Darren: On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m here with Joanne Finnerty of JF Recruitment. Jo, is that right?
Jo: Yes, that’s right.
Darren: We’re going to be talking about all things recruitment—how you do what you do, why you do what you do, and what advice you’ve got for people both in terms of getting jobs and hiring the right staff. Does that sound like the kind of thing we’re going to be talking about?
Jo: Perfection.
Darren: So, Jo, why did you start in recruitment?
Jo: I was at Wirral Met College studying for my private secretarial course. I wanted to be a PA and travel around the world. That was my big dream.
Jo: About three weeks before we finished the course, a recruiter came in and said, “We will get you all jobs.” They said they’d get us temp work to get experience, we could decide what we wanted to do.
Jo: So I signed up with the agency and their first job they gave me as soon as I stepped out of college was at Octel in Ellesmere Port. I worked there for a year covering for a lady who was off ill. When she came back, we’d gone from typewriters to word processors, so I had to teach her how to use Microsoft Word.
Darren: So you had to teach the lady coming back how to do a job effectively.
Jo: But that went down well. She was like, “Where’s the typewriters gone?”
Jo: Then I rang the agency and said, “This lady is now coming back. I’ve retrained her to do her job. What have you got for me next?” Because I liked temping. I liked going to various different companies and checking them out and thinking, “Would I want to work here?”
Jo: It was quite a way to get to from where I lived, because I didn’t drive. I didn’t drive until I was 24 or 25. So I was 19 at this stage.
Jo: They said, “We’ve got a job at BIC Cables in Helsby.” I said, “How do I get there?” They said, “You get two trains from Rock Ferry Station.” I said, “Fine. What time do I have to start?” They said, “8:00.”
Jo: I checked the times and asked what the rate was. They said, “£2.20 an hour.” I said, “I’ll be there.”
Jo: I did that job for about three months. I was the temporary secretary to a room full of 30 engineers. They were great. They were such a laugh—loads of banter.
Jo: After those three months, another lady who was off sick came back and I rang the agency. They said, “Right, we want somebody to come in and type a load of CVs for us all day. Very boring, but we do need somebody, and you’re a really fast typist.” I was 100 words a minute.
Jo: So I went into the agency in Wallasey and I was typing CVs, and I was watching the recruiters and seeing what they were doing. They were going out on client visits, seeing how businesses work, looking at their processes and systems, and talking about jobs.
Jo: They had lots of people coming in to look for jobs. It was all very exciting to me because I wanted to do that.
Jo: So I spoke to Bernie, one of the recruiters, and I said, “Can you teach me what you’re doing?” She spoke to the agency owner and they trained me up to be a recruiter. So I went out on all the client visits, all the lunches, all the meetings. It was so interesting.
Jo: Candidates would come in with cards and flowers and chocolates and biscuits and say, “Thank you for getting us that job.” And I thought, “This is the best job in the world.”
Darren: There’s a lot of freebies.
Jo: But there was a lot of nice stuff—going to see lovely companies, recruiting great staff for them. And I thought, you’re helping people’s dreams come true.
Jo: Because we had people coming in in tears. They’d been made redundant. They’d lost their jobs. They weren’t going to be able to pay the bills. And to be able to ring someone up and say, “We’ve got a job and we think you could be great for this,” it was just magical to me—and it’s still like that now.
Jo: Similarly with the clients, with the businesses who want great staff, you’ve got to care about them. You’ve got to care about who they want, who’s the best culture fit for that business.
Darren: Culture is important, isn’t it?
Jo: Huge. You can teach a lot of stuff, you can teach skills, but you can’t teach attitude. Culture fit is number one.
Jo: Then the agency owner asked me to go into business with her. I was about 22 or 23. But I felt I needed a lot more experience to run my own business, so I turned it down.
Jo: I went to work for a bigger recruitment business in Liverpool called Link Recruitment, who then got bought out by Spring Personnel.
Jo: They said, “You’ve got a couple of years experience, but you’re not a seller. You’re consultative.”
Darren: That’s a big part of recruitment, isn’t it? It’s not just finding the candidates and fitting them in the right roles. You’ve got to sell to new clients too.
Jo: But I didn’t see it. I never saw it as sales. I still don’t see it as sales.
