Jimmy vs the Producers: How We Interviewed Andy Burnham at No.10 in 48 Hours

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0:38Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Welcome to this special episode of Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. We thought you might be a bit interested to learn a bit more behind the scenes of the Andy Burnham interview, how it came about, what goes into making an episode like that, and also an opportunity for you to meet some of the team that were involved in it all as well, from Tui, the producer who's been with us for a while, to Aggie and Annabelle who help on commercials, et cetera.

1:20we thought it'd be really useful just to kind of reflect on what was a whirlwind week and talk a bit more about it. Yeah, so I guess really what we want to do is kind of give the people what they want. This was, as you say, a kind of whirlwind of a week. Started off by you kicking back in your garden, enjoying a barbecue and receiving a text that basically said, hey, you know, how do you feel about coming to interview the Prime Minister in a couple of days? no pressure it was only his first podcast interview since coming to office and I think only his second media interview overall and so yeah it would just be really interesting I think for our viewers and listeners just to you to kind of paint a little picture of what happened over the next 36 hours the kind of roller coaster of you know is he isn't he is it going to happen isn't it going to happen etc.

2:11I've become slightly numb I think sometimes to getting a message like that so immediately it popped up with the person who I've worked with from the Keir Starmer interview year four so you immediately know that it's true and that it's kind of legitimate and then as you say I was in the middle of doing something so I was like well I'll go back to that in a minute and I did and I just got the sense I thought quite quickly this is probably going to happen because there's this whole kind of game with like when you're booking triple a guests of you don't know whether it's going to happen and i also know the context of working in downing street of how like manic it can be and how much can change you can have something like grenfall happen overnight or southport whatever it is right which just you know until you're kind of sitting in the chair opposite the prime minister in downing street i don't believe these are quite ever going to happen for 100%, right?

3:06You always know there is a chunky 10, 15 % chance and so on. So we went back and forth a bit on that Sunday, but I was kind of quite confident that it would happen for when they were saying and so on. And then you just, you also, people probably interested in the negotiations of, yeah, how long is it going to be? Like, where are you going to do it? You've been in Derby that morning as well. I was also quite keen on the idea of potentially doing it at number 10 North as well, just because I thought that would be, would have been really interesting. So you sort of, you know, negotiations has always been strong, but you're just kind of like finding out what each other want.

3:44And then, you know, it was a Sunday and we had this rule of it with the team that, you know, we don't WhatsApp on a Sunday unless it's good news or critically important. And so I thought it kind of fit into both of those categories, basically. So I sort of sent you guys a message just being like something we might need to start prepping for this week is this could be happening. So, yeah, I mean, I'd be interested in what you guys thought when I sent that back. I mean, obviously it's been with us for a couple of months, but it is one of those messages that you sort of write out yourself and think, gosh, this is quite strange.

4:21Normally when you get a message from your boss on a Sunday, it kind of fills you with dread. But, you know, yeah, in this instance, it was like, yeah, probably one of the most exciting sort of work things to be pinged about on a Sunday. and, you know, we tried to jump on it as quickly as possible. Yeah. I guess I'm kind of interested in terms of, like, this compared with any of the big moments for the sort of most exciting moments for the show over the last five years. Obviously, this was incredibly rapid turnaround, so very different in that sense. But did it feel different kind of landing, I guess, this huge this time?

4:56It has done on reflection, yes. In the kind of, like, immediate, oh, this is going to happen. because I've been on way the week before. I mean, I've had this sort of quite funny experience when the government changed the week before on the Monday that I'd been on the beach. And, of course, 10 years previously, I'd gone in with Theresa May. And so I was watching this kind of government change as it's become a bit more regular in British politics, but I was literally flying a kite on the beach with my three daughters. And I remember thinking, gosh, how different this was to me 10 years ago when I was kind of like running into the building and just sort of like smiling to myself.

5:35And there's definitely a bit when the government changes and you kind of like miss it a bit. And that's obviously one of the questions you get asked most is do you miss it? And, you know, as time goes by, less and less. But there is definitely another surge of adrenaline and so on, which is, you know, weirdly what this interview kind of ended up providing. Because when that happens, you know, I've been away the way before. I hadn't actually been reading that much of what the government was doing. So I was like, right, I need to now sort of basically get as well equipped for this interview as I possibly can within the space of 48 hours, which is a whole kind of like intellectual challenge on its own.

