Reviewing 2024 as a Python Recruiter and Founder
03/01/2025
As 2025 starts, I wanted to look back and review my year as the founder of Foxley Talent in 2024.
If you’re reading this, you probably know that we do things a bit differently here and our focus is community driven. In this review, I’ll be looking back at our experiences as well as some of the milestones we’ve reached along the way. Our goal at Foxley Talent is to be the go-to recruiter for the Python and Django Community.
JANUARY started off with a planning and strategy session between our 3 directors, identifying how we are going to grow the business by focussing on our 3 core areas of Python/Django recruitment, Jon building our USA arm, Liam focussing on our contractor service alongside our European Clients and Josh looking after the UK.
As part of my renewed focus of supporting the Python/Django community in the United States I produced a report highlighting some of the trends for hiring, looking for work and the salaries available to Python/Django Developers across the US.
We held the ever popular January Django.Social London winter walk around Hyde Park on a fresh afternoon in late January with a good turnout and some excellent conversations.
Outside of work, I was continuing my rehab from a back injury and started playing golf again. I love getting out on a frosty morning and completing 18 holes once a week.
In early FEBRUARY I was joined on the golf course by Will Vincent who was visiting the UK for the weekend. I met him from the redeye flight across the Atlantic and we played at my course in Reading. A great day!
My Daughter’s Birthday is in February and she asked for her bedroom to be decorated, This was no easy paint job, she wanted 3 different colours and a complicated pattern. I wore an old Djangocon t-shirt whilst doing the work with my wife (who did most of the planning and all the delicate/intricate bits - as well as picking all the new furniture and things)
The London Django Meetup returned and was held at Octopus, afterwards I agreed to give a talk at the next edition.
We also confirmed our GOLD sponsorship of DjangoCon Europe which was held in Vigo, Spain in May. Supporting the conferences is just one of the ways in which we give back to the community but also a great opportunity to meet potential clients and developers who we help to find work for.
MARCH was our best “sales” month of the year. This was also the end of Q1 and our best quarter ever. Starting the year this well probably gave us some false hope that the “market” was improving. We completed several hiring projects and even helped Mariusz Felisiak the former Django Fellow to secure a fantastic new role with a client in America.
I gave my talk at the Django Meetup London - “Navigating your Django job search in 2024 (& Beyond)” to a big audience and got some great feedback in the weeks/months afterwards from people who had taken the advice and used it for their own searches.
The talk wasn’t recorded but I will record and publish a new version on our youtube channel soon.
In APRIL we had the Easter school holidays and also celebrated our Q1 success with a meal out and an afternoon/evening playing darts (Foxley Talent’s official sport) in various pubs around Reading.
We had an expansion of the Django.Social community with new groups being formed and the format changing slightly in these new regions - creating “country” groups rather than city based to allow people to meet wherever they are without having to start a new group each time.
On the subject of the socials, we held April’s London event at a beer festival next to London Eye. It was a lot of fun with a good turn out of first time attendees and some regulars.
A lot of MAY was spent preparing for DjangoCon Europe. We had to get new t-shirts printed to giveaway, along with new stickers and this year we added some USB chargers to our sway offering. Booking flights was a logistical challenge. There were no direct flights from London on the days we wanted to travel so we had to go via Madrid Airport.
Half way through the month Adam joined our team part time as a researcher. His role was to help us identify potential candidates for our jobs and to map out the django community around the UK initially. This was an opportunity for us to see if having a junior member of the team would work out. Adam was working for his Dad 2 days a week still.
We held a picnic in London for the Django Social where we played frisbee and cornhole as well as some good conversations and a picnic where everyone brought something to add to the offering. Afterwards we ended the night with some Darts back in the pub in Reading.
JUNE’s highlight for all of us was attending DjangoCon Europe in Vigo - you can read (Josh’s DjangoCon Europe review here) where he covers some of the highlights.
During the conference we recorded some interviews for our YouTube Channel along with asking lots of people on the final day to guess where 2025’s event will take place.
In line with the other Django Social communities we announced that Django.Soical London, Bristol, Cambridge and Manchester were going to merge into the new Django.Social UK Group (you can join here)
My personal highlight though was being invited to become an Individual Member of the Django Software Foundation. I was truly honored and accepted the opportunity.
We finished the Quarter by signing up new clients from the conference but our sales just about covered our costs for the period. This also allowed us to sponsor DjangoCon US again.
JULY and AUGUST are always quiet from a hiring perspective with lots of people (our team included) taking time off over the summer to spend with families and manage the long school holidays.
During my kids summer holidays my youngest daughter lost her first tooth and her older sister had her first flying lesson(she wants to be a Pilot!!). I also took my son to the Reading festival for the first time where we saw Blink-182 headlining!! All amazing experiences.
