• You will hear a radio interview with Beth Hatfield, the Director of Jumpstart,

M: Welcome to Business Start-up. Our guest today is Beth Hatfield. Beth started her own recruitment agency of temporary marketing staff when she lost her own job some years ago. Thank you for coming, Beth.
F: Thank you, Michael. Nice to be hero.
M: A lot of people think it’s the end of work when they lose their jobs. Tell us what happened in your case...
F: Well, I was working for Fast Forward, a marketing services agency. It seemed very successful — you know, with a very impressive client list... but I had heard there were cash flow problems. There was some talk of a possible takeover to save the company, but this all came to nothing. Without any notice, we were all suddenly made redundant.
M: And how did you react?
F: Well, I didn’t think that there’d be any difficulty for me, or for the friends I’d worked with at the agency, in finding new jobs. My main concern was actually for one of the company’s main client, Dryden Limited.
M: The agricultural machinery company?
F: Yes, that’s right. I was running their big sales campaign for Eastern Europe, and the promotion still had another month to run. Now they’d be left without an agency, I felt very bad about that.
M: And it was because of this that you started up your own business?
F: Yes. I talked to them and offered to run the account from home. I already had a small PC and a fax machine and plenty of room to work in, but nothing suitable for running such a large campaign.
M: Did they invite you to work at their office?
F: I really wanted to work from home, so they gave me an up-to-date computer and a photocopier. And that was the beginning of Jumpstart, ray own agency. I soon had too much to do so I took on an assistant. She’s still with me.
M: What happened next?
F: A friend of mine, Thomas Beck, gave me some really useful advice. He’s a successful investment manager — I’ve known him for years.
M: What did he suggest?
F: Well, I had a lot of plans for Jumpstart, offering a whole range of marketing services. Thomas liked my ideas, but he thought I should focus on just one area.
M: And did you take his advice?
F: Yes, I decided to make Jumpstart a marketing recruitment agency, because I knew the business and had good contacts.
M: Was it easy getting started? How did you raise the money?
F: Well, I’d learnt an important lesson from my time at Fast Forward. They’d had to stop trading because of large bank loans. I didn’t want to make the same mistake with Jumpstart. I thought I might have to sell my house, but fortunately, somebody I’d worked with at Fast Forward was very interested in coming in with me as a partner and also had money to invest.
M: So how did Jumpstart find enough recruits to get started?
F: We planned to advertise in local newspapers because it was so cheap. But then decided that it wouldn’t reach the right people, so we placed ads in several specialist marketing magazines, expensive, but very effective — lots of enquiries. Nowadays, we advertise mainly on Internet, but not then, of course.
M: And what do you look for in a recruit? What is essential?
F: Well, even though the work is temporary, I’ve always felt that it’s very important to provide quality staff. Because of this, I don’t think it really matters if the recruit has a degree in marketing, for example, but I always insist on them having experience in the field. Location is never a problem though — I recruit staff of companies all over the country.
M: You make it sound easy. Weren’t there any problems?
F: It wasn’t difficult getting good recruits, though it took up a lot of time. What wasn’t easy at first was selling the idea of temporary marketing staff to possible clients. The real challenge, however, was negotiation rates that companies would see as value for money. They were quite used to going to an agency for temporary secretaries but not for other types of staff.
M: Well, your efforts really worked. Now, tell us what plans ...