Lily Shippen | Building a successful recruitment business, It’s not all about headcount and cold calls, sometimes it’s about shortbread!

On this episode, I’m joined by Lily Shippen from Lily Shippen - Secretarial and support recruitment. 

Lily started her journey at Robert Walters, gaining top biller status after being in the business for three years. After feeling burnt out and wanting a new goal, she made the decision to set up her own recruitment consultancy. 

I love Lily’s journey because it’s not like most founders’ that I’ve had on the podcast. Her first three years of business were tough, and there are a lot of key learnings here in particular for those who are considering setting up on their own.

For recruiters who are wanting to learn more about growing a business without managerial experience, this one is definitely for you.

For the junior consultants out there, this is an excellent podcast to learn about burnout and essentially spot the signs early on to ensure that you can be kinder to yourself when building a desk.

You can connect with Lily on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilyshippen/

Time Stamps:

How did Lily enter the world of recruitment? [2:18]

How did you come across recruitment? [5:52]

Working in a big business [8:04]

Who were you surrounded by?[10:00]

Billings [12:08]

Why did you start your own business? [15:46]

How do you structure your goals? [20:28]

First year in business [22:12]

What was your two year plan? [26:44]

Winning clients with biscuits [29:40]

How did you go about investing more in your website? [30:57]

In hindsight, how do you think you would start things differently?[34:38]

Switching off [41:10]

How do you sell your business? [44:47]

Year three [49:14]

Mentality of your business going in to year four [54:51]

Connecting with people and networking [58:41]

How easy is it to forget where you were? [1:02:03]

Best decisions in year four and psychometric testing [1:03:08]

How did you approach clients? [1:07:39]

How do you structure your day now? [1:09:28]

Piece of advice to someone starting their own rec business [1:14:53]

What are you excited about? [1:17:03]

Final advice to the people [1:18:43]

I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - Hishem Azzouz

If you would love me to cover certain topics with future guests please drop me a message. 

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