Candelisa People’s starring role in Channel 4’s new fly-on-the-wall documentary The Job Centre has been good for business, according to the recruitment agency’s managing director Jane Vincent. 

And rival recruiters have been on the whole positive towards the show, she adds.

Vincent, who set up Horizon Recruitment in 1997 and scooped the award for Best Regional Recruitment Firm at the Recruiter Awards for Excellence in 2004 and 2007, then set up Candelisa in 2009, appears alongside her team in the television programme showing daily life at a recruitment agency.

The first show was screened last Wednesday and Vincent told Recruiter it has already resulted in new business for her agency.

“The day after the programme our phones were going mental. We have already got new business from it. We’ve got new clients from it who we never worked with before and have already been given a job.

“We have got hundreds of CVs through within minutes of the TV show going live,” she added. 

The reception from the recruitment industry has generally been positive: “People who know me and know me as a recruiter have all been very supportive. They like the programme. They thought it was funny, they have related to it.

“I’ve had some emails from recruiters who I have never met before saying they really enjoyed the show.”

However, Vincent adds the show has come under fire from some recruiters on Twitter. “We’ve had a few Twitter trolls but you are going to get Twitter trolls. We had another agency say ‘It’s not a true reflection of what we do… It’s not a bums on seats industry’.

“It’s not a bums on seats industry – we go through the process to get the right people. We have to, otherwise we wouldn’t get the clients we’ve got, but they’re not going to show that on the television because it would be boring.”

The second episode of The Job Centre will be screened tonight.

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