PWC Spotlight On… Instant Impact

This week, our co-founder and director Felix Mitchell was interviewed by PWC as part of their 'Startup Journey' initiative. This is what he had to say...

Sum up your role in one sentence  

I’m one of the two co-Founders of Instant Impact and I head up the Business Development side of the business; winning our larger clients and thinking around what additional services we can offer.

What makes your company unique?

We focus on finding the most entrepreneurial companies in the UK and helping them to hire driven and intelligent graduates. That means that we’ve had to hire a team with a very different outlook to normal recruiters.

We often work with companies facing a brand new recruitment challenge be it hiring their first graduates, massively scaling up their recruitment post investment, or hiring a different skill set to what they’re used to. That requires us to hire a truly consultative skill set in our own team.

On the other side of the process are our candidates; all intelligent graduates from top universities looking for their first job. They have huge potential but not that much experience, putting us in a position of responsibility. It’s important for us to avoid being pushy and focus on patiently helping them through one of the most important decisions in their lives.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before you started Instant Impact?

Learn to manage your stress as a priority and don’t feel guilty taking holidays.

What business idea do you wish that you had come up with?

In the start-up world, you realise that ideas a ten-a-penny. It's the implementation that matters. So I'm going to tell you what company I wish I'd built.

Jukedeck are a very cool company. They generates music with no need for a music license allowing a generation of YouTubers and Facebookers to soundtrack their videos with no fear of IP law. They’ve also built a great team.

Having a technology company that can be truly game changing and a top notch team means that they have the rare opportunity to scale a global company quickly when they nail the product and marketing.

If you could invite three people to a dinner party, who would they be?

I think I’d do a dinner party of famous Mitchells, my family adopted the name when we immigrated so it would be good to know my stolen heritage.

David Mitchell would undeniably be a great dinner party guest and Joni Mitchell would have some brilliant anecdotes from the road.

Finally, Felix Mitchell (Jnr) was the drug kingpin of Oakland in the ‘70s and, amongst other crimes, is guilty of unwittingly thwarting my SEO attempts. He has a lot to answer for.

If your job could take you anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?

To Cape Town. What an incredible city; great food, awesome weather, and an amazing party scene. What’s not to love?

What has been the best part of your Startup Journey so far?

It’s definitely been building the team at Instant Impact. The fact that so many young people who could have built their careers anywhere have chosen to do so with us is humbling.