6:08I listened to his whole book. I went back and listened to loads of old interviews. You have to think, who do I know in my network that I can reach out to right now and that I can speak to that knows him and so on. And so, yeah, you're kind of pulling at all these different threads. And I think that was one of the things that I was pleased about this time was that we got a great team in place and I was able to kind of leave production and commercials and socials to the team. And I could just focus on that, which meant that I was able to land the best interview that we could and was able to travel so far.

6:45I think it is different this time, I think, because it reflects the wider world. it's not just the reflection on Jimmy's job to the future, it's the whole podcast landscape that the Prime Minister sat down with in essentially his first week still, you know, the start of his second week, the podcast and had like carved out a really long conversation for it. I think that just shows the sort of difference of where the industry is at and also where Jimmy's job to the future is at. I think with what you mentioned other kind of like previous big moments, in the show along the years and so on. Obviously doing Starman last year in Downing Street felt like a full circle moment where it was getting more serious and people were beginning to get this was a thing.

7:31And then of course doing Blair the kind of year before that as well. I basically seem to tick a late prime minister per year as we go. I've referenced to friends and colleagues since that so much of what we do in the YouTube creator landscape is can be quite nebulous in terms of like it's subscriber numbers it's watch hours it can really feel like in the industry it doesn't you know all these numbers can kind of be a bit meaningless and so on um and you know i can't necessarily remember what i numbers were this time last year example right yeah it's always how important is something to you what are you still thinking about it a year later and so on and the answer to that is no um whereas this feels like a bit of almost like Olympic medal type moment of, you know, whether it's the first podcast or the second interview.

8:24So whether it's gold or silver, like no one can, that's never going to be changed. Like, and that's a huge kind of thing for us. Whereas a lot of the other stuff sometimes feels like times and world records and so on. As great as they can all be and going past 100 ,000 was a big moment and so on. It's all a bit kind of meaningless. Like a lot of what we're trying to do is like, you know, that relevance the value of being in the room and where these interviews travel to as well is like a really important point and the fact it got picked up in everywhere from the la times to the australian like right across the uk i don't think we've ever been on radio one before yeah i'm not sure we'll have radio one again um but like that was yeah that that is just the sort of thing and it's how you also what i find particularly touching about all this as well is like the is what i find particularly touching about edit what i find particularly touching about all of this is the kind of outpourings of people saying what a good job you did and just like how well you're kind of doing it because you're in it building it every single week and i have been building it now for you know beyond 350 weeks and people come and go during that time um but you know just lights up your network which is a lovely kind of moment as well yeah yeah um a network is probably quite a good segue into talking about our partner for the show, which was obviously LinkedIn.

9:52And I think for many reasons, they felt like such a sort of natural partner for the show. Speaking personally from my Nagy's experience, we came across Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. We became aware of your platform through LinkedIn. It's how we're kind of sitting here today. And like serendipitously, Andy Burnham had also launched his own profile on LinkedIn around the time this interview happening yeah i look i think linkedin is amazing i mean it's quite interesting in terms of thinking about my time when i was at number 10 we had linkedin come in for the first time and talk about kind of like a bit about how it was going to merge towards more social media kind of platform because previously it did just used to be sort of direct connections and obviously that shifted and i don't think i even posted when i left number 10 that i had whereas now that would absolutely be the kind of um paramount thing to kind of do to to alert your kind of network that you're available for conversations and coffees etc we were listening back to the trailer for uh jimmy's jobs of the future from uh september 2020 uh a few weeks ago and i talk about like please share the show on linkedin like yeah we are a business and work show I just think it is a really powerful platform.

11:06And it's one of the things that I talk to quite a lot of A-level students and people just graduating. It's like, get on the platform because you can engage with people and follow kind of senior business leaders and get there. I used to think about it as a really old school method I used to do. After I'd done an internship, I used to often try and go traveling after it. And I used to send postcards. The idea would be the postcard would sit on the boss's desk or my online manager's desk. And basically, I would be like a constant kind of reminder there. And now you've got LinkedIn to kind of do that.

