Meet Jimmy McLoughlin, founder and host of Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future podcast

Jimmy McLoughlin spent much of the last decade at the forefront of Britain's business world. Having been director of external affairs at the Institute of Directors, where he was instrumental in founding the organisation's fledgling offshoot for young entrepreneurs, he entered Number 10 as a special advisor on business, technology and entrepreneurship to Theresa May. He remained there during the first half of Boris Johnson's tenure before swapping politics for family life. As a new father and husband to a doctor, McLoughlin became a stay-at-home dad during the pandemic while his wife worked on the front line, and it was during those long hours that his podcast idea was born. Challenging himself to become the Martin Lewis of jobs, McLoughlin sought to help people discover the exciting roles being created by entrepreneurs and how they are shaping the future of work. Now in its sixth series, McLoughlin's interviewees have included Gymshark sensation Ben Francis, Ruth Handcock of Octopus Investments and Giles English, co-founder of Bremont. The show's remit has also widened with guests having recently included Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, and both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak during the race to become prime minister.

The story of Jimmy's Jobs of the Future, is the story of me. I left Downing Street in the autumn of 2019. We were starting a family and I wasn't sure what I was going to do next, but I explained to Boris Johnson that I wasn't going to be both a good special adviser and a good dad. It was time for me to do something else. I travelled with my family to California, and at the start of 2020 I studied at Stanford University for a few months.

I swapped Downing Street for diapers. Everyone remembers March 2020 and we got back to the UK on one of the last flights before lockdown. My wife, who is a doctor, went back to work and I became a stay-at-home dad. In a matter of months my life had changed from flying around the world on RAF Voyager with the prime minister to being home alone with my six-month-old daughter for 12 hours a day. It was the worst time to doom scroll, so we listened to podcasts instead.

The business media gives more time to job losses than it does to entrepreneurs creating jobs. Debenhams closing with the loss of 12,000 jobs obviously generated bigger headlines than an entrepreneur creating six or 12 jobs a time. I began to think, ‘Is there something I can do in terms of helping with the unemployment crisis that will come?' The Today programme has 12 minutes of business news but no one was doing long-form interviews with entrepreneurs to unpack these stories. That's where the idea for Jimmy's Jobs of the Future came from: entrepreneurs talking about where the economy is going, aimed at 25- to 35-year-olds, in their first or second job, who are thinking about what they want to do next but unsure as to where their skills can be applied. 

I opened my black book of contacts and got some pretty big entrepreneurs on the show. I had the idea, the contacts book and the ability to hold a conversation. I had to learn how you record, edit, produce and market a podcast. We kicked off the first season with Hayden Wood, co-founder of Bulb, which at the time was the fastest growing company in Europe. It's now a reminder of the dangers that entrepreneurs put themselves in when starting companies. [Bulb went into special administration in April.]

There's never been a better time to be a young person - or anyone - doing a career shift. Careers are getting more challenging, but there are more opportunities and more types of jobs being created than ever before. But navigating all this new information can be quite hard. Careers advice isn't very good in the UK. I wanted to speak to people who are creating those new jobs, not just now but in 18 months' time.

I'm trying to become the Martin Lewis of jobs by exploring all kinds of different jobs that people are doing. As we've expanded, I've gone back into a bit of my old stomping ground of politics by having Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak on the podcast to talk about the jobs that politicians do. We all assume we know what the chancellor and the prime minister does every day because we see it on the news, but it's not as straightforward. 

Where else could Andrew Bailey go to speak to 10,000 people about the job of the governor and all the different jobs that the Bank of England is creating? That was how I pitched the interview to the Bank of England. It was a big marquee interview for us but with so many organisations competing to get the best talent, there isn't really the space for the governor of the Bank of England to speak about the jobs it is creating.

Podcasting is like building a well: it goes from very narrow and very deep, and if people don't know it exists, it can be quite hard for people to discover it. It's a nascent industry and we spend three times as long marketing a podcast than we do recording it. For me, social media has meant up skilling. I dismissed TikTok at first, but I now realise that it's a skill to pick out the best 60 seconds from a 40-minute podcast.

I dismissed TikTok at first, but I now realise that it's a skill to pick out the best 60 seconds from a 40-minute podcast.

A good interviewee for us is someone with a story, an interesting career path and an interesting job. A career switch is always good to learn from. We're currently looking at the jobs of sport. The professionalisation of sports over the last 30 years has been incredible: at the start of the century, Barcelona Football Club employed around 100 people; it now employs close to 1,000 people in non-playing roles. What are all those jobs?

Elon Musk would be a dream guest. I'm also desperate to get Demis Hassabis from DeepMind on because [artificial intelligence] is a very interesting area for jobs. I'd like to have Miles Jacobson, studio director of Sports Interactive, which produces the Football Manager video games as a guest too. 

The way people make income is changing. Herman Narula, co-founder and CEO of Improbable Worlds, said on the show that the boomer generation will have earned their first money on newspaper rounds, millennials through hospitality, but the generation coming through now will earn their first pounds through online. I find it fascinating that we now have influencers, TikTok and people making a living from a YouTube channel giving fantasy football tips.

We're always looking to talk to people about potential partnerships with anybody who's interested in talking about creating value for our economy through jobs to 40,000 listeners. We spoke at the National Farmers Union and did two episodes on the future of farming, which was really interesting because it's one of the oldest jobs in the world but has also experienced huge technological changes.

I'm a columnist for The Times but I'm dyslexic and writing doesn't come naturally for me. It can be challenging. The thing about podcasting is that we are all social animals. We've all told each other stories and we were talking long before we were writing. When you work at Number 10 you become used to kind of being the prime minister's voice when you're talking to business and entrepreneurs. These are areas that I had always been interested in but after leaving Downing Street I had to find my voice. I hadn't realised until then that podcasting was the medium for it.

www.jobsofthefuture.co