Most recruitment leaders struggle with one thing: inconsistent performance.

Some recruiters smash targets. Others barely bill enough to cover costs.

After hundreds of conversations with founders on The Recruitment Mentors Podcast (80,000+ monthly listeners), I noticed one pattern:

The best leaders don’t just hire great recruiters, they build them.

That’s why I founded Hector: The all-in-one training platform for recruitment agencies with 10+ consultants who want predictable, consistent billings.

With 120+ courses from today’s top billers and hands-on implementation support, Hector helps teams:

Build consistent habits that drive billings

Develop recruiter skills that actually fit today’s market

Create a culture of accountability and high performance

If you lead a growing recruitment team and want to eliminate inconsistency,

👉🏻 Visit https://thisishector.com/ or drop me a DM to learn more.

Hishem Azzouz

Diversity in Recruitment

We believe EVERYBODY has a right to a fulfilling and successful career. Our vision is to make recruitment processes accessible to EVERYONE and to create an environment where every person is welcome and has the equal opportunity to secure great work. 

We help recruitment businesses and internal recruitment teams get to grips with diversity and inclusion. Through advice and training we give recruiters the insight, tools and confidence to attract underrepresented talent, recruit inclusively, secure better business and confidently partner with their clients & internal hiring managers.

Check out my podcast appearances below to get a feel for my style and vibe.

Founder

Inclusive Recruitment Foundations

I co-run Inclusive Recruitment Foundations DEI eLearning alongside Diversity in Recruitment. 

Our second DE&I business venture, Inclusive Recruitment Foundations, is the sister company to Diversity in Recruitment and Balance. IRF is an eLearning platform designed exclusively to support recruiters and hiring managers in businesses committed to inclusive, accessible, and equitable hiring. It complements, not replaces, the work we do with leadership teams and senior recruiters through our independent businesses and enables us to reach larger populations.

Co-Founder

Flexa

As a HUGE advocate of flexible working, I am very proud that Diversity in Recruitment is Partnering with Flexa to help companies be recognised as inclusive employers of choice.

Flexa Ambassador

Recite Me

I am passionate about breaking down the barriers candidates face when accessing recruitment processes. We can all play our part and work together to make the online world a more inclusive place; that's why I am a proud ambassador of Recite Me.

Recrite Me Ambassador

Powered By Diversity

Associate trainer with Powered by Diversity and proud to be part of their flagship Ambassador Certification programme. I also integrate their DE&I Health Check tool in my work, which is invaluable for data collection and diagnostics.

Associate Trainer and Ambassdor

APSCo

As Head of External Relations, I led the creation, development and launch of APSCo member-focused Diversity and Inclusion Agenda - APSCo Embrace.
 
The Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) was formed to give all firms involved in the recruitment of professional talent that have a commitment to excellence, the specialist support and distinctive voice they need to be successful. It gives candidates and employers a trusted badge of quality whilst providing member firms with an innovative range of services designed for them by recruitment experts.

Head of External Relations & D&I Strategy Co-ordinator 

The SR Group

Having originally joined the Frazer Jones HR Recruitment brand to develop their Third Sector recruitment business, I took an internal role off desk and joined The SR Group's People & Development Team, my fabulous dual role saw me delivering and developing their bespoke global in-house Recruitment Sales Training Programmes and leading the group Social Purpose/CSR agenda and the development of the Diversity and inclusion agenda across the group and its brands.

Internal Learning & Development Consultant, Social Purpose & DE&I Lead

Eden Brown

Specialist recruitment of permanent and interim highly specialist roles across range a of corporate functions from junior through to Director/CEO level in London and across the UK

Recruitment Team Manager

Career Teachers

London based boutique Education Recruitment consultancy

Primary Education Senior Recruitment Consultant

TPP Not for Profit

Specialist recruitment & placement of professional Fundraisers with UK Charities, based in London

Senior Recruitment Consultant 

Helping agency recruiters, internal recruiters & hiring managers get to grips with Diversity, Equity & Inclusion through training, eLearning and advisory services.

With over two decades in the recruitment and TA space, I improve recruiters' and hiring managers' performance and results through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training, e-learning, audits and advisory services. 

