The document provides information about The Director-e, a portal matching business skills and expertise with opportunities. It introduces the leadership team, including Managing Director Les Phillimore, who recognized the opportunity to leverage senior professionals' experience. Communications Director Rachel Hargrave and others joined to establish The Director-e as the premier recruitment resource utilizing seasoned experts' knowledge and networks.

1. Press Pack
2017
For all media enquiries, please contact:
Rachel Hargrave
Communications Director
The Director-e
rachel.hargrave@thedirector-e.co.uk

2. About Director-e
The Director-e is a unique portal dedicated to matching proven business skills, seasoned expertise, exceptional
talent and sustained achievements with real business needs, aspirations and strategy.
Our mission is nothing less than to set a new standard in 21st
century recruitment and placement.
“As the Gig economy gathers pace freelance working increases and employment and placement becomes uberised.
Hiring Managers, businesses and recruiters will no longer simply be looking for, or perhaps even able to place, full
time employees into permanent positions in the traditional manner. Businesses will become more and more agile,
looking more and more towards horizontal growth channels and as they do, will need to rapidly draw down vast
experience, knowledge and expertise into their organisations - very often at senior level.
“This is where The Director-e sets the standard by blending vast experience and expertise with permanent,
temporary and project based recruitment and placement or even out-sourced project management, consultancy or
due diligence opportunities. The likelihood is that fewer and fewer candidates will have a chronologically intact CV
but their overall experience, expertise and agility is likely to be much, much greater.”
Les Phillimore
Managing Director
The Director-e

3. Candidates and Recruiters
We are a talent-led and business focused recruitment and placement site committed to generating the maximum
economic, business and social capital from some of the most successful, experienced and influential business
experts and stakeholder managers across the UK.
For Recruitment Agencies and Hiring Managers we are dedicated to helping them find extraordinary candidates for
those unique positions - candidates who are seasoned professionals, highly experienced, supremely qualified and
confident in numerous roles and situations. Experts who can hit the ground running, assimilate into new cultures
rapidly and push the new boundaries of operational performance; who boast a track record of operating at the very
pinnacle of performance. Our candidates will bring immense capability and personal gravitas to the business.
At The Director-e we think like a recruitment expert, we understand business and have fine-tuned our search and
selection process to ensure our recruiters find the ideal candidate with the minimum of effort. We also carry out
random candidate sampling to ensure that the candidates registered within our database do carry the qualities,
skills and experience that they say they do.
With a growing database of the seasoned professionals (many of whom are experienced business researchers,
analysts, marketers and report writers who have the proven expertise to undertake confidential off-site projects for
businesses of all shapes, sizes and sectors) The Director-e will also offer Contract, Interim and Consultancy services
to businesses from start-ups through to rescue and recovery.
Registering with The Director-e is FREE and those who register will be the first to benefit from new updates, alerts
and opportunities as they come online throughout the year.

4. Why the Team Behind The Director-e Came Together
Les experienced the challenges of senior recruitment first hand and quickly recognised the immense opportunity
available if a new approach to senior recruitment was brought to life. Research cemented those thoughts into
what is now The Director-e. “Quite often it seemed that Hiring Managers were uneasy around people of my
seniority and experience because we are, in many instances, far more experienced than them. That or they think
‘this candidate will see a ‘better’ job and will be off’. That just isn’t true but it is often the perception,” says Les.
Whilst on his own search for a new role Les applied for a job through Matt Willis who, after reading his CV, called
him for a discussion during which it became clear that both Les and Matt had similar experiences and they decided
to form the initial team behind The Director-e.
Les knew both Craig Johnstone and Rachel Hargrave personally and professionally and shared the idea and vision
with them. Both Rachel and Craig had each seen examples similar to Les’ experience and believed in the proposition.
Like Les and Matt they likewise recognised the immense economic and intellectual capital available in a Senior,
Executive and Professional candidate database and how this could be leveraged for everyone’s benefit in the new
Gig economy. With the resources and expertise to help make The Director-e happen they joined the team. The rest,
as they say, is history!

5. Les Phillimore
Managing Director
Starting his career as an electro-mechanical apprentice with GEC, Les soon rapidly changed direction establishing
himself in the gaming, leisure and hospitality sectors and joined family owned Greenall Whitley Ltd in 1983 as
they started out on a major expansion and stock market floatation programme.
Les grew with the group as it positioned itself as a leading £1.1bn FTSE 100 Plc leisure and hospitality operator and
as a Group Executive Manager for the then Greenalls Group Plc, Les relished the responsibility of a substantial multi-
disciplined national workforce and multi-million pound revenue and cost budgets.
Taking leading roles in corporate strategy and behaviour, performance and brand management, mergers and
acquisitions, product development, and multi-faceted change within technology-led multi-site operations Les’s
passion for business excellence saw him introduce numerous initiatives to leave a trail of bench-setting and first-to-
market innovations across multiple disciplines setting far-reaching new standards of performance with iconic
corporate clients such as Whitbread, Mitchells and Butler, Scottish and Newcastle, Allied Domecq, Bass, Enterprise
Inns and DeVere Hotels to name a few.
In 2006 Les was appointed UK Managing Director (Designate) for a joint venture between the $3bn USA Harbour
Group Inc and a major UK retail Plc with the immediate challenge of turning-around and re-energising a stalled
multi-million dollar, multi-stakeholder investment programme. Job done Les transferred to the sister company to
lead on next-generation Trans-Atlantic digital NPD / NPI programmes.
A Co-Director of a boutique Business Consultancy Les’s recent projects have seen him working on numerous
regional, international, start-up and innovation projects which have served to further cement the economic and
business needs for The Director-e to be a leading light in 21st Century recruitment and placement.
Contact Les at les.phillimore@thedirector-e.co.uk
Les is particularly happy to speak about:
1. The Director-e - the vision, the mission, the opportunities and the even bigger opportunities.
2. Performance Management – getting the best out of your people, your suppliers, your clients and your
business.
3. Seasoned expertise supporting micro / SME / Innovation businesses.
4. Recruitment, placement and over-qualification – the misnomer in the economy.

