2 February, 2009 – Euro London Appointments – A Personal View
Eileen Sudmann, Branch Office Manager at Euro London Appointments, talks about her decision to relocate to Manchester and set up the northern division of the company.
“I moved to Manchester two years ago, after spending a couple of years in London and four years on the Isle of Wight. I am originally from Berlin and moved to the UK to improve my English during a volunteering year in 1999 and loved it so much I stayed here. I moved to Manchester to set up the northern division of my company, Euro London Appointments, we are specialists in the recruitment of multilingual personnel within all sectors.
I had ‘test-driven’ many northern cities before deciding on Manchester as my new home – for both commercial and personal reasons. On a business level, Manchester is the most successful area in the north for placing multilingual candidates and is also well located for us to be able to service the whole of the northern region. Personally, I loved Manchester as it had that ‘city feel’, but you can still be in the countryside with just a 30-minute drive. It also has a strong cultural offering that you don’t get anywhere else in the UK, outside of London, and yet it’s cheaper, cleaner and friendlier. It really is true that northerners are friendlier!
I currently live in Stretford so it only takes ten minutes in the car to get to work and I generally go out in Manchester at the weekends so I have plenty of choice for restaurants and bars for when I want to relax after a long week at work. I go back to Berlin three or four times a year so it’s also great to be near the airport.
When I moved here, I knew nobody, but through business networking and joining hobby groups, I now have many good ‘friends for life’. I think Manchester has really defined interest groups so making friends is easy – for example I’m really interested in European cinema and a business contact suggested I should go to the Corner House cinema which provided a great ice-breaker for meeting like-minded people.
For my company, Manchester has also proved to be a fantastic location for us. We have offices in Spring Gardens and there is a fantastic business community. It’s easy to ‘sell’ Manchester as a great place to do business – the infrastructure, the motorway links, the airport, and the talent pool – and importantly for us, the amount of good quality linguists and language businesses in the area due to the excellent universities.
I believe Manchester is an international city, as the overseas students that come here tend to stay and make it home – and even encourage their friends to come here too! For an international student, working in the UK looks fantastic on their CV as a good job here is perceived to be three or four times more demanding than an equivalent role in other countries – after all it’s a fact that the Brits work longer hours.
MIDAS really helped me and my company when we decided to locate our northern office here – not only with finding property, but also introducing us to some good business contacts, they even invited me as their guest to dinners and awards ceremonies as they knew I didn’t know many people here – and I am still very good friends with two people I met.”