Julie Bishop: Leadership, Social Recruiting & Personal Branding in Business | Be Yourself Podcast

Be Yourself Podcast

JulieBishop

UK entrepreneur who built the social recruiting movement and founded JobHop.co.uk — on leadership, hiring, personal branding, and why marketing yourself is non-negotiable regardless of what you do

Leadership · Hiring · Social Recruiting · Personal Branding

Watch on YouTube JobHop.co.uk

About This Episode

From Selling Cars to Building a Movement — What Real Business Experience Teaches You About Leadership and Hiring

Most people talk about leadership as a concept. Julie Bishop has lived it across industries — from the high-pressure world of car sales to founding JobHop.co.uk and creating the social recruiting movement in the UK. That range of experience gives her a perspective on hiring and people that is impossible to fake and hard to find in a single conversation.

This episode covers the full spectrum: what leadership actually requires beyond titles and org charts, how hiring has changed in the age of social media and personal brand, and why the way you present yourself online and in person is now a professional skill that everyone needs — not just founders and marketers.

The thread running through everything is personal branding. Not as a vanity project or a LinkedIn strategy, but as the fundamental act of being clear about who you are and what you stand for — and having the courage to show that consistently. Whether you are a business owner, an employee, or someone figuring out their next move, this conversation will challenge how you think about visibility, credibility, and the way you market yourself to the world.

Leadership — What It Actually Means in the Real World

Beyond job titles and management theory — what effective leadership looks like from someone who has built and run businesses across very different industries.

Hiring and the Social Recruiting Revolution

How Julie helped change the way companies find talent, what social recruiting means in practice, and why the old model of hiring is no longer enough in a world where candidates have a voice too.

JobHop.co.uk — Building a Platform That Changes the Rules

The story and vision behind JobHop — a project that rethinks the relationship between job seekers and employers, and why Julie built it the way she did.

Personal Branding — Why It Is Not Optional Anymore

Why every professional needs a clear personal brand — not to be famous, but to be findable, credible, and competitive in a market where first impressions happen online before anyone picks up the phone.

Marketing Yourself — Regardless of What You Do

How to think about self-promotion as a professional skill rather than a personality trait — and practical ways to get started even if you have never thought of yourself as someone with a brand.

About the Guest

Julie Bishop — Entrepreneur, Founder of JobHop, Creator of the Social Recruiting Movement

Julie Bishop is a UK-based business professional whose career is defined by range. She has sold cars, built companies, and — most significantly — created the social recruiting movement that changed how organizations in the UK and beyond think about finding and attracting talent. That arc from frontline sales to industry-changing entrepreneurship is not accidental; it is the product of a person who treats every role as a learning environment and every challenge as a business problem worth solving.

Her platform, JobHop.co.uk, is the practical expression of her philosophy: that the relationship between employers and job seekers should be more transparent, more human, and more driven by fit than by the blunt instrument of a traditional CV process. JobHop puts control back in the hands of candidates while giving employers a smarter way to recruit.

Julie speaks about leadership, personal branding, and business with the directness of someone who has been in the room where things get done — not consulting from the outside, but building from the inside.

Who She Is

UK entrepreneur and business professional whose experience spans from selling cars to founding JobHop.co.uk and creating the social recruiting movement.

Her Project

JobHop.co.uk — a recruiting platform built on the idea that hiring should be transparent, human, and driven by genuine fit. One of the early pioneers of social recruiting in the UK.

Her Focus

Leadership, hiring strategy, personal branding, and the practical mechanics of marketing yourself at every stage of a career — from first job to building your own business.

Her Core Belief

Consistency over intensity. Keep showing up, keep giving value, and your audience — whether clients, candidates, or customers — will keep showing up too.

