Page 31 - James Caan - Get the Job you Really Want

particular company who has worked out well – mentally you
will have a natural bias towards any applicant coming from the
same company because you assume that company tends to hire
good people.
One of the best investments I ever made was a business

called Alexander Mann Solutions, started by Rosaleen Blair, who
went on to build the most successful business I’ve invested
in. My first investment in Dragons’ Den was with a woman,

Sammy French, and her Fit Fur Life dog treadmill. From a gender
perspective my experience has always been that I’ve been more
successful with women in employment than otherwise.
I know that goes against the norm. Women tell me they often
think that they are not as good, that there is still a glass ceiling,

and that the jobs they really want don’t exist. I don’t accept that.
I think there are opportunities. Clearly there is competition. And
there are not as many opportunities or organizations that prefer

women. Men obviously do well. There are a lot of them, they hog
the senior management positions, they dominate the boards
of F T S E 100 companies. But I expect to see that balance change
over the next ten to fifteen years.
One school of thought considers that if more women had

held senior positions in banking and finance, the collapse of
the financial markets in 2008–2009 might have been much less
severe, if not averted – and that women will be instrumental in

helping the UK recover from recession.
Merit alone should be the determining factor in getting a
job, and discrimination law is designed to rectify any imbal-
ance, though it will take time to root it out – how many women

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