Recruitment Agencies 🚀🚀🚀

❓ Are you feeling the pressure from your clients to deliver more diverse shortlists
❓ Have you recently lost a pitch or bid because you failed to showcase your DE&I capability
❓ Do you need to differentiate yourself from competitors and build out your client services
❓ Is your focus on improving how you recruit, building candidate networks & making more placements
❓ Would you like some help navigating conversations with your clients around DE&I
❓ Are you committed to improving the candidate experience & becoming an agency people trust

Employers 🚀🚀🚀

❓ Need help to connect your DE&I strategy to hiring and talent attraction
❓ Don’t know where to start with auditing recruitment processes for inclusion, equity and accessibility
❓ Struggling to upskill your recruitment team and hiring manager populations in inclusive recruitment
❓ Current agency, PSL, MSP, or RPO failing to deliver diverse and engaged candidates in their shortlists
❓ Does your Employee Value Proposition and TA activity fail to attract underrepresented candidates 
❓ Are you committed to improving the candidate experience & becoming an employer people trust

I can help…

✔ Provide training, audits, advice and guidance that makes sense to recruiters and hiring managers
✔ Stop you losing great talent from clunky, overly complex, inaccessible recruitment lifecycles
✔ Enhance the performance of recruitment marketing and increase advert response significantly 
✔ Improve shortlisting pools, increase CV-to-interview ratios, help recruiters make more placements
✔ Develop winning pitches, proposals, and retained propositions 
✔ Increase the hiring capability of everyone involved in your recruitment processes
✔ Audit and select talent suppliers with the proper credentials to build high-performing, diverse teams
✔ Improve the candidate experience significantly, building your EVP, agency or company brand
✔ Get the business out of the hiring habits holding back your organisation and its potential. 


If you want a commercial and human approach from someone who understands recruitment and DE&I let's talk at jo@diversityinrecruitment.com or call me 0330 1743200.

Jo Major (She/her)

When I announced my semi-retirement from the recruitment agency world last week, it was met with utter shock.
 
My phone didn’t stop ringing. 

Recruitment business owners everywhere were devastated by the news of my withdrawal.
 
Only joking, my phone didn’t make a peep.
 
I’m guessing you all just missed the post, LOL.
 
Jokes aside, I put it out there to hold myself accountable. I’m serious about moving deeper into the employer space, working more closely with Talent Acquisition teams, internal recruitment functions, and hiring managers.
 
A huge part of that next chapter is ramping up my work around skills-based hiring, hiring manager training, and practical TA support for employers who want to hire better, fairer, and more confidently.
 
And yes, less than a week later, here I am at an agency event.
 
But this is no ordinary agency. This is OA Recruitment Solutions  
 
Led by the brilliant Laura Clark 🚀  
and packed with the kind of people and values that remind you why some businesses in this space will always matter.
 
For businesses like OA, I’m not going anywhere. These are my people. I’m proud to support them, alongside a number of other standout leaders and recruitment businesses I’ll always have time for and align with.
 
Thank you for an amazing event. It was brilliant to hear from your HR network about the things that actually matter, and the real future of hiring, HR, and recruitment.

Alexandra Aileru and Hannah Coley you insights were just brilliant thank you🙏🏻 

Big love Team OA!!

#MyPeople #EpicBusiness #TrueLeadership

Jo Major

I train & support TA teams, recruiters, and hiring managers to build skills-based, fair, inclusive, and accessible hiring practices that reduce bias and improve hiring results, candidate experience, and decision-making.

No alternative text description for this image

International Women’s Day is coming, and I’m going to say this out loud.
 
If we don’t offer hybrid, real flexibility, part-time senior roles, or job share, we should cancel our IWD plans right now.

And I mean right now - to save the embarrassment, quit the performance, because it is all nonsense if you don't fix the one structural barrier that directly stops women progressing and showing up at work. 

Why? 

🤮 Cupcakes, afternoon tea & fizz don’t fix careers
🤮 Panels at fancy corporate events don’t fix progression
🤮 Celebrating women means nothing if the working model forces women to downshift, step back, or leave.

Five days in the office has flick all to do with so-called culture, it's a blatant leadership filter IMO

If we want more women in senior roles, we need to redesign senior work, not get marketing to 'just do something' on the 8th March. 

