Emma Easton – Recruitment

Show Notes

34s: Emma Easton is the director of Strand Recruitment which specialises in IT, HR, accountancy, telecoms, sales & marketing. They provide a shortlist of the best talent on the market.

57s: Are all recruiters scum bags? I have been in recruitment for nearly 17 years and some of my best clients start off thinking that but we aren’t all sharks. Reputation is everything in recruitment but they soon see the value.

2min 41s: You were schooled in Harrogate? I moved from Newcastle when I was 7 and went to school in Ripley and then to Rossett. My high school teacher, Mrs Pratt, told me in 6th form “you need to get into recruitment”. I took a telemarketing role for a few months and then applied for a medical recruitment role which I was in for 4/5 years and then I went onto Reed accountancy.

4min 46s: After the birth of my second child, I’d had 14 months on maternity and I would have gone back on zero and had to build up my client base. I decided at 30 to own my own business.

5mins 20s: Have you ever gone back to see Mrs Pratt? No, I went back to Rossett for a careers day and saw some old teachers but not her.

6mins 1s: You must’ve placed hundreds of candidates? I only used to specialise in accountancy but it is hard to keep track. It’s certainly in the triple figures.

7mins 26s: What do you put your success down to? 90% is hard work and work ethic. I am passionate about my job and we don’t have to take on every client so we have a very high placement rate. One year ago, we launched our IT division but before that we used to turn away candidates looking for those positions.

9mins 45s: We have 6 consultants in Leeds and we have an office in London. We work with national clients and we are proud to say that WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff were one of our clients, they did engineering work on The Shard in London. We also had smaller ones like Poundworld and we supported the head office functions.

11mins 39s: Do you have any tips for businesses hiring their first member of staff? You need to think what value the role will add to them, what that person will achieve and also how to retain them and the succession plans.

13mins 48s: What is your morning routine? I wake up at 6am normally, sometimes 4:30am because I have a referral based meeting which starts at 6:30am. I play netball 3 times a week, we’re called the Midget Gems.

15mins 22s: Who’s the most successful person you can think of? Oprah, she has been through a lot and achieved the highest standard of her career in terms of success. She’s awesome in lots of different aspects, in particular, a chat show host can transform into a movie star. She turned herself into a corporation and involved herself in politics.

16mins 48s: Why did you go to the London market? We can emulate our success in Yorkshire and they are more about the service over cost.

19mins 32s: Do you have a business coach and do you coach others? I don’t and I don’t coach others, I am good at recruitment but that doesn’t always transfer into other businesses.

20mins 10s: What was your most memorable placement? Poundworld were one of the first and I didn’t take holidays for 18 months so I could be responsive and available all the time.

22mins 31s: What would your enemies say about you? They would say I am a fair person and I hold my own in a negotiation.

23mins 21s: What was your longest day? I was up and out by 6am and I didn’t get back until 10:30pm

24mins 23s: How do you sustain yourself? I believe energy breeds energy, so the more you do, the more energy you get.

26mins 14s: In 5.5 years where do you want to be? The business never flatlines so you’re either up or down and I think we can double the team in that time.

27mins 56s: Is a lot of your work LinkedIn related? It’s a great talent pool for some of our consultants. A lot of our profit goes into investment of job boards which goes into a pool that we have access to and we can cherry pick the candidates.

29mins 32s: Which books have a synergy with you? The Secret which is about believing and visualising. I miss the targets of being an employee and being held accountable to something.

31mins 30s: You have peers? Yes, a group of directors get together every month and we keep each other accountable.

32mins 18s: What tech do you use? What’s the most useful app? Emails are the app I use the most. For the office, we have a bespoke package.

33mins 21s: How do people find out more? Go to www.StrandRecruitment.com or call Leeds on 0113 360 7800 or London on 0203 890 4544 and I’m on Linked in as Emma Easton.