Laughs, loyalty and lifelong learning: An interview with OneSearch’s Liz Jarvis

At OneSearch, we believe our strength lies in the collective expertise, passion, and unique stories of the individuals who form our team. In our ‘Meet the Team’ series, we invite you to step behind the scenes and discover the diverse talents that drive our commitment to uncompromising quality. Today, we’re incredibly excited to introduce you to someone truly special: our Managing Director, Liz Jarvis. Known for her unique blend of wit, unwavering loyalty, and an inspiring passion for learning, Liz’s remarkable three-decade journey with OneSearch offers a unique window into the values and vision that truly make the OneSearch difference every single day.

Liz Jarvis grew up on a diet of comedy. She loved Bill Hicks. And, like her parents, she adored Billy Connolly.

“We had all of his vinyl albums,” says Liz. “I would take them upstairs to listen to them. He does a big spiel called ‘The Crucifixion’. It’s around 30 minutes long. I could perform it word for word for word.”

Her OneSearch colleagues have often wondered aloud if she missed her calling as a comedian.

There’s far more to our Managing Director than an irrepressible ability to make people laugh, and as she marks a significant milestone, we thought it was a good time for our customers, colleagues and other industry professionals to find out more about the woman who:

• Lets squirrels climb on her monitor during Teams calls
• Was chucked out of a séance at York Dungeon for a fit of giggles, and
• Once gave a lift to a distraught man at Glasgow Royal Infirmary who, it transpired – much to husband Tom’s dismay – had got lost delivering a curry to a patient.

30 years and counting

Liz has been with OneSearch almost as long as we’ve been collecting data.

She’s now reached 30 years with the company and has seen OneSearch grow from its embryonic stage to where it is today. It has been quite the trajectory; for OneSearch and Liz.

• OneSearch has grown from a small town planning practice in West Dunbartonshire to a team of over 200 offering the most extensive range of property information datasets in the UK.
• Meanwhile, Liz has risen all the way up the ranks from a junior role in the data team to become Managing Director of OneSearch and Director of Legal & Search at Landmark. And her journey has been recognised by Scottish Business Insider magazine, which named her among Scotland’s most inspiring business women.

Things could have been very different were it not for a quirk in Liz’s employment history.

Tiptoeing past the typing test

Do you remember Ceefax?

Way back when TV only had five channels, before the words analogue or digital had entered common parlance, Ceefax (and its little sister Teletext) was the red button of its day. Working at Newstel after graduating from Leeds University, Liz was responsible for adding updates on the shipping forecasts and the day’s horoscopes.

Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger. North or northeast 3 to 5, occasionally 6 at first, except in Cromarty. Fair. Good, occasionally moderate …  Sagittarius. In a social setting, you could come across as a person who is eccentric and yet very interesting.

You might think that experience would have meant Liz was a fast typer. So did the founding partners of SPH (as OneSearch was originally called) when they were hiring her back in 1995. Such was their confidence in her typing skills that they excused Liz from having to take the company’s (then) mandatory typing test.

Liz is convinced, if she had been made to take it, she wouldn’t have passed. You had to achieve so many words per minute and she knew that, while meticulous, she simply wasn’t fast enough.

“I’m the only person they ever took on that they didn’t give the typing test to,” Liz tells us.

While Liz was spared that particular challenge, her upbringing taught her the importance of not avoiding difficult situations.

Being there for people

Liz and her brother had an unusual but happy childhood.

Their parents instilled strong values in them. Doing the right thing for society was always a big deal.

“My dad, in particular, was a real believer in doing the right thing. No matter how uncomfortable things were, my dad would always make us go and do it.”

Liz remembers the time, when she was a young teen, a neighbour passed away. Her dad made her go round and speak to his widow.

“I remember thinking, ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t know what to say’. But actually, my dad forcing me into those situations at a young age meant that now, whatever’s happened to anybody, I’ll be the first to phone them up and say, ‘I’m coming round’.”

It’s not about knowing the right thing to say. It’s about being physically present.

Brought up at The Big Hoose

Liz grew up at, but not in, Scotland’s largest prison.

Bar-L. The Big Hoose. HMP Barlinnie, where her dad was a prison warder. (Her mum was a conveyancer.)

Liz’s family lived in prison quarters. They were there during the famous riots when prisoners were launching slates off the roof. Many hit and smashed the family’s windows.

It taught her how to survive in an environment where people really don’t like you.

“We lived in a really tight-knit community, because all the prison officers lived together. Everybody looked out for one another. Everybody protected everyone else.”

It’s why Liz believes it’s so important for young people to feel safe.

“It’s my turn to do it”

Liz is passionate about helping younger people get into a better situation.

That’s why she’s excited about her new role as a member of Landmark’s Social Values programme. Part of Liz’ recent history has included working closely with the King’s Trust to support and provide opportunities for 15 to 18-year-olds.

“If you don’t catch people at a young age and steer them onto a path which is more sustainable and better for their self-esteem, then that’s when things can start to spiral and go wrong.”

Liz believes if you put people on a good path, they’ll start to thrive.

“I believe in giving people chances, because all the way along the road, everybody’s done that for me. I’m 52 now, and I think that it’s my turn to do it for other people.”

Not that Liz hasn’t already been helping people.

Steps to resilience

Since she was a student, Liz has always volunteered.

