Celebrating 10 years of Net Talent - Spotlight on Yvonne Moffat
Our founder and CEO Yvonne, opened the doors at Net Talent 10 years ago, and in celebration of our 10th anniversary, we chat to Yvonne about her experience in starting a new company, its challenges and what makes Net Talent stand out.
Hi Yvonne! Can you tell us about your career before Net Talent?
I started my career in the publishing industry in Scotland and spent 2 years in London, which was both rewarding and successful and I thoroughly enjoyed. I started my recruitment career with a Global IT recruitment company in 1999, and thereafter a Directorship role with a small IT recruitment company, at this point I really had a burning desire to shape and create my own culture. I wanted to be instrumental in creating a business for consultants to grow and where we could all share in its success.
Tell us about how you started Net Talent?
Starting a new company is both exciting and challenging not to mention risky but I was lucky to have such an incredible investor, John Hailstone, who believed in me and had the experience to support what I wanted to achieve in the early days.
Net Talent was formed in March 2010 and the story begins with a portfolio of extremely supportive and loyal clients which allowed Net Talent to be profitable very quickly.
We grew rapidly, and with the addition of Sales Director Derek Gibb in 2012, who is on our board and a shareholder, the company continued to go from strength to strength. Derek and I share the same goals and objectives for our business and work extremely well to ensure we continue to work in partnership with our staff, clients and candidates.
What have you learned over the past decade?
What I have personally learnt over the 10 years is nothing stays the same and you need to adapt and welcome change as part of growing and developing both yourself and others.
What challenges has Net Talent faced over the years?
The biggest external challenge we’ve faced recently, like many others, was the legislative changes to IR35. We started planning for this early – meaning that we were actually able to turn this change into an opportunity to deliver a greater service to our clients. We acted in a consultative role – sharing our knowledge with our clients to enable them to change the mindset of how to utilize the skills of off-payroll workers in a compliant way that had ongoing business benefits.
Internally, we had the unique challenge that we changed the structure of the business for the first time in 8 years. There was absolute transparency at every stage of the process, so that every person from the leadership team through to our newest recruit knew what we were doing, but more importantly – why.
What makes Net Talent different?
I think the differentiator for us is our partnership approach. We truly focus on treating people as individuals and ensuring that we build a relationship that means something. This is why, other than our newest client wins, we don’t have any companies in our history that we have only done one piece of business with. It’s also why we have worked with people both in the role of client and as candidate, and why we have helped some individuals on their career paths for 10 years.
Every person in our business shares this commitment, and everyone, including myself is a hands-on recruiter. Our partnerships are important to us and we need to be connected to people to make them thrive.
Thanks Yvonne – we can’t wait to see what the rest of our tenth year holds!
