Picture the scene. It’s 2005 and you’re going through one of the most financially, emotionally and mentally challenging experiences of adult life: a divorce. At the same time, you’re selling both your family home and the business you ran with your former husband.
Faced with that loss of control, some people might look for the security of a steady job. Michelle Carson decided to start an executive search business.
That business became Holmes Noble, an executive search firm that is still going strong 21 years later.
“There were other things that weren’t necessarily within my control, but starting this business gave me that sense of control,” Carson explains.
Returning to a permanent role in recruitment, where she had already worked for many years, might have seemed like the sensible option. But Carson was uninspired by what she saw.
“I’d left a good company and I wasn’t seeing anything better,” she says. Her conclusion was simple: she could do a better job herself.
“Once that seed is planted in your mind, it’s very difficult to see anything else that will meet your expectations.”
Holmes Noble: the meaning behind the brand
With ten years of recruitment and executive search experience under her belt, Carson had the credentials to start something of her own. The company’s name, however, gave the new venture a particularly personal sense of purpose and accountability.
Holmes was the surname of Carson’s grandfather, who came to Britain from Northern Ireland and had built a life for himself despite facing a number of setbacks, including homelessness. Noble represents the qualities she saw in him. “For me, being noble isn’t about status or rank,” she explains. “It’s about resilience, strength, courage, generosity, honour and integrity. Those are the words that conjure up my grandfather and the values I wanted the business to reflect.”
Carson grew up understanding the value of money because there was very little of it available. Her parents separated when she was a baby, and she went to live with her grandparents. “To illustrate how tight money was, there was a time when my mum had to use a five-pound commemorative coin to put food on the table.”
“I cared enormously about the quality of everything, to the point where I thought I needed to be involved in everything. That just isn’t sustainable, and it isn’t good for the people working for you either.”
Choosing a business name with such strong personal ties gave Carson what she describes as a great “weight of responsibility”. That responsibility extends to how she views Holmes Noble’s place within the UK recruitment sector.
“I have very high standards, and the industry I was working in had always received bad press,” she says. “I wanted to create something that set those standards and wasn’t transactional.”
For Carson, that means moving beyond simply filling vacancies and instead building lasting relationships. Some Holmes Noble clients have worked with the firm since it launched in 2005. “I think one of our strengths is that, once we work with an organisation, it stays with us,” she says. “I describe it as a partnership with our customers, rather than the more transactional approach found across the wider recruitment industry.”
Measuring success beyond making an appointment
Holmes Noble’s emphasis on long-term outcomes is reflected in its performance figures. Some 92% of the executives it places remain in their posts two years after their start date. Over the past year, 96% of its assignments were filled from the original shortlist.
“Ultimately, the measure of a successful search isn’t simply making an appointment, but making the right one,” Carson says.
For Carson and her team, being a standout executive search firm is also about how the experience makes clients and candidates feel.
“Just because you might not have an opportunity for a candidate today doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep in contact with that individual and build the relationship.”
Instead of focusing solely on immediate vacancies, Holmes Noble develops trusted networks of clients and candidates for the long term.
“Whether you’re going to get work from a prospective customer today is almost irrelevant,” Carson argues. “It’s about really getting to know that person and that organisation. People who are candidates today could be your customers tomorrow.”
It is fair to say that Carson approaches recruitment, and her company’s place within the industry, a little differently from the mainstream. Her own brain operates differently, too.
After being diagnosed with autism and ADHD in her fifties, Carson has become more aware of the pressures and challenges neurodivergent people can face in the workplace.
Leading as a neurodivergent founder
From the social expectations surrounding after-work drinks to the need to navigate multiple messaging platforms, she reflects on the additional burden that apparently ordinary aspects of working life can create for neurodivergent people.
Carson has established strict personal boundaries to protect her focus and wellbeing. Instant-messaging platforms and their constant notifications are off the table. Emails are not answered immediately but organised by priority, using red for urgent messages and amber and green for less pressing correspondence. “You can lose your whole life just responding to emails,” she states. If somebody needs her urgently, sending a quick text is the best approach. She also favours focusing on one task at a time, rather than the constant multitasking and movement between platforms and projects that define the working day for so many.
“The minute you stop and do something else, the amount of effort you have to put in to get back to what you were doing before is huge.”
Learning to relinquish control
Carson has learnt plenty about leadership during more than two decades as a founder. One of the most important lessons has been recognising when to relinquish control.
“I needed to control everything,” she admits of her early years at Holmes Noble. “I cared enormously about the quality of everything, to the point where I thought I needed to be involved in everything. That just isn’t sustainable, and it isn’t good for the people working for you either.”
Delegation, she acknowledges, is a learned behaviour rather than something that comes naturally.
One of her biggest decisions came several years ago, when she appointed a CEO so that she could take a step back from the business.
“That’s been really hard for me,” she admits. “You have to step back and allow people to live and die by their own decisions. You can’t keep stepping in, or else why did you make that appointment in the first place?”
Another decision of which Carson is particularly proud, and one that has likely contributed to the company’s longevity, is her cautious approach to risk and determination to keep Holmes Noble as well funded as possible.
The firm’s ability to weather the global financial crisis of 2008 and the disruption of the Covid years speaks to the effectiveness of that approach. It is also a reminder that, while taking risks can create opportunities in business, risk aversion has its place.
So, where is Michelle Carson now?
She describes herself as being in a more reflective phase of her life and career.
“I’m more philosophical in my fifties than I was in my forties and thirties.”
For her, that means accepting that the highs and lows; hiring the right people, making mistakes with the wrong ones, ensuring there is enough cash to pay wages and dealing with everything else that comes with leading a company, are simply part and parcel of running a business. “When you’ve been through everything, you know that everyone is going to be ok,” she says. “You just know.”
