Yahoo Finance My first boss: Simon Swan, CEO of Hiring Hub, the 'Robin Hood' of recruitment
The people who helped shape business leaders
Simon Swan is the founder and CEO of Manchester-based recruiter marketplace Hiring Hub, which connects employers with top-rated recruitment agencies to help them find the very best candidates.
Described as the ‘Robin Hood’ of recruitment, Hiring Hub is forecast to make £3m in 2023, with Swan overseeing a team of 24 which has doubled in the last year.
My dad was a fireman and mum a doctor’s receptionist and so if I wanted the latest pair of football boots I had to save up.
I had three paper rounds by the time I was 12 and started an apprenticeship in engineering at 15 when I left school, partly because I wanted security and money was a route to that. It gave me an entrance into the world of work.
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I also wanted to fund my hobby of motorcycle racing. I was never going to be professional and so the next best thing was to review them for magazines. I had no background in journalism but sent off articles I had done to every editor in the UK.
I wrote a similar letter to Ken Wootton, the editor of Melbourne-based Australian Motorcycle News, who wrote back offering work experience. I purchased a one-way ticket to Australia and met Ken at a MotoGP race.
I had to put all the back issues in order on my first day and by the end of the week Ken decided to pay me a small wage. He quickly let me test bikes, got me on to the news desk and let me start writing features.
As a business leader now, I look back at the way Ken let me make mistakes, his work ethic and the way he coached me. He also gave me freedom to learn and I never saw it as a negative when he told me something was wrong.
It was a small team in 2000 but a highly productive, high-performing team producing Australia’s leading motorcycle magazine, a bi-weekly which celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2021.
During my time there, Ken kept testing me to see if I would step up. Culturally, you couldn't fail at that business. He worked long hours and on deadline day you could be working until 2am. It was like putting an orchestra together, with design, sales, advertising and editorial - we all had to get it across the line.
Some 18 months later I left Australia as an experienced journalist and got offers with three bike mags back in the UK. I was an editor at one publication needing to hire a deputy and so I contacted a recruitment agency which didn’t deliver. I found a boutique agency that did come up trumps and it left an impression on me that specialist firms were where it was at.
A few years later I left publishing and saw the industry from the other side. It was around the time of the emergence of Skyscanner, booking.com and Moneysupermarket and I saw an opening for getting all the independent and boutique recruiters onto one platform in the same way those sites did.
Hiring Hub is like a Tripadvisor for recruitment agencies. We are a marketplace connecting employers to a network of specialists across the UK and Europe. It’s built on a single platform which encourages trust and transparency.
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I’m on a bit of a mission to democratise the industry. We see ourselves as the ‘Robin Hood’ of recruitment as the big agencies are slow and rigid and I want to redistribute those jobs to our small independent recruiters, who care more for the clients as they own their own businesses.
The number of independent boutiques over the last decade has grown to around 20,000 with fewer than 10 employees. The barriers to entry are low and you can find candidates on LinkedIn and the digital revolution has been a catalyst for fragmentation in the industry.
Ken died a few years ago and when I first tried to be as effective a leader as he was, I had to really work at it. For him, it came naturally.
I don’t have many regrets in life but I would have loved to have thanked Ken before he died. I know he would have been proud of where I am. If someone has had an impact on you personally, an old boss or teacher, it’s definitely worth making contact to say thank you. Just imagine receiving that – it would make your day.
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