11:42You can follow these people, you can connect with people. Yeah. And it's where all the audience are. The future audience are there kind of lurking from the job seekers to the employers to everyone who's listening is there kind of very natively. and it just felt like the perfect fit, you know, the opposite of a badging exercise. It actually really adds to the episode. So it was a no-brainer. Particularly as well, like, it's... You know, what he was saying on there as well about the work shadowing, which we'll probably come on to a bit more, is the work piece that really sort of travelled. But it is true, like, you know, being in the room can be difficult if you haven't got connections and so on, right?

12:24You just touched on the work shadowing point that Anthony Burnham made. In terms of like kind of looking at the whole overall interview, what are, do you think, the kind of the key sort of takeaways from you when you're looking at it through the lens of the mission of Jimmy's Jobs of the Future? Like what kind of really struck you most? Obviously work shadowing was a big thing that he was really pushing. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think there are the work bits. I mean, I think one of the things that I picked up on was that I was quite surprised that he broke into poetry sort of halfway through it, right?

12:55Like there's been a bit of commentary online about how he's a bit sort of, you know, needs to be careful about how laddy some of the social media content is and so on. And so it's quite football, beer, snacks, pub based side of things. The office as well. Yeah, the office and so on. But I think one of the things, name drop coming in here, that John Major said to me before I went into number 10, which really stuck with me. I went around and saw lots of people before I started and got some advice. And he said, if you're yourself, you'll enjoy it. If you try and be someone that you're not, you won't.

13:29And I think it definitely came from him trying to be someone at times that he wasn't in there. And I think at the moment, Andy Burnham is being pretty true to himself in that. There'll be challenges, but again, he's aware of that. And I thought he was, you know, breaking into poetry in the middle of an interview. It was not on my sort of like Andy Burnham bingo card that I got on before the, yeah. Your Top Trump's card. Yeah, my Top Trump's card. But I just thought, you know, that, you know, it was great in some ways that he did that. And it shows like, you know, you've got to do the stuff that gets you reach, right?

14:06Which is the pub snack stuff and whatever. But it's great that he can also jump off and do depth at various points as well in terms of poetry. But I think the interesting thing, a lot of what's been picked up, the bit that really travelled, and I did sit there and think this will go far, is when he was sort of railing against Zoom interviews. Because I can totally see the point on that. But then I also think, and it's been interesting seeing some of the commentary online about this, is for a lot of people it makes it cheaper as well, right? to interview from the potential employee side of things as well.

14:39It means they don't need to travel and so on, which is something he's really focused on with the buses and whatever. So I think it's an interesting area, which we'll probably kind of like come back to more and more. Partly, I think, as well, it's just an AI world of where you want to probably get people in the room because you don't know what they've got behind the screen and reading, et cetera. I think that's the sort of secondary layer of that. But I think a lot of employers will still use Zoom interview in the first instance for screen, screaming, like the way that people used to do with the audio call.

15:12And quite often now, I prefer an audio call with people as well. I find if you have a Zoom call, it ends up filling the 30 minutes that it's allotted for. And a lot of the time doesn't necessarily need to be. Like it can be a much quicker thing. You can just do an audio call. It allows for a much quicker exchange of information. do I think the the other sort of big thing that sort of stuck out that traveled was obviously the work shattering side of things and how important that was and it has been really interesting on a couple of sort of like bits on it is the amount of people on LinkedIn that have said I did that or I knew somebody that did that has been really strong and it shows that it makes a difference actually and it's a real thing and it was in the sort of post-match interview as I wrote about on Substack in terms of like him chatting to the team and so forth but he also did speak more and more about the work show.

16:13He was like I have actually got to go back to the Great Manchester check the numbers on how many people we got through and obviously it's like day eight here but like I would like to see what we can do here at 10 Downing Street to kind of implement work shadowing and so on. And I think this stuff matters, right? I think it's funny, some of this kind of premiership as far has been like characterised as vibes only and such like, but like vibes matter. And I think going into places and seeing how they work and just getting a bit of an idea, just meeting two or three people that you can then go and add on LinkedIn or whatever, right?

