Interview with Alex Paterson, Website Director of Check4 Ltd

Check4Jobs.com is part of Check4 Ltd who has very ambitious plans to make a huge impact in the UK vertical search market over the next 5 years. We plan to roll out 3 other major product based search engines and it's my job to make sure it happens. So watch out for check4hotels, check4cars and check4property.

It all started when I developed a job board whilst balancing my day job as an area manager for a leading high street recruiter. I saw an opportunity to stay in recruitment but use my software knowledge (I started writing code when I was 15) to make something special. I asked my friend at Ness PC to give me a good name for people checking for products online and he said 'I guess checkfor.....' I replaced 'for' with '4', job done.

Needless to say vertical search is something which is quite new and still growing. I personally like mobile and video technology. Right now we are working on new projects that help deliver both of these to our users. We are lucky to have attracted some of the most gifted software engineers I have ever seen to work on Check4 products. Type 'pay per cv' into Google for our latest release.

Thank you. I am lucky in that respect. I was born in an area of Scotland where it is rumored Pontius Pilate was born (I'm not kidding!!) so my superstitious Irish mother and proud Scottish father drummed it into me and my siblings that we where decedents of Rome and the lost tribes of Israel! In other words I didn't have a choice about what I studied. Recruitment to me was always sales and I was particularly good at mathematics also.

My secret algorithm is: Sales + Maths + IT = online business

I am well versed in answering this question. I have to admit I am not a nervous person and people tend to misinterpret that as confidence and maybe it is. As I mentioned earlier we have a top class team at Check4 and I am sure we will be able to continue to grow even during these times of crises. Problems coming from the job market are serious though. People say we will surely get more traffic as people are being made unemployed. This is true however our business model works a lot better with people swapping jobs not losing them.

Yes, if you don't like selling, long hours or pressure then don't get involved. If you do, then go for it as recruitment is an excellent career choice for you.

It's an old cliché but there is nothing repetitive about recruitment and new challenges are constantly being thrown at you. Socially it's a great environment recruiters are generally good company and raucous individuals who know how to party.

My laptop and blackberry. That flashing red light gets me every time!

I would love to travel; even when I studied I was working every evening and have never left the UK for more than 7 days. Then there's my teleportation machine. But that's a story for another time.

A contact name and number for Simply Online Group (www.simplygroup.net)
Excellent web stats that we have jumped in traffic by 300%.
Telephone.
That's it. I suffer from OCS.