Growthmode

A digital marketing platform and growth agency that puts technology, AI and automation at the forefront. 

Built by a highly experienced team of entrepreneurs and academics with strong backgrounds in AI, marketing and enterprise SaaS, our aim is to help modern marketing teams keep up with the pace of change through accessible technology and data-driven strategic marketing services. 

Products and services include:

- Data-driven growth marketing services
- AI and automation development platform
- SaaS growth marketing platform

Talk to us if you're looking for:

- Ways of unlocking rapid growth, when you've already tried traditional channels
- Support in navigating and implementing AI to support your marketing
- More accessible, simplicity-focused technology tools to manage your growth

CEO & Founder

Alvius

Groundbreaking recruitment technology platform.

Early Investor and Advisor

Umi Digital

Digital marketing agency focused on the hospitality sector.

Co-Founder, Board Member

Firedrop

Generative AI startup on a mission to automate design.

Launched the world's first automated website builder in 2017, using highly innovative proprietary AI technology to generate website designs witout templates.

Pivoted to enterprise design automation, ultimately delivering multi-million dollar design automation and AI transformation projects for multinational FMCGs in the area of packaging design and ad creatives.

Founder & CEO

Likeminded Media

Online dating portfolio company featuring popular niche sites for redheads, plus-sized people and more. Grew from 0 to 50,000 subscribers entirely organically.

Alterity

Software development agency. Sold the business after 18 months.

Founder & Managing Director

Integral Search

Headhunting senior consultants in the risk management sector.

Head of Risk Management Search

Imprint Plc

Headhunting senior consultants in the accounting and management consultancy space.

Executive Search Consultant

Omnia Music

An online music platform focused on discovery of unsigned artists. Grew from infancy to over 4,000 registered artists and over 3 million visits a month.

With over 20 years of visionary leadership in AI, marketing, and enterprise SaaS, I am deeply passionate about driving innovation and growth. As the CEO and founder of Growthmode, my mission is to empower modern marketing teams to thrive in this era of rapid technological change by offering accessible tech and data-driven strategic marketing support, equipping teams with the necessary tools and insights for rapid growth and AI integration.

My journey includes co-founding several successful startups, notably a generative AI company that spearheaded multi-million dollar AI projects before the era of ChatGPT.

At Growthmode, I lead a highly experienced team of entrepreneurs, marketers, creatives and academics with backgrounds in AI, marketing, and enterprise SaaS. We are building a digital marketing platform and growth agency that puts technology, AI, and automation at the forefront. Our goal is to help businesses do 30% more.

Beyond Growthmode, I lend my expertise as an advisor and mentor to early-stage startups and entrepreneurs.

Marc Crouch

Michael Blakley

Co-founder at Equitas | Interview intelligence software to ensure fair hiring

Founder of Equitas, inclusive interview intelligence software designed for fair hiring and helping companies build diverse teams. 

In a previous life I was a professional interview and assessment expert, designing and delivering recruitment, assessment, and interview campaigns for the likes of BSkyB, Aldi, TfL, and MoJ from entry-level hires through to C-suite. 

After 10,000+ interviews conducted across UK & Ireland, knew there had to be a better way, so set up Equitas. Working with the biggest employer in Ireland (HSE) and some incredible clients who are passionate about fair hiring, decentralised hiring, hybrid interviewing and DEI. 

Outside of work and HR tech startups talk to me about:

🏃‍♂️ Long-distance running

🥋  Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

♟  Chess

🦮  Guide Dogs

Co-Founder

Creating faster, fairer hiring with Equitas. Our inclusive interview software and dynamic interview frameworks allow companies to run their interview and assessment process with a simple, intuitive and structured approach to interviewing, assessing and selecting candidates. 

We are changing the way people assess with a focus on reducing interviewer and assessor bias, improving accuracy and making the assessment process more efficient and cost-effective. Currently working with some of the biggest healthcare providers in Ireland and the UK.

The State of TA Tech market at the moment. 

TA and Recruitment folks, if you're like me, you come on here and are drowning in content with people telling you different things. 

