can watch what other people are doing and do the opposite. James took quite a lot of chances during his life, and incredibly at a very young age, and its hard to find successful people, who built their businesses from scratch.

Born Nazeem Khan, he took up the name James Caan, after watching him in the movie. James thought it sounded cool. Guess where he chills out every now and then? Cannes, south of France, in his yatch. After visiting this cote d’azur paradise in 2005, I quite envy Jimmy C, and have a future goal to have a holiday home there as well. Why not?

His extended bio is shown below, with some more info about his book:

JAMES Caan is one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs. Dropping out of school at just sixteen, he started his business life with no qualifications and two pieces of advice: ‘observe the masses and do the opposite’ and ‘always look for opportunities where both parties benefit’.

Armed with just these two pieces of fatherly wisdom, extraordinary charm and the yellow pages, James Caan built a market-leading business with a turnover of more than £130 million from a broom cupboard.

The Real Deal is the incredible story of James’ remarkable life. From his childhood as a Pakistani immigrant to the phenomenal success of his first company, this book traces James Caan’s journey to both financial and personal maturity.

It deals with his fear at realising his goals too early, and offers a frank account of what success at 30 really means.

The Real Deal brings us bang up to the present, including the truth about his role on Dragons’ Den, what his charity work in Kashmir means to him, and how he has come to completely re-evaluate what money is really worth.

Planned lots of features for the site soon, and also a futher launch of some niche / country websites.

While I have quite enjoyed the Executive Search market the last couple of months and have made some great placements, I will take some time this year to develop online recruitment portals.

Will explore my passion for recruitment and a strong interests in technology …