This week saw us reach a significant milestone.
On Tuesday, the 30,000th consultant signed up for their 3 month guest consultant account. That's an awful lot of people through our virtual doors in our more than 10 years of operation.
That doesn't mean that we have 30,000 consultants as current members of course.
Not all guest account holders go on to become full paying members and not all full members stay with us for the rest of their natural lives (shocking but true)
The actual numbers at any time are in the 'ball park' of 1,000 full members, 1,000 on guest accounts and a further 10,000 ex-members, ex-guests, registered clients and people who have simply asked to be kept informed. So we have around 12,000 people on our weekly email contact list and getting this newsletter.
That's quite a large community divided across corporate, engineering & technology, IT consultants and small business advisers. It's a fantastic targeted audience for members to post projects and offers to and for companies to advertise to in the weekly newsletter.
A reminder of how Skillfair works:
Every day we scan over 1,100 websites and other sources, then our UK-based analysts - led by Cath - select and tag the best with the skills needed for the project or tender. Overnight, our system compares these with the skill-set you have entered and drops your personalised listing into your inbox around 8 am each morning. That's a lot of legwork and expert sifting being done for less than 3 pounds a week.
Members can also search for consultants with particular skills to bring in on their projects and can put their own projects and offers into the system. We also take some commercial advertising as long as it is appropriate for our audience. We also have arrangement with some public and private sector organisations to enable them to post their projects straight into Skillfair which means that many of the projects don't appear elsewhere.
People can also speak to the membership helpline which is looked after by Angela and she helps members to get the most out of the system, optimise their profiles and she gets to know the people who phone or email her regularly. When clients put tenders and projects directly into our system, Angela gets in touch to make sure the client is genuine and at the end of the project contact period - she gets back in touch with them to find out how it went for them.
Skillfair isn't just a computerised conveyor belt then. There are real people at the heart of it who are constantly working on members behalf, looking for ways to improve the services and listening to your comments about how you would like to see things improved.
If you know anyone who ought to be getting the benefit of Skillfair, please forward this message along to them and tell them to consider signing up for a guest account to try us out.
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