6. Matthew Willis
Commercial Director
Matt started working in recruitment in 2009 for his father's business FMCV, which is a niche agency that
specialised in the coffee, catering and food service industries.
Since his father's departure from the business in 2012, Matt is now the owner and director of FMCV and has since
expanded into a number of other industries, including town planning, legal and facilities management.
Matt and Les crossed paths in late 2012 when Les applied for a senior operations manager position (which
unfortunately later fell through and the vacancy closed) and have remained in close contact ever since.
Matt married Natalia in 2013 and they very recently welcomed Anastasia to the Willis family.
Contact Matt at matthew.willis@thedirector-e.co.uk
Matt is particularly happy to speak about:
1. Use of technology within recruitment.
2. Placements v’s over qualification.
3. Job security / instability and managing crises’.
4. Recruitment and how the markets react to uncertainty (including Brexit).

7. Craig Johnstone
Operations Director
Managing Director of UK marketing services provider Mulberry Square, Craig has 30 years of experience in the
printing, publishing and marketing communications industry; the last 19 of which he has spent building his own
print management and marketing services businesses in a very competitive and fast moving landscape.
Innovation has been fundamental to Craig’s business success, being a pioneer in the development of the print
management sector in 1997 at the age of 27 and has since been a leading figure in the sector’s transition to
marketing services – borne out by the British Printing Industry Federation’s testimony at MediaPro 2010.
A time-served lithographic multi-colour machine manager with an eye for colour and stickler for quality, he rapidly
rose through the print industry ranks as an estimator, sales representative and business development manager with
some of Leicestershire’s foremost and well respected printing companies, honing his skills and developing his
knowledge whilst recognising that quality and service were the pillars that provide the foundation of success for any
business.
He has been a firm advocate of life-long-learning and is the perfect example of how those with a thirst for
knowledge can use social media and the World Wide Web to enhance and further their education, harness
information and turn it into an opportunity not only for their own business but most importantly for the benefit of
their clients.
Les first discussed his vision for what has become The Director-e with Craig in March 2015. Craig has since, with his
marketing team, taken up the development of the company’s brand identity, honed and developed its online
presence and helped to shape its strategy and proposition with his fellow directors to where it sits today.
Contact Craig at craig.johnstone@thedirector-e.co.uk
Craig is particularly happy to speak about:
1. The immense value that the over 50’s can bring to business.
2. The importance of continual personal improvement.
3. How important it is to be able to recognise and communicate the benefits you can offer, whether it be as a
business or an individual, in relation to your target’s need.

8. Rachel Hargrave
Communications Director
Rachel Hargrave has over 23 years of communications experience across a wide variety of clients including:
Corporate (BP, Castrol, Honda Motor Europe, Canon UK and Canon Europe, BT, O2, Vodafone, GSK, Allergan,
Linklaters, Mercedes-Benz, Daimler Chrysler, BUPA, Mars Group, Lloyds TSB)
Public Sector (UK Trade & Investment, East Midlands Development Agency, Arts Council England - East Midlands and
the NHS)
Third Sector (Arts & Business, Creative Leicestershire, the Odysseus Foundation, Charity Link, Rainbows Hospice for
Children and Young People, Hathern Dog Rescue, Leicester Charity Link and LOROS – the Leicestershire and Rutland
Hospice).
Prior to forming RDZ PR Ltd, Rachel originally worked in film and video, moved into creating and producing live
events (conferences, exhibitions, gala dinners and award ceremonies) before settling in corporate communications.
This varied background has given Rachel key skills in strategy, implementation, content design and delivery, as well
as project management.
Rachel founded her first agency 14 years ago and RDZ PR Ltd in 2014. Rachel joined Les and The Director-e in 2013 as
Communications Director.
Awards Won
CorpComms Award – Best Corporate Publication – Private Sector
Corporate Engagement Awards – Best Relationship-building sponsorship programme for Canon Europe Tuxedo
programme
Contact Rachel at rachel.hargrave@thedirector-e.co.uk
Rachel is particularly happy to speak about:
1. Telling your story authentically.
2. Communicating effectively internally and externally.
3. The importance of values in a business working in a competitive marketplace.