Key Quotes

consistency over intensity

Julie Bishop

it's not practice makes perfect — it's practice makes progress so you progress all the time

Julie Bishop

never ever stop giving away free knowledge never because that's what will hook your listeners your viewers and help them to tell others

Julie Bishop

BTW: This episode of the Be Yourself Podcast is produced by Beverly Media. Want a podcast that looks and sounds this good? Check out Beverly Production →

Full Transcript

0:00

Introduction — First Instagram Live and the Value of Showing Up

Serhiy hey hello how are you I'm doing all right doing great what about yourself

Julie yeah okay it's okay I'm glad I finally got oh no it's panicking but I didn't receive anything I was like what is happening is that your first time ever doing this stream on Instagram on Instagram yes

Serhiy okay yeah it's usually um Zoom yes see I wanted to take it to zoom but I decided that since it's easier for my audience to tune in here I just stick to Instagram for now I think I will update a notch as as I kind of do it more and more time it's a it's a learning curve for me so uh yeah so it's my first Instagram live

Julie so that's good yeah yeah I think my third and every single one of them have I mean yeah every everyone become better than the preceding ones so definitely something that speaks to I don't know our experience doing this thing yeah although absolutely although you cannot hear my entire face talking of experience now yeah now it's better

Serhiy yeah all right Julie um let's Chit Chat uh before we have I don't know if it's the best time for my followers to join because it's actually middle of the day of Monday hey yeah so but it don't be um kind of concerned about the number of people who's watching because in the moment because we'll definitely get the uh the best the the amount later as they will check the recording that's okay we've got one viewer so if we can give that one viewer a little bit of a nugget of knowledge of knots then I you know my job's done

Julie yeah and you know this I think this is something that you can testify to as since you work with uh network uh what like networking is basically part of your life right from what I understand we'll get to this a bit later but it seems like we as well I'm not sure if you do this like I am but since I started being like a blogger this addiction to number of people have really played has really played uh a bad joke with me you know you kind of get addicted to not like if you like if you don't have a lot of what the universe at the moment you think like you're doing something wrong you know and this kind of this so so hold up I mean thing that feeds you really is not good for for us

Julie absolutely but the thing the key is is always to be consistent so uh if you keep showing up then your audience will keep showing up and it will grow consistency over intensity

Serhiy yeah definitely yeah always keep keep giving consistency good good content and you'll grow your followers

4:09

Julie's Elevator Pitch — JobHop and the Journey to Entrepreneurship

Serhiy would you like would you mind to tell us about yourself since I'm helping people to perfect their elevator pitches maybe you can give your elevator pitch

Julie so uh I am an entrepreneur I've been in business for many years and prior to job hop so at the moment my main business is a platform called jobhop.co.uk and it's primarily for digital talent and we're connecting uh great talent with uh employers here in the UK and I deliver lots of training on uh company culture and keeping uh employees retaining employees attracting employees employer Brands building your um employer brand ambassadors so that's what I'm doing at the moment and I deliver lots of training uh prior to that I've had other businesses so uh I have been a bit of a serial entrepreneur but um I I have stuck at this one so I had two businesses before which I sold and uh this business I'm in at the moment I haven't uh been sort of tempted by the uh another little shiny object so uh I'm still I'm still focused on this business at the moment and I love it

Serhiy but but the ones that you had have have they really kind of took you to the place where where you have today taken you to the place where you right now or you know how the Civ jobs always said I mean in his famous species said that you can't connect dots looking forward you can only connect the dots looking backwards did your dog dots connect to in a way that you you're in the perfect spot for now do you feel like it's the perfect spot for a perfect match

Julie well I'm not in the perfect spot okay I mean yes and I think uh you know every day there's progress so um you make progress towards your goals and my previous businesses uh yes definitely that they all led to this business so my first business I had had no idea really about running teams and having employees so that gave me a lot of knowledge in having a team around me and literally I had no Mentor I read everything from books so I was like reading these books thinking oh this is how you run a business a lot of it I got completely wrong and then I moved on to my next business with more knowledge and understanding and that business really was the sort of Entry to my third business because in my last business I was looking for a particular person to work in that organization and I couldn't find them through the normal channels so I went online so this was in the early days of social media oh I went yeah really early and I went online and started looking at profiles online and I thought oh this is interesting so I can tap into people's profiles find out more about them in specific no this was this was literally when LinkedIn had just come to the UK so 2007 so LinkedIn wasn't really um a a platform that people really knew about they knew of but I don't think people were really using it so there was another platform at the time which isn't in existence anymore and I was using that platform and I was tapping into people from there and that's what gave me the idea of job hop so it it was you know that was the stepping stone into job op

