Samantha Schlimper, Managing Director at Randstad Enterprise: How People Really Get Jobs (It’s Not Your CV)
My Duvet Flip by Jack Parsons
Jack Parsons
4.2 • 8 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode Guest
Sam Schlimper is Managing Director at Randstad Enterprise, where she works with global organisations to redesign work, unlock human potential, and build future-ready talent strategies. With deep experience across recruitment, financial services, and advisory, Sam is passionate about creating meaningful work that energises people and organisations.
Episode Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
0:23 What gives you energy and what drains it at work
1:17 Sam’s duvet flip and why self-reflection matters
2:09 First job lessons and learning what you don’t want to do
3:04 Why trying things is essential early in your career
3:39 How Sam fell into recruitment and talent without a plan
4:12 Confidence, training, and learning on the job
4:46 Building confidence in a hybrid and remote world
5:47 Why job descriptions don’t reflect how work really happens
6:33 Do remote workers really miss out on promotions?
7:39 How to know who you are (and why it’s a lifelong job)
8:16 Being good at something that slowly drains you
9:10 Why fun, energy, and people keep you in a job
10:05 What makes a great recruiter today
11:40 How people really get jobs beyond their CV
12:44 Understanding human potential at its core
14:13 Simple ways to identify your own potential
15:36 Are you stuck in the ‘frozen middle’?
16:29 What it feels like when work slowly erodes you
17:36 Mucky ducks and how bad culture spreads
18:57 What to do if you are the mucky duck
20:04 Knowing when it’s time to leave an environment
22:13 Why human connection matters more than ever
23:14 AI, young people, and the future of work
24:45 Why early careers need new, non-traditional routes
25:46 The beehive analogy and problem-solving talent
26:47 Why AI should be treated like a colleague, not a tool
28:37 The danger of cognitively offloading your thinking
30:08 How to work with AI without losing your edge
32:43 Psychological safety and AI adoption at work
35:40 Confidence, power, and who embraces AI first
38:38 Lessons from Sam’s time at Barclays
40:33 What Randstad Enterprise does and why Sam loves her work
43:49 The red folder quick-fire questions
48:24 Sam’s duvet flip and what really gets her out of bed
Episode Partners
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | One of the most important things is to constantly be reflecting on what is it that gives me energy, |
| 0:05.9 | what is it that takes away my energy, what am I good at? Sometimes we're really good at things, |
| 0:09.9 | but they don't actually energise you. And that's important, right? Try a number of things and you don't |
| 0:14.1 | know what you want to do and then work out what you definitely don't want to do. Absolutely. Hi, |
| 0:19.1 | I'm Sam Schlimper. I'm the managing director of Randstad advisory with about 40,000 people. |
| 0:26.6 | And this is my duvet flip. |
| 0:28.6 | How do you know who you are? |
| 0:29.6 | That is a lifelong job. |
| 0:31.6 | Feeling a sense of disconnect or a sense of I'm just being drained slowly away every day. |
| 0:36.6 | You can feel it immediately. What is it that gets you out of bed in the morning? If I don't know that, if I can have a list of skills as long as my arm, nothing is going to happen. People do what they want to do and they're great at doing and they find ways, it's like water, right? They find ways. And that's how an organisation actually works. What does human potential mean to you? If you look at a beehive, yeah, you have worker bees. Some of them have very specific jobs. You also have 10% of the hive, which are just scouts. They don't have a job, they're just there to solve problems. Turn up with a B-I and you go, look at these ones. |
| 1:11.6 | You're totally. You get some honey. |
| 1:13.6 | What does you duvet flip? What gets you out of bed in the mind to flip the dovee? |
| 1:16.6 | At the very core of it. I want to... |
| 1:19.6 | Hi, I'm Sam Schlimper. I am the Managing Director of Randstad Advisory Enterprise. Just before sitting down with Jack, I'm feeling good. |
| 1:30.3 | I am so excited to talk about what the world of work looks like for young people. |
| 1:35.3 | I wanted to come on my dovo flip because I think it's such an entrepreneurial, fun thing to do. |
| 1:43.3 | Jack is full of hope, energy and crap. Of the show in general, |
| 1:48.4 | super professional, super beautifully set up and well thought out. Hi Jack, let's do this. Sam, welcome to |
| 1:56.2 | my duvet flip. How are we? Very good. Thank you. Nice way to start the morning. Yeah, and thank you for coming |
| 2:01.3 | having a couple with me. Because I can't wait to talk about your career, your journey and where it's |
| 2:06.6 | taking you. But I always start here with my guest. First job, what was it? What did it teach? If |
| 2:13.6 | Sam was looking back now at a younger self, what should be saying? |
... |
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