16:46Like it just makes you, it just gives you a bit of that connective tissue to kind of understand how things work more. Because I was struck by, like, when I was doing that preparation for the interview, that this, we are generally blessed with prime ministers in the United Kingdom who have been successful all the way through their career. The job sort of demands it of you that you don't really get many kind of missteps along the way because it falls back. But actually, it was interesting that, you know, when I was reading this stuff, I was like, yeah, I'd got in my mind Andy Burnham the sort of archetypal, you know, researcher, SPADs, Member of Parliament, Cabinet Minister, etc.

17:26But actually, I haven't realised that he sort of spent these three years at university. And it's funny because people can dress these things up now at times, right? It's like, oh, you know, I have a few weeks doing this, that or the next thing. And it's not really, you know, it was probably like three years that he was kind of working in pretty unglamorous... Yeah, sea container world. Sea container world and tanker land and stuff like this. You know, not it's not what's from the other prime ministers of recent years kind of that the careers have looked like yeah it was also interesting the reaction you got when you put the call out about you know anyone who had done a shadowing placement and then i think we had a meeting with a prospective partner a week or so later and she actually she had actually done uh shadowing yeah she'd shadowed him up in manchester um a while back so yeah he definitely speaks the truth and i think there's something in that i mean i yeah we've we've kind of been reflecting on it a bit and we've sort of put that call out because we wanted to gather the names which we have done now.

18:24We don't quite know what we're going to do with it yet but I think there was something interesting and he really came alive when we were chatting afterwards about whether there is some kind of campaign or something that we can do with it because also at the other end of the scale I have had business leaders come and get in touch and be like it is a lot harder now because of the safeguarding and so on and it's different if you're the great mayor of Manchester and you've got people and teams around you but there are I mean he said he would look at the regulations I'm not sure he can look at those particular regulations that easily but I think there's definitely something in it where we've become risk averse about getting people into places and I think it's sometimes difficult to remember in those early stages of your career like how much those things made a difference yeah when you get on into your third decade like and when you can make that stuff happen a bit more uh you you sort of forget what it's like um and so i think it's important to try and do that i mean a side story of this is like i remember the first day that i went to downstreet's work and i was so unbelievably kind of excited and in awe and i look back now myself and i'm a bit like oh that's like a little bit twee and whatever but you know it it's important to kind of remember because you just you just sort of forget yeah putting yourself back in those shoes yeah that's exactly what you said see somebody's been listening to their uh i think one of the other sort of reflections that have about where we're going with all of this is you know it started with a zoom mic and a laptop in my spare bedroom and at the height of covid with a young baby that seemed the best way to go about it and there's definitely as a couple more children have been added to the roster in the last few years like it's been a bit of a challenge but um the youngest is turning three in the autumn and i can't wait to sort of do more in real life things i think there's a real way that we can kind of like shake up the sort of careers fair, careers markets and so on.

20:36We can make it exciting and not seem the kind of like rubbish kind of dating style system that in some places has become of late. And not a week goes by where you don't read about impressive graduates having to have filled in 200 forms and so on. I think there's ways that we can change that and really excited about some of the people that we can work with, but bringing it to life as well. it is that thing of like work shattering or meeting the people or hearing directly from them on stage about how they started their businesses or what those kind of like career key career moments were um for them you know who were the people that took a chance on them yeah andy burnham didn't actually say this in the episode but it was a lady called eleanor mills that um took a chance on him she happened to be tessa jow's um goddaughter and she was kind of working with him and knew him a bit and said you should really go for this kind of interview and you know the whole trajectory of andy's life changed off the back of that moment and arguably the country as he could become prime minister as well and i just think you know creating more of those sort of like serendipitous moments and so it would be really exciting for what we could kind of do and I feel a pressure as well about it, but pressure is a privilege to be responsible for trying to do this now because the old maxim that politicians have said for a long time, talent lies everywhere, but opportunity does not.