Jo: They said they’d done my psychometric profile and I wasn’t a big seller. So I said, “Give me three months to prove myself.” They said okay.
Jo: They told me I was going to start a brand-new desk from scratch. They’d never done industrial recruitment in their Liverpool office before. I had zero business on the desk.
Jo: I said, “Fine. Who’s your best industrial consultant?” They said, “Tina Cork in our Hanley office.” So I rang Tina and I said, “Can I come and spend a week with you and see how you do it?” She said yes.
Jo: Tina had the Potteries contract in Stoke-on-Trent—200 odd temps out. That’s what I wanted.
Jo: I spent time with her, then came back to Liverpool and hit the phone hard.
Jo: “No” to me just means “not yet.” They just haven’t got a need. You can’t force companies to give you vacancies if they haven’t got any.
Jo: There was one contract I wanted in Liverpool, which was the Parcelforce contract. They had an agency in there already, but recruiters move on.
Jo: The lady there said, “No, Jo, we’re not moving, but ring me every day at 4:00. You never know, there may be an opportunity.”
Jo: So I rang her every day at 4:00 for three months.
Jo: Then one morning a call came in: “Jo, it’s Parcelforce.” She said, “We’ve got two spaces for tomorrow if you can fill it.”
Jo: I said, “No problem. I’ll ring you back within the hour and let you know which two are going to do it.”
Jo: So I rang two of my best temps—people I trusted. I said, “I’m going to pay you extra. I’m not even going to make any money on this. I need you to turn up and do an amazing job, because if you do, there may be an opportunity for you to get a permanent job in here.”
Jo: They said, “No problem, Jo. We won’t let you down.”
Jo: They turned up the next day. I rang the contact at 8:00 to check they’d arrived. She said, “Yes, Jo, they’re here.”
Jo: All night I’d been panicking, thinking if they don’t turn up, that’s it—my one shot has gone, and possibly my job.
Jo: I told them, “If you let me down, I will not ring you for again.”
Jo: They did a great job, and within three to six months they’d got rid of the other agency and we had 200 odd temps in there.
Jo: Then I passed my probation and they gave me an assistant because I needed help. It was faxed timesheets in those days.
Jo: With temps, you’ve got timesheets and payment, booking sheets with every person’s name on it, reference checking, right to work checks, and payroll. I would go on site every Monday and collect all the timesheets.
Jo: I kept that contract until I got married. My husband at the time was living in Leicester, so I was moving to Leicester. I told the agency.
Jo: They said, “We’ve just bought an agency in Nottingham. Can you manage it?” I said, “How far is Nottingham from Leicester?” They said, “45 minutes.” I said, “Yes.”
Jo: It was the year Nottingham was one of the host cities for Euro 96, so it was exciting.
Jo: I had a great six months there, but we didn’t like Leicester. I missed the Wirral. I missed the coast.
Jo: I said I wanted to go back home. He agreed. So I rang the agency and said I was coming back to the Wirral. They said it was okay and they had a branch manager job in Chester that needed sorting out.
Jo: I went as branch manager and we recruited a whole new team. We went from the bottom of 35 branches to number one within two years. I got branch manager of the year.
Jo: We had an amazing team, made a ton of money, won loads of contracts, and delivered a brilliant service.
Then I was headhunted to go and work for Kelly Services. Six months in, it wasn’t what I expected, so I left and went to work for Adecco.
Jo: But because I was used to going out and winning business and servicing it, it was different at Adecco. They had national people winning business, so it would just get handed to you.
Jo: I wanted the thrill—the win, the success—and then account manage it with a team. If it’s handed to you, you don’t have that same relationship because they haven’t given their trust in you.
Jo: I left after about a year or so. I was doing amateur dramatics and shows and singing and dancing, and I thought, “I just want a nice steady job.”
Jo: So I went to work for a marketing company around the corner from my house. It was a call centre running a Pilkington Glass campaign. I was answering calls—dead easy job. Lovely company.
Jo: Then I went to work for Park Online in Birkenhead because they had an internal recruiter job coming up. But they said to do that job I had to do three months in the Vodafone call centre first, and the hours were 3:30 till 11:30 at night.
Jo: I asked if the recruiter job would be available in three months. They said yes, but I had to go internally. I said fine.
Jo: I did it for three months because I wanted that internal recruiter job. I went into the recruiter office every day asking if it had come up yet.
