Interim Sector: Why set up an interim desk? Balancing your portfolio to navigate the feast and famine of recruitment

Vanessa Collins

Chief Operating Officer, Joss Search

Vanessa has a passion for operational excellence with extensive experience which enables her to bring a rounded approach, she is known for her pragmatic and effective solutions that has supported organisations of all sizes, in the last 25 years she has worked across many areas of the recruitment industry; Executive Search, Interim Management, Contingent & Volume Recruitment, Recruitment Communications, Employer Branding, Creative & Digital Marketing, Media, and Assessment Services, where she has led teams, developed services and implemented solutions both internally for Recruitment businesses and for Private and Public Sector clients.

As a COO Vanessa’s remit covers; Service Development, Change Management, People & Culture, HR, Marketing, IT, Governance, Compliance and Legal, however developing the talent across the business still remains her favourite part of the job.

Prior to that Vanessa has an interesting background from being a Creative Director of an award-winning agency, Operations Director where she jointly ran a Recruitment Advertising Agency, Head of Sales for a large Full-Service Recruitment Agency and later running all the service areas as a Director reporting into Global Head office in Zurich.

Amy Morris

UK Managing Director, Oakleaf Partnership

Amy has spent 15 years at Oakleaf Partnership progressing from Consultant to her current role at UK Managing Director.

Amy starter her career within an international recruitment firm focusing on temporary resource across the commercial support sectors in Yorkshire. She moved to Oakleaf in 2008 to their newly opened office in Leeds where she stayed for two and a half years.

Having moved to London in 2011, she managed the growth of Oakleaf’s Commerce & Industry team and led the development of their interim business, also overseeing Regions and Reward & Analytics divisions before becoming Managing Director of Oakleaf Partnership’s UK business.

Creating similar opportunities for her colleagues is something that Amy is extremely passionate about. She has set up a Women in Leadership forum to continue to share experiences and solutions to challenges that can be faced by women in the recruitment and HR sectors, highlighted in her regular podcasts. Amy is also a member of Oakleaf’s ED&I focus group and sits of the board of Oakleaf Group.

Away from work, living in south west London means regular visits to both the Stoop and Twickenham are a must.