Ricky Martin, this year’s winner of the BBC’s The Apprentice, launched his joint venture recruitment company, Hyper Recruitment Solutions (HRS), last night at the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in London’s Piccadilly.

Martin’s business partner, the entrepreneur Lord Alan Sugar, was at the event to answer questions from guests at the event, which included nearly 100 science and technology companies and Recruiter magazine.

At the start of the event, where guests were offered refreshments from waiters in lab coats and goggles, Martin was presented with a certificate inducting him as a member of the RSC. 

He introduced his new company, saying that because he was a scientist and passionate about the sciences, this “differentiated his company” from other scientific recruiters. HRS would “recruit to the highest possible standards in the industry” and to that aim was accredited with both the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) and the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC), he told the audience.

In answer to a question about finding skilled people, Lord Sugar told the audience that employers need to go to specialist recruiters to get the top talent but they had to be discerning. “We need to filter out bad recruitment companies,” he said, so that you don’t just deal with a “fast-buck merchant”.

Martin had spoken with Recruiter earlier in the day, and he stressed his focus was to “promote science as an industry” and said that recruitment was almost a secondary factor. He was keen to promote the industry to graduates and school leavers. “There’s a lot more to science than sitting in a lab,” he explained.

When Lord Sugar was asked why clients should turn to HRS for their recruitment, he said that Martin’s value was that “he understands the business, he’s a scientist”. He concluded: “That’s why we will succeed and not just be A N Other.”