As you can tell, I really held back in my latest newsletter 🤣

#FixTheSystem #MarketingRollocks

International Women’s Day is coming - eyes roll! OMG, I hate this stuff with a passion. The LinkedIn posts, the panels, the cupcakes, the afternoon te

Open article: The Woke Recruiter: We should cancel our IWD plans right now, if we don’t offer hybrid and flexible working! by Jo Major • 4 min read

The Woke Recruiter: We should cancel our IWD plans right now, if we don’t offer hybrid and flexible working!

Should you mix friendship and business, or is it a big mistake?

I’m asking because of this one, me and Melanie Mills 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

Mel and I first met in retail at Harvey Nichols in the late 90s.

After a few years of big nights out and making the kind of chaotic decisions you only make in your twenties, we took two very different routes.

Then disappeared from each other’s day-to-day for about five years, until we randomly bumped into each other in Covent Garden. And from there it was full life mode, weddings, babies, funerals, career twists, everything.

Fast forward again, and our careers couldn’t have looked more different.

Mel’s been flying in the corporate finance world, and I’ve been head down building my own business.

And if I’m honest, it diluted things for a while, not because we didn’t care about each other but because life, I guess, got in the way. 

Also, running a business and holding a big corporate role can feel like two different planets, with different pressures and different types of tired.

But recently things shifted.

Mel made some changes, started doing some incredible stuff, and set up her own business Connexion Career Collective, and I’ve been able to support her, especially around community, because that’s genuinely my happy place.

Now we talk and see each other every week. 

We’ve just spent a gorgeous weekend together in the Cambridge countryside.

And I can feel the difference; it's brought back proper quality time, and weirdly, it’s helped us understand each other more than we have in years.

So, I’m curious…

Mixing friendship and business, yes or no?

Do you get enough time with your closest friends?

Have you ever collaborated with a friend just to create more space to actually be mates?

Have you ever had a friendship drift because of work, time, or just different worlds?

#WeLookLikeProperGrownUps #FriendshipsAndWork #WomenInBusiness

This will be my last ever Agency Expo.

The last time I’ll take to the stage, five years after starting Diversity in Recruitment, and fittingly, right where it all began, when Louise Triance ⭐️ offered me my very first speaking gig. I started big, LOL.

Over the last five years, I’ve had the privilege of working with what I genuinely believe are best-in-class agencies, the ones that don’t stand still. They care, and they’re commercial in equal measure. Innovators. Disruptors. People who are brave enough to do things differently, a bit like me.

But here's the honest bit...

I’m a bit exhausted right now.

It’s been hard, at times, trying to get parts of the industry to treat things like candidate experience, recruitment law, inclusive process design, strategic client support, modern BD, and bias control as non-negotiables, not nice extras. 

And then there’s the basics: interviewing properly, seeing the whole candidate, and running a process that’s consistent, fair, and actually controlled, the stuff that improves outcomes for everyone, including commercial outcomes.

What’s surprised me most is that I’m still seen as a nice-to-have when times are good, as if inclusive, fair, and accessible hiring matters only when people are watching or when it’s convenient to be seen doing the right thing.

And after 1,825 days, give or take, I’m feeling ready to put my energy where it can create the most change and where it’s properly valued.

This isn’t me slamming an industry I love. It’s me being honest about what I need next.

I’ll absolutely STILL work with recruitment businesses who want to do this work properly and strategically, and who are committed to improving their services and candidate experience in a meaningful way.

If that's you, you know where I am, right! 

However, it’s time to commit more of me to the employer space, to lean into my HR, TA, and hiring manager networks, and to fully commit to that journey, because that’s where the real leverage sits, the decision making, the budgets, and the ability to improve the experience at scale, with people who have the appetite to listen, learn, and do things differently.

Same mission, new focus - I’m proud of what I’ve built here, and I’m ready for the next chapter.

See you at the Expo.

Big LOVE 💜

#Evolving #SelfAppreciation #ZeroComfortZone

I am speaking at a women’s event today, and I’m not bringing polished, palatable bullshi💩

The title of my talk is…why I won’t be giving any more f🦆cks to gain.