22:07I feel it's so true. I just think there are so many amazing things that are happening right across the country and we can be the place where people come to get the kind of careers inspiration because the job market is going to change right in the next five years. So I can't believe I get to say this, but Jimmy, welcome to Jimmy's Job for the Future. Right, so I actually think the story about how we met each other is quite a fun and interesting one. Do you remember that day on the 21st of September in 2024, one day before our birthdays, Well, for the listeners, me and Jimmy, we actually had the same birthday on the same day.

22:52So that happened just one day before our birthdays. So I came across your profile on LinkedIn and I was like, he has a podcast about jobs and about business. That is everything that I'm into. So let's connect. And then I remember like two minutes later, you accepted that invite. and then you dropped me a message which I think is quite a rare thing for people to do nowadays because like I remember at that point you have around 10k followers on LinkedIn so a lot of people in your network what was your thinking when you do that well I just always think when somebody connects with you you should just sort of like have a quick message because you generally have a look at the profile I mean I don't always do this but I just think it's good to sort of like acknowledge people and so on and i could see you were doing podcasting masters at city university right so you're always one of the things i've learned about being an entrepreneur is that you're always on the lookout for top talents etc somebody's been proactive gone out and connected you know sort of mini green flag early on i suppose um and yeah you you think about that and then again you'd sort of done you know what we talk about a lot which is you'd connected ahead of time and then you came and joined the following year, right, in terms of for work, for a work placement, right, which was kind of almost as Andy Burnham was saying, like a day a week.

24:19And then after that two months, we sat down and we were like, okay, Tui, you're not so annoying, so I'd love to work, continue working with you. And so I would be curious to know, so when you look for people to work with you on things, what do you particularly look for? So I think it's a challenge. It's a challenge at different stages. I think early on, you're just looking for the kind of raw ingredients, right? So, you know, you do want people that are going to work hard, right? Like one of the things that at any stage in your career you have to think about is like, what are your edges? What advantages have you got over people?

24:57And the thing that every young person has is time in the day and time over the course of their career as well. So they need to think about the kind of like cumulative compounding effects. So people that can sort of get that and just realise that partly by getting ahead is by working hard, doing the job that needs to be done, but then doing the kind of extra things. That's the thing that I think often about is that you need to demonstrate that you can do the next job of the wrong before you're given it. You need to be able to show that I can do this, I have done it, so give me the job. It doesn't work the other way around where the employer thinks, or you've got the potential to do that and so on it does perhaps in the first instance right like when you take somebody on you're looking for a kind of potential but so i think that's um that's kind of important for what you're looking at ability to kind of like synthesize information and explain things is quite important yeah we're dealing with lots of different complex issues we go from interviewing prime minister or chancellor one week to doing a love island influencer the next there's quite a lot of range that has to be taken there and understood about kind of the episode planning and just i suppose being able to understand the mission and where we're heading because sometimes it's not clear and it's not implicit and it or rather it is implicit rather than explicit um and so that's a real kind of challenge so that's one of the things you're looking for it's quite a rambly answer i can cut that down um You made me look good to me.

26:35That is what I look for in people. Make me look good. So you talked a lot about compounding effort. And I remember you mentioned that after the Annie Burnham interview, because in that we talked a lot about social capital, about the importance of network. Can you elaborate a little bit on that and how young people can leverage on the compounding effort to make a move in their career? What compounds is part of the change of AI, right? But one of the things is relationships and friendships and networking have compounding effects that you don't sort of realise and so on. You can build, I think in the modern era, you can build lots of loose ties.

27:19So you can go to lots of events, you can kind of connect with people, you can leave an impression of who you were and so on. And then these sort of loose ties end up presenting themselves in opportunities in different ways. I mean, we can talk about this story that when I got taken to an event by YouTube a couple of years ago, we met somebody there who got in touch with us just yesterday and has now presented us with an amazing kind of YouTube guest for us to sit down with in a couple of weeks' time. I think that's kind of important when it comes to social capital is just the compounding effects that take place and just going out there and meeting people, going to events, building your understanding of how these things work and how networks put together.

28:06Brilliant advice. We'll have to do it again to it. In the next Jimmy vs. the Producers session... It's going to be longer than this.