I'm going to try and condense it to some of the best voices you should follow: 


🧠 The TA Tech aggregators: 

Jessie Schofer, Glenn Lindley, Dionne Atwill 🛸, Rob Green 🚀, Alan Walker, Jeremy Russon - from clear graphics to personalised recommendations and everything in between


✍️ AI in hiring writers and influencers: 

Hilke Schellmann, Sarah O'Connor, Hung Lee, Glen Cathey, Joe Atkinson, Luke Eaton, Jamie Betts, Sarah White - from what the biggest enterprises are doing right down to the fastest operators in the TA space using every piece of AI they can - risks, pro's, con's, what's working, they cover everything


👩‍⚖️ AI legislation in hiring: 

Martyn Redstone - Martyn help me out here anyone else we should follow? - Martyn condenses things like Workday and Eightfold lawsuits into what it means for us in the TA space.


🥇 TA leaders who post great stuff:

Jen Hulme Assoc. CIPD, Darren Bush, Luke Eaton, Akbar Karenga - great leaders, posting great practical content that TA leaders and operators can use


🤩 The hiring events super-connectors who know everyone:

Bobby Leonard, Jamie Leonard, Mark Lennox, Andy Daniel, Dionne Atwill 🛸, Anna Milbank - deep networks with every TA person across the 🌍


🙏 Podcasts and live webinars you shouldn't miss:

Chad Sowash, Joel Cheesman, Emi Beredugo, Hung Lee, Adam Gordon, Christine Ng - my 2x favourites are Brainfood Live and Chad and Cheese - telling you what you need to know on a weekly basis


Anyone I missed or you'd add to these lists?

Founder at Equitas | CEO Screenloop | Interview intelligence and fair hiring

Who are the top ATSs by customer count? 

Overall: 

🥇 Workable
🥈 Ashby
🥉 Lever 

SMEs (1-1,000): surprise, surprise it's identical

🥇 Workable
🥈 Ashby
🥉 Lever 

Enterprise (5,000-10,000):  

🥇 Workday
🥈 Smartrecruiters
🥉 Greenhouse


I'd love the thoughts from the experts in this space to see if it rings true with what you are seeing or hearing? 

Gabriella Preston-Phypers, Jessie Schofer, Rob Green 🚀, Hung Lee, Alan Walker, Jeremy Russon

Another Friday shout out to epic folks in my network... 

Last week was the amazing Akbar Karenga this week we've got Martin Mason 

The amount I have learnt from Martin over at TalentMapper the last few years could fill multiple books. 

Reach out and speak to him if you're looking for advice on 


🤩 Internal Talent Mobility 

🙏 Fair hiring and DEI

💯 Building high performing teams 

😃 Anything linked to TA strategy 


He was in-house Head of TA in a past life and started building tools and programmes to help level the playing field and help underrepresented talent. 

One absolute hero to add to your network.

Epic for the teams at Equitas and Screenloop to be nominated across so many of the IHR - In-house Recruitment suppliers awards categories. 

Shout out to Rachel Okungbowa, Akbar Karenga, Merilin Männamäe, Barbara (Varvara) Marinakis, Giulia Sciota 朱衡丽, Victoria Butler, Jessica Silva Carvalho, Tauseeq and Javier Martinez for delivering some amazing work over the last year. 


🏥  No.1 interview provider in Irish healthcare with Equitas

📈  Launching interview-as-a-service with Equitas

🥇  Best interview intelligence insights with Screenloop

🤩  One of cleanest designed ATSs on the market with Screenloop


And both Equitas and SL supporting 200+ companies with National Interview Week to help 5,000+ students with their first ever mock interview experience in 2026.... 

Blink twice and another year will be gone. 

Amazing just to be nominated and shout out to Rachel doing all the applications.

TA and Recruitment Folks... 

What the Better Hiring Institute (BHI) is building is a movement that is already having impact. You should sign up today if you haven't already. 

On Monday afternoon we were in Parliament with policymakers, employers, academics and founders discussing one big question:

Solving the Skills Gap for Tomorrow...

How do we make hiring fairer, faster and better — while actually solving the skills gap?

1️⃣ Lord Knight spoke about:

- We will have 50–60 year working lives
- People having multiple careers across a lifetime
- The myth of “degree = job for life”
- £50k of debt before someone has even begun to adapt
- We’re entering a 100-year life economy, but our system still assumes linear progression.
- Crucially we need confidence in AI, creativity and adaptability embedded earlier in education.