It’s a different vibe for me, topic-wise, because this one is about my story. Not man-bashing, system-smashing but how I became a product of my environment. 

Its about a time when I picked up three books, Fix the System, Not the Women by Laura Bates, The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Sieghart, and Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez and I experienced a huge perspective shift. 

Those books were my education.

They gave language to things I’d felt for years but couldn’t always explain. 

They helped me understand the moves I’d made throughout my life, the compromises, the shrinking, the proving, the constant calculation, and why my head and heart hurt all the god damn time.

So no, this isn’t a talk about being nicer, softer, quieter, or more grateful.

It’s about what happens when women finally realise they were never the problem to fix.

Thanks Jade Brar-Haase MBA  for giving me space and for not buying into the BS of IWD.  

#FixUp

A third of Gen Z men think a wife should obey her husband.

We keep telling ourselves that younger generations will naturally fix sexism, bias, and outdated attitudes at work.

This research suggests otherwise.

According to new research from King’s College London, nearly a third of Gen Z men agree that a wife should obey her husband.

That should worry all of us 😯

Because these attitudes do not stay at home, they show up in interviews, hiring decisions, and management behaviour - globally. 

This week’s newsletter is about the dangerous myth that progress just happens on its own, a lie I've been supporting. 

And why recruitment and workplace culture need to stop assuming that younger means more inclusive.

Give it a read, share your thoughts...

#BeyondShocked #FutureofWork #TellingMyselfBigFatLies

Warning: this is a tough read! I’ve been telling myself and others a comforting lie for years: “Don’t worry, Gen Z are going to sort all this inequali

Open article: The Woke Recruiter: Gen Z, sexism, and the lie of automatic progress by Jo Major • 5 min read

The Woke Recruiter: Gen Z, sexism, and the lie of automatic progress

I recorded this podcast with Luke Pitkin and Andy Sturgess from Giig Hire, it was epic. 

Doing stuff like this is pure joy, I bloody love it! 

We got into all things diversity, inclusion, recruitment culture, the mistakes I’ve made, and the stuff I wish someone had told me years ago, before I was out there confidently doing things that were… let’s call it wildly unhelpful.

If you’re someone who hears D&I and immediately thinks, oh god, here comes a preachy lecture from an ivory tower, this is not me, apparently, according to Luck and Andy, I break the mould - I'll take that 💜

We spoke really openly about the mistakes I've made in the past. judging staff on their clothes, forcing them to wear heels, and how I've patched my mistakes in later life.

Also, yes, I turned up with matching T-shirts for them.

A few bits we covered that you might enjoy...

🎤 My biggest regrets from my early leadership days
🎤 Why I  proudly use “Woke AF
🎤 Why I hate the whole “pale, male & stale” debate, 
🎤 Why I’m not here for alienating white men if we actually want progress
🎤 Why double fees for 'diverse' candidates can drift into illegal territory
🎤 Where women go from top biller to part-time problem overnight

And, because it wouldn’t be a proper episode without it, we got into some properly embarrassing stories.

Links in the comment, and if any of these topics hit a nerve, you’ll probably enjoy the full episode.

Thanks lads, you are just brilliant and I get why folks love you so much! 

#IGetToDoThis #BrilliantHumans

Most recruitment processes have not really been designed.

They have sort of just happened. 

The majority of them look absolutely fine on the surface, but get into the weeds, some are full of gaps and risks. 

I don't think this has anything to do with competence. I find it's usually down to fast growth and things evolving over time with no guardrails or rigour.

You get a melting pot of different hiring managers, habits, processes, and different versions of what good may look like, not a whole heap of structure and a big old stack of instincts and guts. 

It doesn't take much company growth for hiring to start feeling inconsistent, hard to defend, not very inclusive, and miles away from being genuinely skills-based. 

This is the stuff I love to work on.

I’ve created a six-week 1:1 programme for TA and recruitment leads in which we properly go through the recruitment process, pull it apart, identify where the issues are, and work out what needs to change.

It is part audit, part advisory, part training.

VERY AFFORABLE, super practical, very honest and really, really enjoyable. 

Everyone who’s been through this programme has come away from working with me feeling more confident, more aware, and much clearer on what to do next.

