48 | Acquisition International, Influential Businesswoman Awards 2024 May24679 Talent Acquisition CEO of the Year 2024 (Scotland): Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill Join Talent oin Talent’s comprehensive, white label solutions offer clients the fastest access on the market to embedded hiring support - putting highly skilled recruiters coupled with proprietary AIpowered technology inside their clients firms. Since its inception, the company has remained steadfast in its mission to become the world’s most trusted, high-quality talent solutions partner, displacing traditional models with its high-value alternative. With its unrivalled expertise in modern talent acquisition and implementation of state-of-the-art technologies, Join Talent is uniquely positioned to provide the expert help clients need to scale and succeed. Join Talent is a UK-based company with a footprint spanning 21 countries. Its remote-first approach allows the company to support clients on a global scale and match their unique requirements. With their c-suite themselves having been leaders in some of the world’s largest inhouse recruitment teams, Join Talent understands the importance of acquiring and retaining talent. Its dramatic growth is testament to Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill’s strategic vision and Join Talent’s highly skilled leadership team. Driven by its client-centric approach, the team strives to pursue talent acquisition excellence for leading brands around the world. With nearly two decades of experience in organisation management, operations, and talent acquisition behind her, Katrina HutchinsonO’Neill established Join Talent as a bootstrapped enterprise at her kitchen table, building her future forward enterprise from the ground up. Over the last six years, Join Talent has been recognised in the top 20 of the Financial Times 1000 European ‘fast growth’ index, number 1 in 2023 in the Time ‘fastest growth UK’ companies list, and been awarded the King’s Award for Enterprise by His Majesty King Charles in 2023. With its impressive growth and high-quality offerings, Join Talent is well on its way to becoming the world’s most trusted partner for embedded hiring support. Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill shares, “Since I started my career, I have witnessed a range of changes in the corporate and start-up worlds regarding women’s roles and treatment. However, these changes have not always been for the better, and many challenges persist. The networking over beer-in-a-bar culture of the 1970s is, unbelievably, still a thing for some men in our sector. They don’t even attempt to hide it, it’s almost worn as a badge of honour! “However, I have found immense support and upliftment from male allies and also from female business leaders and entrepreneurs. These communities are incredibly empowering, and I adore being part of them. Despite the significant progress we need to make, I believe we can achieve real traction by focusing on initiatives like “Buying Women Built.” By actively working with female-owned and led vendors and partners, we can address inequalities across all sectors and make meaningful changes.” Katrina founded Join Talent with a fantastic idea for a product offering and took a financial gamble in the hope of long-term stability for her young family. Having worked hard for many years to climb the corporate ladder, Katrina understood the risk she was taking and has encountered many highs and lows on the journey to building Join Talent. Between credit cards and payday loans to help early days cashflow, she established her business and adopted the mantra of ‘when the going gets hard, we go harder’. Today, Join Talent employs nearly 250 people across 21 countries and has ambitions to double in size over the next two years. Katrina set up the company initially as a 100% remote business, offering competitive wages to talented individuals around the world, although today it is also common for clients to need on-site support and that is also offered. By providing her team with the security and stability for their families that she sought for herself, Katrina has created a high-performance culture that offers unparalleled value to its esteemed customers. Under Katrina’s influential direction and the team’s unwavering support, Join Talent has become the hyper-scaling business it is today built on pillars of advanced technology, agility, reach, and outstanding value. Its ambition is to pass $100m turnover by 2026 and with its client-centric approach and impressive reach, the future looks bright for Join Talent. In celebration of Katrina’s inspirational leadership, we are pleased to honour her at our awards as Talent Acquisition CEO of the Year 2024 (Scotland). Contact: Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill Company: Join Talent Web Address: https://jointalent.net/ Established in 2018, Join Talent provides high-calibre talent acquisition support in combination with its proprietary AI recruitment platform that maximises reach and impact. Today, Join Talent is the chosen partner of many reputable companies from Fortune 500 organisations to leading startups. Recognised in this year’s Influential Businesswoman Awards, we speak to CEO Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill about her leading role in Join Talent’s spectacular growth. J
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