Jo: Then one day they said, “That job’s up.” I said, “Great.” I walked in, handed my CV over, and said, “When can I start?” They said, “Monday.”
Jo: So I did internal recruitment. Then the MD came down and tapped me on the shoulder and said he needed a PA too. I did both.
Jo: I said, “You don’t need a PA. You for like an hour a day.” I think I was there about two years.
Jo: Then Christine from Spring Personnel rang me. She said, “I’m branch manager Liverpool. I need an office manager. I know you don’t want to go back into sales, but I need these recruiters sorting out.”
Jo: She had a pile of QVC invoices backdated six months that they wouldn’t pay and she needed it sorting.
Jo: I said, “As long as I don’t have to pick up the phone and do sales, that’s fine.”
Jo: I was there about two years and then they made all the office managers redundant. That was redundancy.
Jo: I thought, “Right, I quite want to do recruitment again.” So I walked into an agency in Birkenhead called Step Recruitment and gave my CV in.
Jo: I’d never worked on the Wirral for a recruiter and I thought it would be nice working in my hometown.
Jo: The owner said, “You’ve got more experience than I’ve got and I’m the owner.” I said I didn’t care, I’d do whatever.
Jo: I was with her for three years and then she closed the business. She said, “Do you want the business?”
Jo: I said, “I couldn’t set up my own business.” She said, “Yes, you could.” I said, “No chance. None of my friends and family have got businesses. In my circle, we work, we retire, we die. That’s it. We don’t do risky stuff.”
Jo: Then I rang Kirsty Craig from the Business Connection and said I was available. I said I wanted to do permanent recruitment.
Jo: She asked how much I was invoicing. I said about £200k a year on my own. She said, “Come over. Let’s have a chat. Where do you want to sit in the office?”
Jo: I started working for Kirsty and it was great. Then she sold it after a year. I was gutted but understood her reasons.
Jo: It got sold again and again, and I took over an office in Liverpool. We won the Bosch Communications contract and ran that for a couple of years. Then Bosch asked us to go down to Worcester Bosch and recruit customer service staff.
Jo: We lost the Bosch contract to Adecco in agreement. There wasn’t anything we could do.
Jo: Jason said, “I want you to come back to Chester office. Bring one member of staff—we’re going to let everybody else go.” I said okay, but asked if I could have an office on the Wirral because I didn’t want all the travelling.
Jo: He wanted me in the office so recruiters could learn from me. I did it for a year.
Jo: In that time I joined BNI because I thought it was a great way of getting business. The BNI meeting was on the Wirral at Leasowe Castle Hotel.
Jo: I met loads of business owners. I was the only employee in a room full of business owners—35 members.
Jo: Every week they were saying to me, “Why have you not got your own business?” And I kept saying, “I don’t do that.”
Jo: After a year of them saying it, and my friends and family saying, “Stop talking about it. If you’re going to do it, just do it. You’ve got savings. Give it a go,” I said to Jason, “I’m actually going to go and start my own business.”
Jo: He was great. He said, “Close the door. Ask me anything about starting your own business. You’ll be locked out of all your clients for the next 12 months, but you’ll be okay. If you need me, give me a shout.”
Jo: As I was saying it, I was thinking, “Oh my god. You’ve said it now. You can’t go back.” I had nothing in place.
Jo: The next week I walked into BNI and it was now “Joanne Recruitment.” Everyone reacted. Jason had paid for my membership for the year, so he said I could keep my BNI membership.
Jo: I got loads of help from the members—free accountancy for the year, free call answering for a certain time, really good deals on the website. All the services in the room were free or very cheap for my first year.
Jo: I had £10,000 savings and thought if it went wrong I could always go back into recruitment.
Jo: I also knew that in a year’s time I had about £200k worth of business coming to me, but I couldn’t go after my old clients. I checked the legal side and didn’t touch it.
Jo: I had the date written on the front of my computer for when I could contact my old clients again.
Jo: I told BNI I needed new business. They brought me about £40k that first year, which was enough because it was only me in the business.
Jo: When that date came, my old clients came back and I needed staff and premises.
Jo: I thought I’d set up my own business and work part-time at about £60k a year, but it became a full-time business.I needed to be a grown-up and get staff and premises.