10:16

Leadership — Learning to Manage People the Hard Way

Serhiy do you how do you what's your approach for managing people in general can you share uh in your experience

Julie well when I first started my in my first business as I said I had no idea and I made many mistakes uh I hired wrong however I did have a good team but I did make some wrong hires because I think a lot of a lot of the time I was in that desperate mode where I needed to have people to work for me so I hired many people people that were wrong for the culture of my business filled the gaps just to fulfill the gaps yes so I was I was firefighting I was like I must have somebody anybody yeah so um yeah so I made a lot of mistakes there and also as I said to you I was reading a lot from books and some of the books I I was reading were very old books so they had a very not like today's film with how you would run an organization where um you you would have an open door policy where your employees could come in and chat to you where company culture should be one of your main priorities I mean today you should be looking after mental health as well as you know their physical health and uh making sure you're giving good training and benefits but when I started years and years and years ago there wasn't any of that it was just literally a few books and it was very old style of leadership so when I when I had to address a team member it would be in a closed office because we never had the open door policy and then I would stand and make them sit and one day one of my employees went I'm not sitting down I'm standing with you and that put me like you know what that didn't happen in the book yeah so um yeah sort of through me and then afterwards I then started to learn hold on I have my own style of leadership and there are certain things that I shouldn't be following in the book so yeah so so there was um a lot of learning a lot of learning but and this still is there's loads and loads of learning so hopefully um I'm making progress every day

13:30

Company Culture Training — Reluctant Organizations and the Change That Has to Happen

Serhiy when you come to an organization are they accepting you with open arms you know and warm hearts or is it is it always kind of uh a battlefield for you

Julie well that's uh um a good question so what tends to happen you would have an organization that has been stuck in their ways for a very long time and maybe this organization doesn't like a change however however they understand that they must make some changes to be able to attract Talent retain talent and also keep up with the competition so reluctantly there are many businesses that drag their feet into this there are though sometimes the younger generation of leaders come into the work environment and see that the company culture needs to be changed and they are the ones that really want it to happen however you still have this hierarchy so you you have them properly here trying to advise the ones at the top that change needs to happen bottom up so um so again there's um a lot of uh controversy or trying to join everybody trying to get everybody to communicate and trying to get the naysayers on board but then you have other organizations were completely want to embrace everything so perhaps um perhaps they've taken over an organization that they they've uh they can see that the company culture is bad and uh perhaps they need to change that company culture so that they want they want our team to go in and help them with that so they're fully embracing that um so there's there's many many different ways but there are so many companies that really don't like change have done it in a way in their way for many years and can't see what's wrong with that however they understand that something has to has to happen but they're still reluctant about it

17:56

Good Culture vs Bad Culture — What Employees Say When You Ask Them Why They Come to Work

Serhiy it seems Seems like you have a pretty clear definition for a bad culture and a good culture can you please sound them up

Julie well a good culture uh is always defined by your employees well your bad culture is as well so if if your employees are saying it's great to work here uh I I love the work environments I've been here for a while because I don't have to look outside for career progression uh it's not just you know a lot of people think well what I'll do is keep them happy we'll put some table tennis in and some nice big cushions it's so much more it's so much more than that it's you know it's about as well uh the mission so every employee who walks through that door should know exactly what the mission is that they're working on and it's so many times I've spoken to uh staff when I've gone into organizations and I said so why do you come here every day and they go I don't know money yeah they they don't know what mission

Serhiy so you see this is what I've been preaching I'm sorry to interrupted it's really once I've been pressing try to have been preaching you know for the last years to have this purpose and it's still considered to be you know sorcerer romantic and kind of corny thing to you know like to change the world it's to to you know too broad but uh money is just the fuel for our vehicle to to move right towards our goal basically it's not the sole purpose uh but we're going somewhere right