2️⃣ Keith Rosser shared that:

- 60–76% of employers are struggling to find the right skills
- Employers are asking for skills over education
- Candidates don’t know what skills are actually needed
- Employers struggle to define skills
- 41% of new hires leave within 12 weeks = a systematic hiring problem

3️⃣ Peter Elias CBE spoke about how we desperately need a shared language for skills

- The move from SOC to SSC a Standard Skills Classification.
- Their work comes from 10 million job adverts analysed.
- V1.0 launching April 2026 (link in the comments)
- If we don’t standardise how we define skills, we’ll create confusion

4️⃣ Lella Violet Halloum shared a powerful viewpoint from young candidates:

- Academic success ≠ career success.
- Students don’t lack ability.
- In education we assess memorisation not the skills to succeed in work
- We reward compliance abd under-develop creativity and applied skills.
- Students should experience rejection early (rather than when applying for jobs for the first time)

5️⃣ Irena Grugulis highlighted a hard truth:

- Employers must step up
- UK training investment has declined.
- Accredited training is falling and upskilling is inconsistent.
- We cannot keep saying “skills gap” while under-investing in training.
- We need genuine co-production between employers and education.

6️⃣  Tina Harrigan-James covered

- We need human skills in the age of AI
- As AI accelerates, human skills become more valuable — not less.
- We need Creative problem solving. Resilience. Leadership. Collaboration.

7️⃣ The National Hiring Strategy November 2025 had 29 recommendations.

- The inefficiency of hiring is estimated to cost the UK £75bn.
- Covering Key ideas:

- Skills-first job adverts
- Organisational skills mapping
- Digitised credentials
- Inclusive, standardised skills classification
- Ending ghosting
- Making hiring faster, fairer, safer


And to close it off we had Danny Heath talking about National Interview Week and the goal to help 100,000 students by 2030 with their 1st ever mock interview experience. 

Helping state school students who normally would never get this support.

🙏 Recruitment and TA folks... one month to go to National Interview Week. 

So many great companies signed up to this incredible initiative by imployable® and supported by Equitas.

Here's a few of the names you might know: 

1️⃣ BBC 
2️⃣ Amazon 
3️⃣ Meta 
4️⃣ NHS 
5️⃣ Mitie 
6️⃣ Serco 
7️⃣ Siemens 
8️⃣ Rolls-Royce 
9️⃣ Mars 
🔟 Deloitte 
1️⃣1️⃣ Veolia 
1️⃣2️⃣ Allen & Overy 
1️⃣3️⃣ PageGroup 
1️⃣4️⃣ Korn Ferry 
1️⃣5️⃣ Eurostar 
1️⃣6️⃣ JLR 


And there's still time to get involved. 


If your organisation wants to give back, has 25+ volunteers and wants to make a real social impact reach out to me or Danny Heath. 


Giving students their 1st ever mock interview experience could be a bit of inspiration that designs the start of an epic career.


So if you're looking to help young people with their employability prospects, build your brand with some amazing students and genuinely give back. Then get involved. 


Happy Friday folks, have an epic weekend 🤩


Karen Hutchison Adão, Akbar Karenga, Graeme Harper, Alex Elliott, Kalpesh Baxi, Jo Major (She/her), Claudine Adeyemi-Adams FIEP, Rebecca Collis, Sharla-Jaye Duncan, Mark K. Mark Lennox, Nick Waller, Martin Mason, Erica Rose, Keirran Slimmon Karen Somal, Asil Choudhury Ben Read Read, Ben Keighley, Hannah Peet

Blink twice and it will be awards season again. 

A shout out to some of the epic folks who joined us last year at IHR - In-house Recruitment awards that you all need in your network:


🤩 Hung Lee - if you're not following Recruiting Brainfood you should be - weekly curated content straight in your email every Sunday.


👩‍💻 Giulia Sciota 朱衡丽 - if you're not following Screenloop's LinkedIn page you should be - copywriter by trade and covering all things marketing with Rachel Okungbowa on Equitas and Screenloop


🥇 Natalie Edmunds MCIPD - an epic Head of TA who tells it like it is when it comes to the speaking circuit, good people + tech the key to any good TA team


💯 Martyn Redstone - the leading voice when it comes to AI governance and legislation in the TA and Recruitment space. 


🧠 James Crichton - another epic Head of TA who wrote some of the best LI articles you'll ever see on assessment and selection methods that stood the test of time. 


🧩 Jim B. - the number one person for partnerships in the TA and Recruitment space, knows everyone from in-house, agency and tech. 


Here's hoping we have another fun awards season when it rolls around again. The teams at Equitas and Screenloop will be there in force again.

The evolution of the ATS space.... 

The below is from 2020.

What would everyone's predictions be now for those top 3:


🥇.....

🥈.....

🥉..... 


Enterprise and mid-market has changed but I wonder if Workday and co. still dominate? 