Jo: Wirral Chamber were amazing because they helped me source premises. And Alan Woods from Wood Squared put me in his reception area for the first year—gorgeous offices in Hamilton Square, prestigious address.
Jo: We were there for a year, then we got bigger. We went to seven staff and moved to The Galleries in Birkenhead.
Jo: We were there until COVID happened. We closed the office because it was on a yearly lease and we didn’t know when we’d go back. We sold all the furniture and everything.
Jo: We all worked from home. I put Claire and FA on furlough and I ran it myself for a year. Then when the business picked up again, I brought them back part-time then full-time.
Jo: We’ve stayed like that since. I asked them if they wanted to go back into an office. They said working from home would be great because they were all set up.
Jo: I found it hard because I’m a people person. I need to see people. I need the crack, I need the banter, I need fun and have a laugh.
Darren: Otherwise, I could imagine you going completely insane on your own.
Jo: In lockdown I thought, “How am I going to cope with this?” Luckily, we do insurance recruitment as well as other head office recruitment. Insurance keeps going.
Jo: We were lucky because insurance companies were still recruiting, which tied us over.
Jo: BNI and Wirral Chamber and a couple of other networks went online. I must have attended three or four networking meetings a day for the whole year—just to keep me sane.
Jo: Now I work out my diary so I’m out Monday, Tuesday and Thursday for networking, BNI, other things, and client meetings.
Jo: Wednesday and Friday I’m on the phone selling—cold calling, follow-ups, research, and a little bit of I have a couple of business coaches that help me with strategy.
Jo: If you looked at my diary during the week, you’d see how I do it because every hour is allotted with something for me to do. My diary tells me what I need to do and then I do it.
Jo: For example, on a Monday, if I’m not with clients, 11 till 1 is my two-hour networking power hour. That’s when I do referrals and introductions.
Jo: I generate referrals for my strategic referral partners, which in turn brings me business.
Jo: Then I have dedicated “JF sales” time—my team know not to interrupt me because I’m on the phone doing sales, research to sell, or looking at different areas we should be looking at.
Jo: I collaborate with about 500 recruiters across the UK and we all help each other. I can ring them and say, “You’ve done this—how have you done that?”
Jo: I also work with a network of about 15 HR consultants and we share business between us. That brings business and candidates.
Jo: We’ve got businesses looking to recruit and candidates looking for a job, and all we do is match them.
Darren: So you’re kind of like Tinder really, aren’t you?
Jo: We match for money.
Darren: From a candidate perspective, what advice do you have for candidates going into interviews?
Jo: We get about 400 CVs a day through all the places that we advertise. We pay Indeed for their services and use a couple of other places too.
Jo: We also use our networks—BNI, Chamber, our own Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok. We’ve got over 30,000 followers on our social medias.
Jo: We get referred to a lot, and we can’t help everybody because we haven’t got enough staff to have a conversation with every single person.
Jo: But it’s interesting that people still apply for a job, click a button, and wait, and then say nobody’s got back to them. Nobody rings.
Jo: Out of 400 CVs a day, we get about three or four phonecalls: “Have you got my CV? Can I have a chat?” That surprises me.
Jo: Years ago, when the Liverpool Echo advert came out on a Thursday with all the jobs in, it was jobs day. We used to stay late to answer the phone calls.
Jo: Now people don’t ring. So we’ve set up a webinar each week—every other Monday, every other Wednesday at lunchtime—for an hour and a quarter.
Jo: People can join via Eventbrite on Zoom, and they can be anonymous. If they’re in a job, there’s no danger of colleagues or line managers seeing. They don’t need to be on camera.
Jo: We run through: what job you want (especially if you want a career change), how to produce your CV, what to include and not include,how to present yourself, how to apply for jobs now, how to research businesses and interviewers.
Jo: It makes such a difference. It’s the difference between being interested in the company or just turning up because you just want a job.
Jo: One of our clients said a candidate we sent knew more about him than his wife did. He was impressed because the candidate so much research. He got the job.
Jo: For interviews: take your notebook with you, with questions to ask. Your mind can go blank, so having it written down helps. If I’m interviewing someone and they’re making notes, that is so impressive.
Jo: It’s the little things. If you’re going for an admin role, sales role, PA role—why aren’t you taking notes?
