Did you know March is Women’s History month? A month in which we celebrate and encourage women’s contributions to history, culture, and society. Artemis Clarke has always been a women-led business however we don’t usually make much of an issue of this because, to us, it’s just business as usual. We hire the right person for the role (as we encourage our clients to do too), and if that person happens to be a woman, then so be it. The important thing for us, is that to become part of Team Artemis, they should be as committed to flexible and remote work as the rest of us.
Part time flexible working as the norm
For example, apart from Kate our founder, the team is all part time (and even Kate works flexibly around her family commitments). What started as a cost-saving measure has actually become the norm for Artemis Clarke . As our team continues to grow, we are committed to flexible and remote working and are passionate about challenging the traditional 9-5 model. As a result, when we recruit for our internal team, we have access to a much wider talent pool, including highly talented and experienced people who are unable to commit to full time work. All of our team have completely flexible employment contracts allowing them to work whenever they like, and even before anyone had ever heard the words Covid-19, we mainly worked remotely.
As our team continues to grow, we hope to attract more men who are seeking work-life integration (we prefer this term to work-life balance!). We have certainly seen this with the part time FD roles that we place and so there is every chance that our next recruit will be a man looking for flexibility in his working day. What is for certain is that, with so many advantages of a flexible workforce, we are committed to this model for the long term. Working remotely means that we can – and do – work with clients and candidates across the whole of the UK and beyond. So, for us, having a flexible, remote workforce is the most effective strategy to grow the business further, and we’re not alone in this approach. Even some of the big corporates are backing flexible work to a much greater extent now, like this example of a senior level job-share (unusually, between two fathers), at Aviva. And this report from Virgin Business notes that “flexible working will lead to more efficient processes and support employees in their work, and beyond that, empower them with a better work–life balance”. Sounds good to us!
Meet the team
On March 8th it was International Women’s Day. We didn’t really shout about our fabulous team because our women-led culture is so ingrained into business as usual that we didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary. But maybe we should have done.
So, we’re taking the opportunity now to share a little more information about our fabulous team, starting with the highly experienced Nic Chandler.
Nic Chandler
Like Kate (our founder), Nic is also a qualified accountant (AAT and ACCA). She has worked in a variety of finance roles from payroll up to the level of Finance Business Partner working across various divisions within a FTSE 250 PLC. Because she understands what it takes to be a great finance person, Nic’s key task is to conduct our Executive Search process and scour our Talent Database to help find the best candidates for our clients’ needs.
A new addition to the team in November 2020, is the lovely Jane Tse.
Jane Tse
Prior to joining Artemis Clarke, Jane had enjoyed a successful career in the Financial Services industry, specialising in the provision of pension advice within a FTSE 250 PLC. Jane’s professional training and attention to detail mean that she is perfectly placed to manage our candidate 5-Stage Assessment Process and she ensures that each candidate gets the individual attention they deserve as they move through both the assessment and the selection process.
Nic and Jane work hard to support our founder Kate Clarke.
Kate Clarke
Kate originally trained as a chartered accountant with Arthur Andersen and then enjoyed a number of finance and tax roles in industry before putting her career on hold to bring up a young family.
In 2012 her corporate career was reignited, but in a new form – as Head of The Mitie Foundation; a corporate charity which focuses on, amongst other things, helping the unemployed into work. It was this experience that sparked the idea to set up Artemis Clarke as, not only had it given her the confidence to build something from scratch, it had made her realise how much she enjoyed matching candidates with job opportunities. And so Artemis Clarke was born.
We do have other team members, including our highly experienced and skilled part time Finance Directors, plus HR specialists and marketing support – but for now we just wanted to celebrate our core team – the three hardworking and talented women you’ll deal with most frequently as a client or candidate of our growing, and very much women-led, financial recruitment business.