Julie absolutely absolutely because if your employees understand what it is that they're doing and why they are doing it then they're going to be more engaged with that so it could be a tiny little I don't know say like a little Cog they have to make all these little cogs a lot of people will be thinking oh we just make cogs however that little Cog goes into something bigger which then goes into something bigger which is part of a rocket that is researched for Mars you know so in at the end of the day that little Cog is so much more that they are contributing to something that's researching a planet that we could all eventually move to so that's the mission

Julie I do know many people that have chosen company culture over money I do know many people that have taken a drop in their salary from the current employer because uh they've wanted better career progression or they were in a toxic work environment and they they wanted to get out for a better employer um I know people that have a Target in their minds that that is the employer of choice for them and they will do anything to work for that

20:01

Social Recruiting — Building Talent Communities Before You Need to Hire

Julie if the company culture is good then perhaps they um some tweaks need to be made because they don't understand how to attract talents it may be the case that they're not shouting enough so we look at uh employer brand ambassadors within the organization so perhaps they they've got um many people who absolutely love working there but they're not really sort of telling everybody about it because to attract Talent it's better if it comes from the employees themselves saying you know we're great to work for so if the employees are saying oh it's brilliant working here you know that the training is great the benefits are great I've got um a great career progress here so if all those messages are coming from the employees themselves that it's going to help the organization to attract talents so we need to put in channels for those messages to be distributed and heard by um the audience that they're trying to attract those candidates

Serhiy and this is what you seemingly call social recurring is that what it is

Julie yeah so um social recruiting so we're using uh the many different channels uh to put those those messages on and building those in employer brand ambassadors to actually go out and share those messages now you can't force anybody to go out and share those messages so you just encourage them to share those messages um and then also recruitment marketing so uh just showing organizations how the marketing department can also not just create marketing to attract customers but also to attract candidates and we try so hard to also get the message across that if they can build communities so don't think about I need somebody now think about we could be needing somebody in six months so say like an organization needs web developers we could be needing web developers in six months let's start chatting to web developers now and then when the time comes we've already built those relationships up with web developers and we can have an open day a recruitment day and we can invite them or just invite them onto a webinar to find out more about us

Serhiy it makes a ton of sense and you know um it's such a holistic you know and such a thoughtful approach to the HR in general not I think that a little little to no companies in my country approach this this way

31:57

JobHop.co.uk — The Platform, the Vision, and Why It's Called JobHop

Serhiy what is this uh website that you have um possess as a USB as a unique selling point that differentiate you guys from other similar platforms

Julie so job.co.uk is it's one it's a UK platform so I have this passion about keeping talents within the UK because other countries are always like looking at our talents and wanting to take them so we we try to keep them in the UK but also it's about building communities so trying to uh get employers and uh hiring teams just to think differently about hiring don't wait till the last minute build up those communities now so when the time comes for you to hire cherry pick you can then go in and say right these are the people we'd like to invite onto a webinar these are the people would like to come along through a recruitment day so when when we first started job pop I didn't even have a job board on there because I was adamant there wouldn't be a job board because I just wanted it all to be focused on communities however I think we were thinking way too ahead because research come back that everybody was looking for a job board so in the end I had to put you know say like let's put a job board on there but for us it's really about building communities so um candidates can connect with employers or hiring teams find out about those companies find out about what it's like to work there they may not be actively looking and most people are not actively looking they're passively looking they're probably somewhere else thinking I wonder what it's like over there and they're just they're just having a look but making those connections

Julie and you may think you know the name job hop but um job hop means so much because when we first started and I said it would be called jobhop a lot of people said oh well that's not very good is it because job hop uh job Hoppers you really want people to stay uh for a very long time yeah yeah it's not a job a like job security and I knew then that fast forward a few years that would not be the case that if you do not um get these great people in your team what they need to grow and develop then they will look elsewhere for it and this is what's happening now people will job hop every two years up the career ladder offer better benefits or for a better company culture and research just come back I can't remember I think it was about 65 research come back that 65 percent of white collared professionals currently in the UK are looking to jobhob and they put it down to toxic workplace so still you know still there are many many workplaces work environments that are toxic and they're not under standing how to change that culture or how to retain employers and they're definitely not going to attract candidates not at all