What are folks seeing at the upper end of the market?

Friday shout out to celebrating the year of the 🔥🐎

A collision of Sichuan TA Club and Kim Stringer's People Ops and HR group. 

Some of the greatest TA, Recruitment & People Ops folks on the planet.

🚨 The State of TA Tech at the moment. 

Yesterday's post was the wider ecosystem. Today here's some great vendors putting out some epic content in the world that you should follow. 



🧲  Attraction and Sourcing: 

Mark Chaffey at hackajob, David Paffenholz 🧃at Juicebox, Gabriella Preston-Phypers at Tooled Up Raccoons, Stephen Anderson at crooton, Ben Keighley at Gaia

This category is hotting up and going agent heavy. Who will win out of the forefront of agents for sourcing, take your pick between Hackajob, Juicebox and MetaView. Other thought leaders in here are epic and if you haven't read it yet DM Stephen at Crooton for the one TA and Recruitment magazine you should be reading.... 


🧪 Assessment:

Jamie Betts at Neurosight, Christopher Platts at ThriveMap, Jess Woodward-Jones at Vizzy

I'm not going AI heavy in this space yet as it's a minefield so here are 3x folks who talk a lot of sense and offer everything from realistic job assessments, candidate portfolios to... OK well one AI one, voice AI assessment. All well worth a follow and hyper focused on fairness. 


👩‍💻 Interviews: 

Akbar Karenga at Screenloop, me at Equitas, Siadhal Magos at Meatview, Theodore Chestnut and Benjamin Sesser at BrightHire, Scott Parish at Hireguide, Lorna Erickson at Expert Interviewers

I've snuck one less tech focused person in on this list, see if you can spot them.... But her videos are brilliant for highlighting everything that is wrong with interviewing. This category has everything from the best interview intelligence providers on the market at SME, mid-market and enterprise. And take your pick AI-lite note-takers and best practice auto-cue for interviews.... Right through to AI the hell out of the process from start to finish (job spec to onboarding). Great voices in here all worth following. 


📈 ATSs - Akbar Karenga at Screenloop, Tom Hacquoil and Sarah Lane at Pinpoint Applicant Tracking System, Daniel Chait at Greenhouse Software and Hannah Peet from Candidly (white label ATS for HRISs), Jim Miller from Ashby

This list could be endless for ATS, but pick your favourite voice in the space that we should add in here (I'll naturally be a bit Ireland/UK/European focused) - Alan Walker, Jeremy Russon, Rob Green 🚀 who are the best voices from the likes of SmartRecruiters and the wider market? 


🙋‍♂️ Any other epic TA tech providers out there that should get a mention? 


✅ Just let me know and we can add them to the next list.

🤩 TA and Recruitment folks, a massive thank you. 


To the 800+ volunteers signed up to give kids from state schools their first ever mock interview experience... 


YOU ARE LEGENDS. 


1️⃣  Sharing your experience & career journey

2️⃣  Hints, tips & advice on CVs & interviews 

3️⃣  Structured questions with the Skills Builder Framework 

4️⃣  Feedback reports to all students


This keeps getting bigger year by year with imployable® and Equitas 


Social impact, Employability, ESG, CSR, Volunteering and giving back this is something for you and your company 🙏


Excited for 2026 and it's only going to build from here 🤩


TY to the folks who helped shout about it: Kalpesh, Danny, Akbar, Claudine, Richard, Keith, Hung, Karen, Marina, Barbara, Giulia, Rachel and many more 🙏

Happy #IWD2026 to all the incredible women in my network who have been supporting me day in and day out, year in and year out. Thank you🙏

Kristina Bier, Rachel Okungbowa, Barbara (Varvara) Marinakis, Merilin Männamäe, Giulia Sciota 朱衡丽, Jessica Silva Carvalho, Victoria Butler, Lisa Kim MacLaren, Karen Hutchison Adão and so many more.

Client feedback is everything in this space. 


Genuinely loved working with Graeme Harper over the last few years. Not just from an Equitas perspective but personally as well. 


✅ Interview-as-a-service with an expert pool of interviews 


✅ Interview software to capture all interview data as a single source of truth


✅ Customer Success team that moved heaven and earth to help the client 


Resulted in an award winning candidate experience and a pace that I've seen no other company work at! 🙌

AGEISM versus Aging... TA and Recruitment folks.


