Lee McQueen
Lee McQueen, has had a successful career in both Recruitment and Advertising but is most famous for winning 'The Apprentice’ in 2008. Today, Lee runs his own business ‘Raw Talent Academy’ - a company which aims to provide Small and Medium Sized Enterprises and Corporate organisations the opportunity to build internal sales academies into long term staffing plans and to encourage organisations to look at the wider talent we have in the UK and not just graduates.
Raw Talent Academy specifically searches for talent that has not had the best start in working life or the best education; but offer key skills hard work and determination, candidates that are street wise have common sense, intelligent, the desire to succeed and above all commitment.
Lee previously worked in Recruitment and spent ten years in the industry, six of which were with Capita Resourcing. After working his way through the business, he ended his career at Capita as the Sales and Delivery Manager, heading up the IT recruitment division. On leaving (Jan 2008), the division turned over £32million and had around 30 staff; 22 of which were revenue generating.
Lee also set up an academy within his division, designed to recruit staff with limited experience and using strong training and development methods to develop them into fully fledged sales consultants deployed within the business.
In 2008, Lee beat 20,000 candidates to land a role with Lord Sugar by winning The Apprentice! Lee says, “ I learnt so much from the gruelling 12 week process and to win it was outstanding. To set out your goals and achieve them is incredibly rewarding. The Apprentice tests you in every way, stamina, business acumen, team work, confidence it was a great experience.”
After winning the show, Lee and Simon Sugar set up a business for Lord Sugar called Amscreen - a digital media business. As Development Director Lee was responsible for the development and integration of the business both commercially and internally to enable Amscreen to become the UK market leader in digital signage. Lee was primarily involved with building a team of sales professionals and the development of new and existing customers for both the site acquisition and the advertising sales for the business; ensuring that Amscreen grew the network and the media that is displayed on it.
Lee Say’s, “Today my passion is about helping others to realise their potential and provide them with a platform to go on and achieve in business. Having recruited sales people for most of my career I’m convinced that every business should have a Sales Academy.”