Jo: We also cover what to do after the interview, what to do if you get the job, and what to do when you start the job. It’s all very well getting the job, but you want to be the best employee they’ve ever seen.
Jo: What to put on a CV: have a paragraph at the top that says past, present, future—what you’ve done in the past, what you’re doing now, and why they should employ you. Tailor it for each job.
Jo: Make it easy to read. If someone’s getting 400 CVs a day like we do, it takes us seconds to go through each one.
Jo: You’ve got to stand out. Put a picture on it—a nice LinkedIn profile picture.
Jo: If you’re looking for a job, be on LinkedIn and have “open to work.”
Jo: If you’re on social media, ask your social media. I think people feel proud and don’t want to do it.
Jo: But your social media is full of your friends and family. If you’re not going to ask them for help, who are you going to ask?
Jo: I saw an example recently: a 17-year-old starting a car washing business posted saying where he lived, that his mum and dad would drive him, what times he could do it, and the rate. Within hours he had hundreds of responses—customers. Some people even said they’d give him the money without needing the car washed because they wanted to help.
Jo: When I was made redundant twice, the first thing I did was go on LinkedIn and say I’d just been made redundant and was available. My inbox was full of job offers.
Jo: What people think of me personally is none of my business. I care about my business, my reputation, and my team’s reputation of doing a great job.
Jo: What not to put on a CV: hobbies and interests can be interesting, but don’t put “go to the cinema,” “go to the gym,” “read a book.” That tells you nothing and doesn’t make you stand out.
Jo: Make it interesting—what you do daily, weekly, yearly. The latest book you read, the latest film you saw, what you do at the gym, whether you’re a powerlifter or into spin classes, road cycling, singing group, netball team, golf.
Jo: If you’ve got a nervous interviewer, they often go to hobbies and interests. If you’ve got something interesting there, you can put the interviewer at ease.
Jo: Football is a universal language. You just never know. We were in Lucca in Italy going up an escalator and someone shouted “Up the Toffees.”
Jo: Telephone interviews and Teams interviews are different to face-to-face. We’ve had awful Teams interviews—people angle the laptop so you only see the bottom of their face, or only the top of their head. Some don’t make eye contact at all. There’s nothing about them.
Jo: It’s a skill that’s massively lacking. Society has evolved—people want to email, never pick up the phone. We see entry level candidates dragged to the phone by parents.
Jo: We can only help people that want a job. We’re not going to force people into jobs.
Jo: I always say: practice, practice, practice. Practice on FaceTime, WhatsApp video, Zoom, Teams—practice with everybody.
Jo: You can Google interview questions you may get asked. We give people some interview questions to practice.
Jo: Rory McIlroy has a golf coach. Is he the best in the world? Yes. Does he practice? Yes. So if you’re going for interview, why wouldn’t you practice interviews?
Jo: We want to get our webinars on the website so people can buy them on demand.
Darren: You’re creating a lot of content. You could have a bank of and offer them as a bundle.
Jo: Yes. Hopefully within the first six months.
Jo: We want to offer it to clients on the other side too—how to recruit.
Jo: And there’s another one we want to do, but I’m not going to talk about it yet. I want to launch it. I know it’s needed and it would help an awful lot of people.
Darren: We are out of time now. Jo, thank you very much for being a guest on the podcast.
Jo: Thank you for having me.
Darren: I asked you one question at the start that went for about 35 minutes.
Jo: Fantastic. I expected no less.
Darren: I’ve loved it. Thank you very much.
Jo: Thank you very much.
More about Joanne:
Joanne Finnerty is the founder of JF Recruitment, a recruitment agency with a passion for matching businesses with the right talent. With over 30 years of experience in the recruitment industry, Jo has built a reputation for her consultative approach and commitment to helping people find the right roles and businesses find the best-fit employees. Starting her career in temping, she worked her way up to running her own recruitment business, offering expertise in permanent recruitment and a strong focus on cultural fit. Jo is driven by a desire to make a difference, having helped numerous individuals transition to new careers and businesses thrive through effective staffing solutions.
You can connect with Joanne here:
Website: https://jfrecruitment.co.uk/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannefinnerty/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoanneFinnertyRecruitment/?locale=en_GB
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joannefinnertyrecruitment/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joannefinnerty0
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