She’s worked at the Citizens Advice Bureau, taught adult literacy courses and worked in a Glasgow soup kitchen. Along the way, she’s met lots of interesting people.

So when Roy Stirrat, one of the founding partners of SPH and Chair of the Link Group, asked if she would like to join the board of LinkLiving – a trauma-informed charity that supports people’s health, wellbeing, independence and community inclusion – it didn’t take Liz long to answer. Four years later, she became the Chair, a position she held for five or six years.

“I absolutely loved that role. Going around the different projects, meeting a lot of the service users, you just realise how fortunate your life really is.”

One particular story sticks in her mind.

A 15-year-old girl was being bullied at school. So much so that she felt unable to go outside the house.

“Her parents were at their wits end. They didn’t know what to do as they watched her sink into depression. She couldn’t get out, couldn’t form relationships. Her self-esteem and confidence were at rock bottom. Then her school recommended she go on LinkLiving’s ‘Steps to Resilience’ programme.”

At the end of the 16-week course, she was a different person.

“You wouldn’t have recognised her. Her mother wrote this really touching letter. It would have brought a tear to a glass eye. She told us how it had completely changed her daughter’s life. How she could never have imagined at the start that she would have come out as this person. For the first time in two years, she was going on public transport. She couldn’t do that before. She had been so fearful of everything outside the front door.”

Volunteering: the gift that keeps on giving

Liz is convinced that one of the best ways to make yourself happy is to do things for other people.

“Helping other people brings continuous joy, and it’s so good for your own wellbeing. You also develop your own skills, empathy and understanding at the same time. It’s a totally two-way street.”

It doesn’t need to be a huge thing that you do. Something small, almost inconsequential to you, can make a massive impact on someone else’s life. “Human connection”, says Liz, “can make people suddenly feel they have a part to play in society and that somebody is looking out for them. Never underestimate what a difference small acts of kindness can make.”

Volunteering also gives you a chance to learn, which is something Liz loves, loves, loves to do.

An insatiable love of learning

Liz doesn’t think of herself as academic, but she’s always been interested in philosophy.

“I love deep and meaningful conversations. The problem is nobody ever wants to have them with me!” she says with a chuckle. “So I had to pay to do a course to have people talk about philosophy with me.”

During lockdown, Liz started attending evening classes with Glasgow University. Among others, she’s taken courses on:

• Existentialism
• Moral philosophy
• Contemporary ethics
• Nature versus nurture
• How to research the history of your house

One thing that Liz has realised from her studies is how “daft wee things can lead to other things.”

For that last course, Liz decided to research the history of her first house, an old tenement near Shawlands and Battlefield, on the south side of Glasgow. She started making TikTok videos about it, and then about the East End of Glasgow.

This caught the attention of the BBC and she was invited to take part in a documentary about her experience of growing up at Barlinnie. Liz being Liz, though, many of the stories she shared were too funny for her interview to make the final cut.

However, Liz has no regrets about it. Because her philosophy is simple: never say no to an opportunity.

It’s something she picked up from her mentors at OneSearch.

Believing in herself, believing in others

Who has had the greatest impact on Liz’s career?

Marcus Noble, the former chairman of OneSearch. Still a close friend, Marcus taught Liz to believe in herself.

“Every uncomfortable situation, he would say to me, ‘go and do it. Don’t wait. Do it now.’ Whether that was phoning someone up or standing my ground about something, he would force me to do it. My nature is more compliance. But his actions completely transformed my self-belief.”

Instilling belief in others is something Liz has taken into her own style of mentoring – an approach that has helped develop talent throughout OneSearch.

“If somebody gets an opportunity and doesn’t believe they can do it, give me one hour with that person and I will convince them it’s something they can do. You can get down the road and realise maybe that’s not quite right for me and then change direction. But you’ve got to go for it. Run at it at 100 miles an hour.”

Liz also takes great pride in seeing talent develop, whether that be taking on the challenge of senior roles or progressing their career elsewhere.

People like Carol Gildea at OneSearch. Zoe Fillingham and Rob Steadman at our sister company SearchFlow, and her old sidekick from their days on the road together in England: Karen Bartke, aka Officer Karen from the BBC Scotland mockumentary Scots Squad.

“Karen left because I encouraged her to chase her dreams. I told her, ‘you don’t want to be 65 standing at the bus stop somewhere with the rain running down your back, thinking if only I’d done it. You can do this. You can do it!’”

What advice would Liz give to someone starting out on their career?

1. Build relationships

“It’s so important to make good contacts and build great relationships with people.”

2. Be all over technology.

“In the past we were able to think, ‘oh, mañana, mañana.’ But everything moves at such a pace now, so if you’re not at the forefront of that, if you’re not researching it, you’re going to get left behind. You need to be in the forums. To be heard at these discussion groups, whether it’s local law societies or government steering groups. You need a place at the table.”

3. Never stop learning

“I’ve still got millions to learn. From courses. From colleagues. From people I work with. Along the way you pick up wee nuggets about things. You never ever stop learning.”

4. Surround yourself with people who know more than you

“I’m surrounded by brilliant people who are great at all the stuff that I’m not. And maybe for me, my biggest skill in life was simply being the glue in the middle that held other people together.”

It’s a fitting note to end on. But just then, our Teams call is joined by a special guest.

A squirrel hops up onto the window sill.

“Wee Sheena.” One of Liz’s regular guests, dropping by with the same easy familiarity as any OneSearch colleague.

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