WHO AM I

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People often ask who I am and what I’ve done.

For those that don’t know, I was a recruiter for 30 years working across the UK, Europe as well as the US & Canada, working with technology start-up companies building sales teams and back filling CxO roles as they grew and spread their wings. I’ve also worked with most of the major & minor consulting companies in the UK and many end clients.

For the last 20 of those years, I’ve also coached thousands of candidates as well as some clients. A lot of this coaching has been career coaching with some life and business coaching when they’ve needed it or wanted it, some things morph on their own.

However, towards the back end of 2023, the recruitment market was going through another paradigm shift, engagements were getting harder to find and clients were taking a new direction bringing everything in-house, using technology and AI and not using external recruiters. Let’s face it if a company is looking for 10 hires in the year and they use a retained or exclusive recruiter charging 20% of base salary and all the roles are ￡100k plus, that’s at least a budget of ￡200k to invest in tech or an internal talent team a year.

Having served my tenure, I was looking for something new, something different, something with a better ‘work life balance’ I’m not the spring chicken I once was.? As it turned out, that for me was and is coaching, something that gave me a level of satisfaction I was no longer gaining from the recruitment side of what I did.

During 2024, I worked extensively on a pro bono basis (free of charge) and helped hundreds of people sort out their CV or Resumes (still helping many people in the US) as well as working with a lot of people on a one-to-one (121) basis. I covered a lot of ground and delved into things I had never really discussed or helped with previously, but it was a life-changing experience and incredibly rewarding.

I also embarked on a huge reading regime which I still maintain today and did numerous coaching courses. My one fear has always been ‘doing no harm’, so if I was confronted with something or someone that I felt out of my depth with, I would refer these people to a therapist, a psychologist, someone else who could help. I also did and qualified as a Certified Counsellor, which has given me the core counselling skills and knowledge to go further and deeper than before when I was recruiting.

I launched Red Fish Coaching in February this year (2025), it’s part of my limited company (William Howard Associates Limited) but I don’t have any associates anymore, just me.

Career Coaching is still very much the starting point for me with many clients, and I typically work with 8-12 people a week sorting out their CV or Resume and this often leads into working on a 121 basis, ?while other clients are referred to me specifically for the 121 coaching. I also offer monthly Career Academy’s for both Men and Woman, these are four-week courses and cover the CV, LinkedIn Profile as well as creating a personal video bio & interview strategy. The aim of this is to help people ‘get from the back of the queue to the front of the queue’ but as important, it’s about getting people ‘seen and heard’ which can catapult them into the ‘know, like and trust model’ basically getting them onto the short list for a role.

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It’s still early days for me, I post on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram every day and the website is up and running (www.william-howard.com) but still needs a few tweaks.

Currently, I have four 121 clients and speak with them twice a month. I would like to increase this ideally to ten clients before the summer. I would also like to increase the number of people who attend the Career Academy’s both Men and Woman, as people certainly get a lot out of this.

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The coaching world, like any genre is a bit of a maze until you start to find your way around, my own coach (yes coaches have coaches as well) Rose Latham has been inspirational and opened me up to a fantastic group of people many connected to the AJC School of Coaching which is headed up by Ankush Jain this I believe is my new tribe and I will spend time getting to know everyone.

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This is the next chapter of my life and I intend to enjoy it. Help as many people as possible and become the coach I aspire to become.

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About the Author ?- ?Howard Longstaff

Over the last 20 years Howard has coached 1000’s of people, staff, clients and candidates, either career coaching or general life & business coaching. Now as a ‘Full-Stack People Consultant, he is a certified counsellor and spends his time coaching people.? The last 30 years he worked as a recruiter, head-hunter, executive search consultant & business owner building teams for clients, working extensively in the UK, Europe as well as the US & Canada.

[email protected] +44 (0) 7710 907 988