Ep.16 Building, Scaling and Selling in Recruitment - Alison Humphries, Recruitment Leadership

Today we talk with Alison about her remarkable four decade career in recruitment, starting at what became Hays in 1985 and rising to run her own office at 21 and her own company at 22. We cover what it was like to be part of Hays from the very beginning, the lessons she took from working across every model in recruitment from contingency to statement of works and master service providers, and what it really takes to build a recruitment business worth selling versus just being a great recruiter. We also dig into where she sees the biggest opportunities in the market today, why she believes the CRM is the most underused asset in most recruitment businesses, and how agentic AI is finally starting to deliver real return on investment for those willing to embrace it.