Between childcare and the holidays and with lots of hard work we managed to make a few placements to contribute towards our costs but the market had definitely slowed down. For the first time we experienced a period of bad luck with placements cancelling, invoices not being paid and legal loopholes working against us. We also spent time working roles for companies who ultimately were not in a position to hire themselves.
Lessons for the future but also a real wakeup call to look internally and start some hard conversations!
During the summer, I started uploading video content to our YouTube Channel. We share so much advice to job seekers every day, we want to put this somewhere that can be accessed easily by anyone who needs it. At the time of writing this we are up to 50 subscribers on our channel. One of my goals for 2025 is to grow this and publish more content.
SEPTEMBER usually signals a change in the market with people returning to work and realising there are only 4 months left of the year to finish projects, hit targets and to hire new people. We definitely saw a momentum change at this time.
We made the decision that we were not the right business for Adam to be starting out on his recruitment career, he had been with us for 4 months and in that time had very little opportunity to work alongside us and build on his knowledge. A junior needs people around them all the time in our industry. Good Luck for the future!
One of our highlights of the year was attending DjangoCon US in Durham,NC (here is my review which you can read in more detail) in September where we got to meet with lots of our connections from around the Django world, we signed up a new US based client who saw that we were sponsoring and I also got some more golf in with Will Vincent during the trip!
We finished the quarter with our worst overall performance since I started the business. This was mostly down to the poor July/August with September being the saviour. We still hadn’t turned our luck round completely and made life hard for ourselves at points too. We really needed a strong Q4 to finish the year as well as some outstanding invoices to be paid. Managing cashflow is genuinely the most frustrating part of running a business!
OCTOBER was our 3 year anniversary, we had our birthday celebrations at TopGolf during the US trip in Durham. There were points over the year where I didn’t think that we’d make it to year four but here we are! Hard work and determination go a long way.
Whilst busy working a role for a new US Client I had a strange/worrying experience, interviewing a candidate who was obviously using a deepfake AI filter over their face and trying to con their way through our screening call. I posted this on LinkedIn and the comments were amazing. I recorded this video about the whole situation.
Elsewhere on our YouTube channel, we have shared some regular content now with a monthly conversation being recorded, this is titled “The Fox” and we’ll continue these as we go. Sharing tips, answering questions and a few interviews too. We’ve also shared our conference lightning talks and some other bits to keep people interested.
The London Django Meetup happened again, another good night chatting to developers and sharing our DCUS Stories too. Later in the month I co-hosted a Python X Rust event in collaboration with the London Python Meetup and Rust London. We had speakers from both communities and an excellent panel discussion. Huge thanks again to Ernest for making this happen!
On the theme of events we also held the London Django.Social - co-working day at BrewDog in Waterloo with a good turn out during the day and several people staying for drinks afterwards.
NOVEMBER flew by, we were busy again with jobs and moving the business in the right direction but still without the results our hard work was dictating. Liam closed off a big project with a returning client in Europe and we also got creative to secure another repeat client from the UK.
Updates were pushed on our website - built in Django/Wagtail and as a non-coder myself I’ve been really impressed with the ease of use of this setup. These updates were our Jobs page and moving the blog to the main Menu bar.
We’ve also made updates earlier this year to our hiring pages. All this has meant that we are receiving more visitors to the site. Hopefully this turns into placeable candidates or new clients too!
I was invited along to what I would call a “UK Python Legends Dinner” by Michael Foord, along with a who’s who of Python Developers from around the UK. We had a Korean buffet in Soho, London and drinks in the pub afterwards. Michael is someone I’ve got to know over the years and it was very nice of him to invite me along.
Amongst other things, DECEMBER signals the end of the year, a chance to review, reflect and look forward. In our final board meeting of the year, reviewing 2024 against our goals the conversation moved towards the future...
This year has been tough, there’s no hiding from that! In order for the business to survive we had to make the hardest decision we’ve faced. With this, Josh has left Foxley Talent to explore new opportunities in the recruitment/talent industry. Things have ended on good terms with Josh even closing off a final placement before logging off for the last time.
I wanted to take this opportunity to express my gratitude and heartfelt thanks to Josh for all his hard work and effort over the past 2 years. We had some great times together and I’m sure we’ll all meet again somewhere down the line. You Sir are a true gentleman and whoever has the pleasure of working with you in the future will be very lucky to have you on their team!
Liam and I wrapped up our year with an afternoon in the pub for some darts, a Christmas Karaoke Duet (East 17 - Stay another day) and a bar snack buffet. This was a quieter night than years past as we still had roles to work in the build up to the end of the year.
In the last few weeks we took on several urgent positions with clients new and old in the UK, Europe and in the US. We are hopeful that this leads to an upturn in fortune for 2025 and that we can build on what was ultimately a very difficult year.
2025 is officially the year of the Snake. Surely that’s a good sign for these Python Specialist recruiters!!
Thanks for reading and Happy New Year to all of our connections from around the Python/Django World.
