It’s 5am on Valentine’s Day. Most of us are fast asleep, our days yet to begin. 

Sarah Skelton’s day has already started. The Flourish MD and Co-Founder is at Broadcasting House in Central London, brew in hand and mic ready to go. 

“Skelly” joined Radio 5 Live’s Wake Up to Money, the BBC’s early morning financial show, chatting to Felicity Hannah about how Flourish is feeling the love – in business terms at least. 

The day’s big talking point: US President Donald Trump’s threat of reciprocal tariffs; matching taxes on goods coming into the US to relevant taxes on American exports. 

Q: Tell us a little about what you do at Flourish. 

Skelly: “Flourish is part of a company called Apprentify, who focus on the education and upskilling of individuals, predominantly through apprenticeships or government funded bootcamps. 

“We saw a niche in the market at Flourish; we focus on education and assessment of early career candidates who are looking to get into business-to-business sales careers. 

“Typically, our demographic will be school leavers, graduates and second jobbers, and the focus is to really look at their potential and attitude, rather than their education or experience. 

“We run face-to-face Discovery Days where we education them about sales as a profession and the different industries available, and then we match them with our clients, who range from the smallest of start-ups to global organisations across the length and breadth of the UK. When we place them, we provide them with training and ongoing coaching to support them in their new job.” 

Q: How are you finding the current crop of school leavers – young people affected by the lockdowns – who have perhaps had a disrupted education? 

Skelly: “It’s highly competitive. Quite a lot of young people are coming out of education, not work-ready. So, what we’re trying to do is educate them about the many varied roles that are out there because when you’re young, you don’t know what you don’t know; that’s part of the problem. 

“We’re also trying to educate businesses to focus on skill-based hiring rather than needing someone with industry experience. If you have the right attitude, we truly believe that you can be coached.” 

Q: What does the constant noise from Trump do to the businesses that Flourish works with? 

Skelly: “It’s the unpredictability that businesses don’t like. That then causes people to pause on their plans, potentially pause on recruitment. It all has a knock-on effect.” 

Q: We’re not seeing the business confidence for considerable GDP growth. How is this affecting businesses’ recruitment plans? 

Skelly: “I’m going to be optimistic here. We just had our biggest ever month. We saw a lot of businesses choosing to invest in their hiring and development of talent. 

“We’re fortunate to work across all different verticals – so when one is contracting, another is growing – but last month we helped businesses that were Series A-funded tech companies, telecoms companies, recruitment businesses, a bathroom manufacturer and the UK’s largest parcel delivery and logisitics firm, all hire young talent into their business. 

“There are obviously companies that are struggling – National Insurance rises, minimum wage, business rates – all of that is impacting some companies, but I’m going to go with the positive rhetoric that we’re seeing businesses investing in hiring and developing talent.” 

If you’d like to listen to the full episode featuring out very own Skelly, click here.

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