Businesswoman hands £250,000 to charity

Champion Recruitment in Oxford is donating £250,000 to charities, including the Oxford Children's Hospital Campaign, to celebrate its 25th birthday.

Mrs Hoodless started Champion Recruitment from a small office in Alfred Street in the city centre.

Now, a quarter of a century later, the agency has a 7,500 sq ft office in Cornmarket Street and branch offices in Abingdon, Witney, and Banbury.

The mother-of-two is now in charge of 74 staff, who celebrated the anniversary with a party at Oxford University's Lady Margaret Hall, on Saturday.

The firm, which serves 2,000 organisations across Oxfordshire, including local authorities, has good reason to celebrate - it now has an annual turnover of £25m.

Mrs Hoodless, who lives with her husband Quentin in Sutton Courtenay, near Abingdon, thought the anniversary would be the perfect time to donate funds to local charities.

She has a personal reason for making the large donation. Her daughter Sally, now 27, underwent a major heart operation when she was just 13 days old. As a result, £160,000 is being donated to the Oxford Children's Hospital Campaign, with £60,000 paying for cardiac defibrilators and resuscitation trolleys.

The mother-of-two said: "My daughter was born with a narrow aorta, and was brought back to life several times before she had a life-saving operation in London when she was just 13 days old.

"We have donated quite a lot of money over the years to charities supporting children with heart problems but we thought the anniversary would be a good opportunity to make a donation to the new children's hospital, and a number of other charities."

The firm has also donated £30,000 to Helen and Douglas House hospices in East Oxford, £30,000 to the Bobby Moore Fund, which raises funds for bowel cancer research, and the remaining £30,000 to the Steve Redgrave Trust, which helps underprivileged children.

Mrs Hoodless recalled how, when she was 17, she told her mum she wanted to go and join a kibbutz in the Middle East.

But after her mother warned her that she could end up being shot, she ditched the idea and joined a recruitment agency in Streatham, south London.

She did not imagine when she started out there as an office junior that she would one day be running her own recruitment firm with a multi-million pound turnover.

"The person running the agency was a wonderful woman called Carol Champion and she taught me a great deal," said Mrs Hoodless.

"I took the name, and in 1981 I opened up Champion Recruitment in Oxford. I wanted to use all the professionalism I learnt from Carol and combine it with a more personal service.

"It was just me for the first six months, and then I got two more staff and the business grew from there.

"It's all about placing people in the right jobs and finding the right jobs for the customers who deal with us.

"Whether you are dealing with a candidate (a prospective employee) or a customer, it's important to value them equally.

"You need to speak to people in some depth to find out precisely what they want to do and when we see someone placed with the right job, there is great job satisfaction for us.

"Some customers come to us when they have been made redundant and they feel rejected. We build them up and tell them 'it is the role that is redundant, not you'."

Mrs Hoodless's husband Quentin helps run the business and daughter Sally works for Champion in quality and marketing. Her son William, 29, is a semi-professional rower.

She added: "It's great having the office on Cornmarket because we get so much passing trade. It's a very good strategic centre.

Olympic rowers Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent were guests at the 25th birthday party, which was attended by most of the staff.

Mrs Hoodless's only regret is that Carol Champion, who inspired her to start her own business, could not be there to enjoy the celebrations.

She said: "She and her husband came to celebrate Champion's 15th birthday 10 years ago, but six weeks later she died from leukaemia.

"Most of what I am is down to her. She took a naive 17-year-old and turned me into someone who is good at this job. You either love it or you hate it, and I love it."

Charity donations

• £160,000 for the Oxford Children's Hospital Campaign. Alice Gosling, director of fundraising, said: "Corporate support from companies like Champion, for a project that will benefit children of employees as well as their clients, makes sense from both a business and community standpoint.

"We are delighted and deeply grateful that Tracy Hoodless and her team have shown such leadership and generosity."

• £30,000 for Helen and Douglas House hospices in east Oxford, which provide respite and end-of-life care for children and young adults with life-shortening conditions Vanessa Fay, corporate fundraising manager for Helen and Douglas House, said: "We are hugely grateful to Champion Recruitment as this wonderful donation is, for example, enough to cover the salary of one of our nurses for the next year, thereby helping us to continue providing the one-to-one care that is so crucial to the children and young adults who stay with us."

• £30,000 for the Bobby Moore Fund. The father of one of Mrs Hoodless's friends died aged 61 from bowel cancer.

• £30,000 for the Steve Redgrave Trust, which has raised £5m in the past five years for underprivileged children and young people across the UK. It helps young people get involved in sport.

Champion Recruitment - The first 25 years Mrs Hoodless launched the firm in 1981, from a small office in Alfred Street in Oxford city centre.

Shortly afterwards, the firm moved to a larger office in the Westgate Centre, and then relocated to a 7,500 sq ft office in Cornmarket Street in 1991.

There are also branch offices in Abingdon, Witney, and Banbury.