Rosaleen Blair, who built her business from scratch ten years ago into a £300 million global enterprise employing more than 800 people, says: “I didn’t do that well at school and didn’t go to university. I’m actually very undistinguished.”

Jan Parker, her executive assistant (pictured in pink jacket), cries out in protest: “She’s just the opposite. She is the most creative and inspiring person you’ll ever meet. The most common phrase you’ll hear her utter is ‘I have an idea’. I’m in the background, juggling the practicalities.”

Rosaleen, who was last week named Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year, founded Alexander Mann Solutions on one of her ideas: to persuade corporations to outsource their recruitment to her, on the basis that they would reduce costs (by up to 60 per cent), that it would free up their human resources departments, and that she, as an experienced recruiter, would do a better job.

Today her stellar client list includes many blue-chips, and the average contract length is five years. For Hewlett Packard, the company manages recruitment in 40 markets and 61 countries, including Asia Pacific, and for Vodafone it organises recruitment of permanent staff in both the UK and Germany.

“We recruit very diversely,” says Rosaleen, “but usually it’s at just under board level.” This is the woman who once recruited nannies in her native Dublin before deciding to go to London at the age of 29 to gain experience in a larger working environment. She joined the Alexander Mann Group, a recruitment organisation. Six months later she had what she calls her ‘eureka moment’ and set up the new business as part of the group. Today, after a series of sell-offs, Alexander Mann Solutions comprises the entire, hugely successful and highly focused business.

Certainly “undistinguished” does not begin to describe Rosaleen, now 41, so I ask her to try again. “Well, my nickname used to be Whirlwind,” she recalls.

Jan thinks that this sums up Rosaleen far better. “She is full of energy,” she says. “The rest of us feel tired just watching her. She’s an early riser and ready for meetings at 7.30am. I get in an hour later. She’s a great people person and finding her can be my biggest challenge — she’ll be talking to everyone, whether it’s the receptionist or her leadership team.

“She’s constantly on the go, and because the business is now in so many countries we’ll have the strangest meetings in the strangest places: the women’s lavatory, air-port lounges or at Boots pharmacy counters. I just have to grab her when and where I can, notebook in hand.”

That notebook is an undoubted ace up Rosaleen’s sleeve, because Jan is an ultra-fast user of Pitman shorthand. She says: “I'm very much a career PA and went to a traditional secretarial college after school. When I passed my diploma in shorthand, I came second in the country.”

Her role in the company involves far more than killer typing and shorthand speeds. She attends board meetings and considers it vital for a PA to understand the strategic direction of the company and its sensitivities.

She has been Rosaleen’s assistant for just over two years. She started with Alexander Mann soon after Rosaleen did, and saw the new business take off.

Rosaleen admits that in those early days she was a workaholic. “I was working from 7am to 10pm,” she says, “until I saw that it was having a harmful effect on the company: others were mirroring my behaviour. Five years ago I decided to be more sensible. We’re not a clock-on and clock-off company; I’m more interested in outcomes.”

The company, an Investor in People, has flexibility in its recruitment policies, so that employees can work part-time or from home, which particularly helps parents of young children. This category now includes Rosaleen: she and her husband, Nick Bishop, a property specialist, have a ten-month-old son and family is her priority. She says: “I don’t really see myself as a businesswoman at all.”

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