❌  In nearly every industry we are hearing stories of folks being knocked back for having "Too much experience" 


💯 If you get a chance have a read of the linked article from Hung Lee in this week's Recruiting Brainfood. 


https://lnkd.in/eVqVQN-A


It points out that: 


🧠 Fluid intelligence peaks near age 20 (reasoning, memory, processing speed)


📈 Other dimensions improve into midlife, including crystalised intelligence (vocab), financial literacy, and emotional stability.


🔎 Traits like conscientiousness, emotional intelligence, and moral reasoning follow an inverted U-shape, peaking in midlife before declining.


🥇 And here's the main one that stuck with me... 

"Individuals best suited for high-stakes decision-making roles are unlikely to be younger than 40 or older than 65." 



✅  So the next time you have a hiring manager or someone else involved saying something along the lines of "Too much experience" this is good ammo to challenge them and see what they mean...


Personally I'm excited about that 25-year span of being better at making decisions, as after starting up a company in my 30's and making every mistake in the book... I must have learned something by now. 


Have a great week ahead folks and let me know if you've heard the line "Too much experience" in the last 12 months?

Everyone is talking about the first stage screen being replaced by Voice AI. 


✅ Are you for? 


❌ Or against 


Whenever it comes to candidates going through a Voice AI screen? 


Adam Gordon has been pointing out that it depends on the role. Entry level or blue collar roles being a better fit for this... 


Glen Cathey wrote an article saying people preferred humans (mainly as they felt they could influence them)


And 1.5m vendors at the moment promising you that their algorithms are less biased than humans (watch Dr. Joy Buolamwini's Coded Bias if you want to see how we got it wrong with the last set of tools). 



Voices of reason to follow in this space: 


Dr. Joy Buolamwini 

Martyn Redstone 

Akbar Karenga 

Sarah Connor at the FT writing some incredible pieces. 

And every single graduate for the last decade who's had to go through a one way video interview and said they hated it i.e. candidates left with just tech having a terrible experience with the folks forcing them to use it saying it's in the name of productivity/progress.

🚨 Candidate Experience in 2026.... And the world of AI.

Right Recruitment and TA folks these 4x speakers are absolute heroes who are going to break down what's happening in the space at the moment. 


1️⃣  Candidates using AI to mass apply - no better speaker in the world than Aidan C.


2️⃣  Do TA folks practice what they preach - Rebecca Collis with a deep dive on TA hiring, structures and candidate experience in 2026


3️⃣  Candidate personas - Chris Rowe will challenge you all with the question "Do you actually understand the candidates and future employees you're looking for and what drives them" 


4️⃣  Employer brand in 2026 - no one across the globe who knows more about this topic than Claire de Souza 


It will be roll on and roll off with the speakers and with 130+ TA and Recruitment folks signed up so far it could be an action packed Q&A


This is one that you do not want to miss as you're going to get actionable insights and takeaways from some of the best people in the space.

TA and Recruitment folks


❓ Are any of you struggling with too many candidates at the application stage? 


🙏 Want a free way to minimise this problem? 


Then listen in on rewind on how 


Claire de Souza, 

Chris Rowe,

Aidan C.,

Rebecca Collis 


All give you best practice approaches for candidate experience in 2026. 


Tech isn't always the 1st answer. Process and comms then if that's right what are the amazing things we can do on top. 


Link is in the comments.

TA and Recruitment folks. 

Does every single one of your hiring managers do some form of training before hiring and interviewing? 


🕵️ License to Hire 

⚖️ Unconscious Bias Training 

💯 Inclusive Interviewer Training 

🤩 Hiring 101


Call it what you will but do you do something with them every year? 


And actually genuinely interested in names you are giving your training courses these days....

The author can see how you vote. Learn more

Does your whole company currently capture their interview data? 


💯 We use a dedicated tool


👩‍💻 We use Teams/Google/Zoom 


❌ Not yet

Does your whole company currently capture their interview data? 

🥇 TA and Recruitment folks. 

Akbar Karenga and I are hearing more and more folks are ATS shopping at the moment. 

🚨 Some people even doing 18x demos 👀  

Getting the core part of your hiring stack is more important than ever. So people are spending more time on it. 


But what's you no.1 priority: 

1️⃣ Price

2️⃣ Features

3️⃣ Customer Support

4️⃣ What's an ATS....

What's most important when you're choosing an ATS?

taplio

The Battle

Marc Crouch

Michael Blakley

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreMichael Blakley's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Marc Crouch

Michael Blakley

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Michael Blakley's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMichael Blakley's LinkedIn Performance