I love it when my clients are interested in my journey, it was great to sit down with Futureheads recruitment and talk with them about my backstory, the business and how I support recruitment teams.
I walked into an Adecco in 2000 looking for a temporary summer job to facilitate my travelling plans and 22 years later, I am still working in the industry – the world travel never happened unfortunately!
I’ve always chosen sectors that are close to my heart and spent most of my career recruiting into schools and charities. I’ve had the absolute honour of placing some incredible candidates into roles that have literally changed the world and the lives of so many people.
After an internal move into an L&D role further on in my career, I started to take on responsibility for Diversity and Inclusion, and this is when my journey into ED&I started. I then spent some time with APSCo, creating & developing their EMBRACE programme and it was during lockdown that I decided that I needed to do more to help recruiters get to grips with ED&I.
I am now on a mission to make recruitment processes accessible to everyone and improve the experiences of under-represented candidates. I now give recruiters the insight, tools, and confidence to attract diverse talent, recruit inclusively and confidently partner with their clients.
If you could go back and do it all over again, would you choose a different career path and why?
Honestly – no. I believe that each of my roles has led me to where I am now, mid-career I’ve finally found what I should be doing. It’s been an interesting and sometimes really challenging path, but it’s created the perfect foundation for my business and how I support recruiters. If I’d not been a recruiter for 17.5 years, there is no way I could offer such unique insight and perspective on ED&I and support recruiters in the way that I do.
What’s the most important lesson you learned in 2021?
Wow, where to start with that question. That you don’t need to be in a business to have a team around you, the best bit about doing your own thing is that YOU get to choose your team! You have a choice to allow people into your world, but you also have the power to deselect those who add no joy. By going through that process, I am now happy every day and I am blessed to have the most talented, positive, brilliant, good humans in my work life.
I always felt I needed the stability of a culture, a work family, and a physical place of work to be a success – but I didn’t, and that myth held me back from breaking away from corporate life sooner, but we live and learn right!
As far as you can predict, what’s on the cards this year for you and your business?
It will be a year since I launched officially in May. That first year milestone feels incredible – I could never have predicted how the sector would wrap its arms around me and elevate the work that I am doing! My focus is on continually developing and evolving my training programme to make sure it’s the best it can be, maintaining my presence on LinkedIn by always using my platform to share advice and insight, and working with incredible recruitment leaders who are passionate about ED&I.
Why ED&I, and why Futureheads?
I believe that EVERYBODY has a right to a fulfilling and successful career. The services of the recruitment industry need to be accessible to EVERYONE and we should be creating an environment where every person is welcome and has the equal and equitable opportunity to secure great work. I won’t stop until I see a step-change across the industry, and we start to put people before profits.
Mission over profit is one of my core values. When I created Diversity in Recruitment, I promised myself I’d only ever partner with businesses that are inspired to make changes for the right reasons, and that I’d never take on ‘cosmetic’ work to help recruitment businesses simply win a pitch.
Futureheads stand for something, they are prepared to do the work to make their services accessible, inclusive, and equitable, as ED&I means something to them. I thrive on working with businesses like them. Our industry needs businesses like Futureheads, they are the future of our industry, and they will be at the forefront of the changes we need to see.
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