Comment RESET of message me if you'd like to know more.

#ThisStuffWork #MeinYourCorner #ConfidenceBuilder

The Inclusive Recruitment Reset

Six weeks, one recruitment process, and a much clearer plan for hiring.

When Sarah first came to me, she didn’t need theory-based inclusive recruitment training. 

She needed practical, expert support to review her recruitment process step by step and work out what needed to change to make it more inclusive, accessible, and equitable.

So that’s what we did.

Over six weeks, we worked one-to-one through her full recruitment journey, combining advisory support, live training and on-demand learning.

We looked at:

🔎 Recruitment strategy
🔎 Accessibility and legal responsibilities,
🔎 EVP & employer brand
🔎 Job adverts & candidate packs
🔎 Job descriptions - creation & communication 
🔎 Shortlisting
🔎 Skills-based interviewing
🔎 Defensible selection decisions,
🔎 The wider candidate experience.

We audited what was there, identified gaps, explored risk, looked at what good could look like, and built recommendations Sarah could actually use.

Sarah was already brilliant, but now she has a much clearer strategic plan for the year ahead, more confidence in where recruitment needs to improve, and a stronger foundation for building a hiring process that is fairer, more inclusive, and more effective.

This is exactly why I’ve turned this into a core offer.

A six-week, one-to-one audit, advisory and training programme for recruitment and TA leads who want more than surface-level inclusion work, and want expert support to review, challenge and improve the whole recruitment process.

Inclusive recruitment will never be just one workshop, because it's a whole ecosystem.

If you’re leading recruitment in an SME, growing business, or scaling team and want to get this right, let’s talk 💬

#Partnership #GrowingTogether #MeInYourCorner

"The system said so" won’t hold up in a tribunal ⚖️⚖️⚖️

AI can supercharge hiring, but it can also undermine fairness.

If you scroll my feed, you’ll see I’m a big advocate of AI in recruitment.

These days, it’s woven into all my training as a practical tool.

I show recruiters and hiring managers how to use it to support things like interview prep, question design, weighting and scoring inclusive job descriptions and adverts, structured assessment - the impact and improvements are massive!

But beyond the hype, we’ve got to be honest about the other side.

AI doesn't totally remove subjectivity, human preference and bias. In fact, it can amplify and bake it in. 
 
The one thing I am seeing is a total lack of governance in AI and recruitment, too many people just don't get 'ethical AI'

I genuinely think being able to evidence governance of fair, inclusive AI is about to become non-negotiable, especially when discrimination claims, unfair dismissal, and litigation are on the table.

Soon, we won’t just need to say our AI is fair, we’ll need to prove it

So today, I’m going live with Sally Spicer and Jen Davidson for a proper conversation about how we use AI in recruitment without letting it undermine inclusion, fairness, and trust.

Come and join us, bring your questions!

#EthicsMatter #CanYouEvidenceGovernence

Inclusion & Inclusive Recruitment Expert | Retained Executive Search | Equity Built into Hiring | Gender Equity Strategist | Keynote Speaker – Inclusion as a Strategy

Jo Major (She/her) and I are back for the next episode of our #LinkedinLive series tomorrow, joined by the incredible Jen Davidson

I think we can all agree AI is already shaping how organisations hire - but the conversation is stuck at the extremes.

Either it’s sold as the solution to bias, or dismissed as a risk to be avoided.
Neither is particularly helpful.

This session cuts through the noise to explore when AI genuinely improves inclusion - and when it quietly undermines it.

We’ll look at:
Where AI can reduce subjectivity and widen access in hiring
How bias gets baked in through data, design and decision-making
Why efficiency often ends up trumping fairness
What good human judgement looks like when AI is in the mix
Why governance matters more than the tools themselves

This isn’t about vendors, shiny tech or ticking a DEI box.

It’s about accountability, capability and using AI with intent.

If you’re a leader responsible for hiring outcomes - not just processes - this is a conversation you need to be part of.

Hop on my page at 12:00 GMT, Tuesday 3rd March to be part of the discussion.

Raj Jones Chartered FCIPD, Jo Major and 5 other attendees

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Jo Major (She/her)

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