Best of Bradford
Jane Vincent is living proof hard work does pay by running successful businesses and giving something back to her hometown.
When Jane, from Bradford, was at school she had her life all planned out. She had been offered a place at Trinity and All Saints to study for a degree in Media Studies as she wanted to be a camera woman. However, one week before her A Levels Jane changed her mind.
Her mum sent her off to do a typing course in Leeds and after a crash course she came out with a super typing speed typing of 35 words per minute! The typing school sent Jane off to a Recruitment Agency in Leeds where she was offered her first job and Jane fell into this job like a duck to water and realised she was very good at it.
She then joined the police force but decided that she liked recruitment and went to work in Bradford for entrepreneur Larry Gould who had a company called Link up.
Jane said: “He was a brilliant mentor and I learnt a great deal from him and worked my way up through the company. At the end of 1996 he sold the company to a big PLC for millions and I took a few steps back and thought, what do I really want to do?”
Jane knew she was good at recruitment so decided with some financial backing to set herself up and start her own business and in July 1997 Horizon Recruitment opened its doors in Bradford.
With just three staff their business plan was to dominate Bradford and it just grew and grew and they opened 15 branches throughout Yorkshire, London and even Poland. Their turnover went from 0 to 28 million with 86 staff. They won Best UK’s agency, Best Regional Recruitment firm twice. Jane also won various awards including Cosmopolitan Business Woman of the Year.
Along the way there were many challenges – in the first week of trading, the day before she opened her new business, Jane’s father, aged 52, died from a major heart attack. In the same week Jane found out her husband was having an affair and a few days later, a man came into her offices and asked for “Jane Vincent”, Jane introduced herself then be handed an envelope… It was an injunction to shut her down!
In 2002 Jane attended a course run by Common Purpose which made her change the way she did business. She has a always believed “you reap what you sow” and decided that she wanted to give something back to her local community.
She agreed to give her staff up to half a day a week off to do something that would impact on the local community – such as collections for the homeless, providing free suits to people who couldn’t afford them, running cultural sessions within schools to educate on different cultures, parties for disadvantaged children and reading to children in school to name just a few.
In the middle of all this hard work Jane adopted her little girl Lizzy Lou at the age of one year. Lizzy is now seven and a mini Jane!
The way Jane changed her business to give back meant it totally changed the dynamics of her organization. People rang her for jobs to work for her. She won business based on her Corporate Social Responsibility strategy and kept the staff who worked for her. It was totally unique within the industry.
In December 2008 Jane sold her business shares to another organization within the group. As she intended to have some time off and adopt another child. Jane was due to be paid a lump sum then monthly for a year, however, due to a legal blip, they never paid her, so she handed over her business, staff and contracts for no return.
Jane was obviously not prepared to accept this and represented herself in court and won, this was then appealed and it went to High Court in London a year later. Jane again represented herself and was delighted she won!
In October 2009 Jane decided to open a new boutique recruitment agency called Candelisa People. She went back to her old business and took her best staff and at the height of a recession started from scratch with offices in Bradford.
n June 2010 Candelisa won a national award for the “Best Small Recruitment Firm” in the UK and has since won awards for “Outstanding Contribution to Bradford” “ Outstanding Contribution to ”Education” and Jane has won “Business Woman of the Year”.
Jane’s new business is run around its four core values
- Community
- Education
- People
- Environment
Everything that the business does ensures it has a positive impact on one of these values.
Last year Jane, who is passionate about Bradford, heard some negative criticism of the town on the radio. She joined forces with Saleem Kader who is MD of Bombay Stores to start Positive Bradford to showcase all the things that go on in and around the district.
Now more than 458 organisations, schools and community groups are involved and schools are having positive Bradford Days or weeks, empty shop fronts are being dressed with children’s art work and many events are taking place showing Bradford’s multi cultural diversity and celebrating everything that is positive.
