Where Are They Now: Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill, Co-Founder and CEO of Join Talent

Katrina Hutchinson started her recruiter insourcing business, Join Talent, from her sofa in 2019. Today, her agency works with some of the world’s biggest brands and employs 220 people around the globe. Hutchinson says that since featuring in The LDC Top 50 two years ago, there have been some challenging times.

In 2023, when the global economy stalled, many rivals chose to make redundancies, Instead, Hutchinson spent £2m protecting her people’s jobs until the market recovered. This has created a culture of absolute trust and respect, where people give their all – and the attrition rate is almost nil. “This year, we are back into hockey stick growth and we’re forecasting revenues of £15m, maybe more,” she says. “We have created a business that is infinitely scalable.”

What makes Join Talent unique?

Mine is the only female-led business in my sector, and the leadership team is also predominantly female. That brings a different approach to client interaction. We’re also all practitioners, this means we’ve been in our clients’ shoes and that’s our USP. We may be a disruptor brand, but we are also very grounded, grown-up, and committed to long-term partnerships that really deliver.

How do you manage a remote-first company? 

This is the way I structured the company from day one, so it’s been seamless. I would say that we communicate with one another more than colleagues in an office. It’s easy to confuse proximity with intimacy – we have to make the effort and it’s made us really close as a team.

How volatile is the recruitment industry? 

It’s the canary in the mine. We provide embedded recruitment support so if companies aren’t growing, demand falls. Many of our competitors are still in the doldrums of 2023 but we are setting up subsidiaries in new countries and we’ll be at 400 people in two years. The business is massively scalable, and we are on a journey to world domination.