Serhiy for more your words it looks like I can as as an employee as a an applicant I can join this board and I can um uh kind of find one of the threats uh dedicated to specific community

Julie and you don't need to be used you don't need to be an active you don't need to be an active job Seeker you can just uh go on there create a profile and then tap into companies um find out more about how those companies operate uh join the communities of the companies of their um started communities uh chat to other employees because as I said to you earlier the employees are the ones who are your employer Brands and if they can spread a great message for you then you don't need to spend out on Advertising because they're doing all the work for you

39:08

Employer Brand Ambassadors — How to Get Your Team to Spread the Message

Serhiy how do you make people talk like does it happen organically

Julie well what you need to do first is find out who is actually saying great stuff about working at your organization because if you have if you believe you have a good company culture then you've probably got um some people there that also believe that it's a great place to work so just finding the start off with uh one person two people by the time you get to three people that's when it starts to uh um snowboarding some critical mass yes definitely but you know to start off with you do have that conversation you do have to uh have a chat with them and say look I know you've been here a while and I I believe you really do enjoy working here um how about if we make your employer brand ambassador so you know that's they're going to be the the Ambassador for the organization and um if there's anything great that you're saying then please just share it with us so we can share it and I always recommend that employers creates like a Dropbox folder so they can put pictures Etc content into that folder so if any of the employer brand ambassadors or if you just got one wants to share it again you can't force them if they want to share it then they'll they'll share it but also encourage your employer brand ambassadors um to take photos to do live streams to do uh walk around tours to talk about their work environment uh interview them with a day in the life or um follow them round round their departments and ask them questions and you know it's all these Snippets of content that can be used across the platforms to attract um Talent into your organization but the more it comes Direct directly for from the employee is where the worth is

43:17

How to Monetize Content — Free Knowledge, Polls, and Building Your First Course

Serhiy I've been posting a lot of content just a lot of content and haven't gotten anything I haven't monetized my content strategy even that strategy but when my content I don't know just Endeavor whatever and it feels to me that it shouldn't be that way but I think it's always a matter of where maybe you can give me like advice where should I stop just giving stuff for free we're gonna should I start like you know monetizing is there is that something that you think you you can answer maybe looking into your experience

Julie I would say um first of all try and bring your community into taking ownership of what it is that you do so by that I mean let's say create a poll create a poll what is it that they really do need a solution for so you could create a poll where they've got three choices so if they all say look we need a solution on how to price properly or we need a solution on how to reach more people or marketing a marketing solution then you know that that's their pain and you can then create a whole live Instagram or podcast or whatever it is around that um how to monetize okay so there's um there's lots of ways so with regards to your contents that you are delivering you could then um I mean never ever stop giving away free knowledge never because uh that's that's what will hook your uh listeners your viewers and uh and help them to tell others

Serhiy I've been doing this for like six months like every single day and I've been idle for a week now for a week and you know it feels like um a burden has fallen off of my shoulders not not a bad burden I enjoyed this but it feels like I'm I'm in the position just to take care more of myself you know but in a way I feel like I'm betraying people who are who get accustomed to get accustomed for you know to getting new information from me yes so I'm on the fence here like how do I stay loyal how do I not you know it's it's funny because these are expectations I said for myself

Julie say say to them you can say to them look I'm gonna create a course what would you like a course about so all those people then that would come to you and say Club I'd really like a course about marketing um um business planning or whatever the the course is they're not you've got like many people on the list already that have just said to you that they want a course on that particular uh topic then you can create a course and you've already got my responders

Serhiy that are not vocal at all I've tried it and they're it's like yeah here's the here's an interest I think that you're competent to answer like why people are not vocal is that because they are not engaged and I I fall short on engaging them just like HR brand can fall short on engaging their employees or why are people just looking and not participating in no way

Julie so uh I think a lot of people just like to watch just just like to sit on the sideline just like to uh make make notes so it's up to you to then try to engage them by asking questions by um you know people are watching now we've got six people who are watching if you're enjoying this please do yes give us a thumbs up likes yeah make it more about people not about ourselves