JOHN ROBINSON is managing director of Wirral-based recruitment company Scantec Personnel. The group aims to grow turnover to £100m within five years, and is focusing on areas including defence, nuclear power, oil and gas and pharmaceuticals.

This was his day:

6.30 am: Alarm goes off. I usually hit the snooze button and steal another 10 minutes. Breakfast is a cup of tea and a bowl of porridge.

8.00 am: A 20-minute drive gets me to our new headquarters at Twelve Quays, in Birkenhead. I like to get into the office early before most of the staff arrive, between 8.15am and 8.30am.

9.30 am: Monthly management meeting, attended by all directors, managers and team leaders. We finish on a high as, despite the recession starting to bite deeper, our new five-year business plan has got off to a great start with record sales figures in January.

10.30am: Back at my desk, I return a number of telephone calls. The Chester and Aintree races are not far away and our corporate invitations are being acknowledged pretty quickly this year. Maybe invites will be thin on the ground in 2009. Spend half an hour on the phone with one of our bigger clients, fine-tuning the details of our important forthcoming contract renewal.

12.00am: Back at my desk, a sandwich has arrived. I catch up with the news online and check how the markets are doing, looking particularly at sectors that we operate in. I check out the recruitment sector news websites and note further office closures and job cuts . It seems our single-site operation is helping us to weather this recession a lot better than a multiple-site set-up.

12.45am: I drop down to our cafe. Half the staff are there having lunch and Kings of Leon is blasting out from the 42-inch plasma as I make my way to the pool table where the lads are rattling balls down the pockets at amazing speed. I challenge the winner and soon realise I’m starting to lose my cutting edge against these young guns. I make some feeble excuse about a phone call and quietly slip away.

2.00pm: Sit down with our financial director. Credit control and cash flow is our life’s blood. Having to meet the wages of over 1,200 temporary workers every week, on time, in this current climate is a feat in itself. I am delighted to hear that, even in these difficult times, our credit control department is keeping a tight rein on cashflow.

Like all businesses, we are under forced re-negotiation of our credit arrangements with our bankers, but, having been with them for over 15 years, we are not taking these changes without a fight.

3.30pm: Meeting with two of our directors. We are all happy with progress so far this year and feel that, despite the recession, there are still lots of opportunities.

4.30pm: I meet our financial controller to look over the end-of-year incentive prizes which I will present shortly.

5.00pm: Meet the manager of one of our biggest clients in the south of England where we have almost 400 temporary workers on site. Having worked with the client for 14 years, we have an excellent working relationship that in these tough times is so very important.

6.00pm: Tonight is gym night. I’m still keen after the Christmas break and a recent holiday in Barbados and am managing to get there three or four times a week.