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New to Market

14 April 2025
Creative/Digital/Media, Engineering

NEW TO THE MARKET: 14-18 APRIL 2025

• Manufacturing and engineering specialist Busy Bee Recruitment has relaunched its website. The refreshed online platform has a modern design and enhanced user functionality, offering an intuitive browsing experience that makes it easier than ever to explore current vacancies, submit CVs quickly and securely, access expert recruitment advice via a blog and submit vacancies directly online.

• Deel, a global payroll and HR provider, has launched a suite of AI-driven products to help companies hire, manage, and pay international teams. Deel will offer an all-in-one global workforce platform integrating payroll, HR, and IT, designed to support compliant operations across borders. Key updates include: Real-Time Payroll in over 53 markets (expanding to 130+ by 2027), offering instant calculations and faster processing; Deel PEO for offering top-tier benefits without enterprise-level costs; Benefits Admin for simplified, compliant benefits management across countries; Deel Talent for streamlined recruitment via trusted agency networks; Workforce Planning, Compensation, and Engage tools – powered by AI – for smarter headcount strategy, global pay management, and employee development; IT Lifecycle Management features like MDM, IAM, and EPP, supporting global device and security control.

11 April 2025
Creative/Digital/Media, IT/Telecoms

Spotted Zebra merges Interview Intelligence and Assessment in one platform

This is technology that transcribes, analyses and evaluates conversations through an AI-powered lens. The merger connects assessment results with interview data, addressing the growing challenge enterprise talent leaders face: making confident, objective hiring decisions when candidate information can be fragmented across multiple tools.

In a statement, Spotted Zebra says that enterprise talent acquisition teams are facing twin pressures from AI-generated candidate applications and deepening skills shortages. 

The launch responds to a critical market challenge, the statement continues; while more than three in four businesses report widening skills gaps, employers are inundated with applications with around half of all jobseekers using AI tools to apply for roles. Current solutions force companies to choose between expensive, disconnected systems or compromise on either assessment breadth and depth, or a scalable interview process and structure.

“We’ve integrated Interview Intelligence with Assessment because our enterprise customers are facing unprecedented challenges in talent acquisition,” said Ian Monk, co-founder and CEO of Spotted Zebra. “By unifying these previously siloed technologies, we’re enabling talent teams to make data-informed decisions based on a complete picture of each candidate’s capabilities.”

Unlike standard Interview Intelligence tools that primarily transcribe conversations, Spotted Zebra’s implementation establishes a data framework that truly connects skill measurements across different evaluation methods:

  • Real-time skill evidence mapping: Comprehensive role skills profiles are automatically created thanks to AI-powered intake meetings between recruiters and hiring managers. 
  • AI-assisted interview questioning technology: The AI-powered Interview Guides automatically generate targeted question paths for specific role skills profiles and each candidate.
  • Consolidated hiring evidence dashboard: The Decision Kit combines summarised skill data from both assessment scores and interview evidence, weighting each source appropriately based on predictive validity for specific skill types. 

According to the company statement, AI in Spotted Zebra enhances human decision-making, ensuring the final call on a candidate’s suitability for a role is objective, data-backed and always in the hands of the hiring team.

Headquartered in the UK, Spotted Zebra was launched in 2020 by Monk and co-founder and chief commercial officer Nick Shaw.

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10 April 2025
Creative/Digital/Media, Executive search

NEW TO THE MARKET: 7-11 APRIL 2025

• UK recruitment firm HRGO has launched ‘Betty’, an AI agent tackling recruitment ghosting by ensuring all job applicants receive feedback. Since its December 2024 launch, Betty has provided personalised insights to over 40,000 candidates. A survey of 1,000 users found 90% valued the feedback, addressing a major frustration in the hiring process at scale. Betty was named after Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Parkinson, the founder of HRGO back in 1957.

• Recruitment firm Sowena Group has moved into new headquarters in Manchester city centre. Perran Cooke launched Sowena Group last summer after more than a decade in the recruitment industry, including roles as regional MD for the North at executive search company PSD Group and as a director at Axon Moore. Sowena now has a team of five and has taken office space at The Tootal Buildings on Oxford Street. The company statement says Sowena Group is expected to deliver more than £650k in revenue this year.

Senior recruitment consultants Dave Kreitz and Mackenzie Harrop have joined Sowena in recent weeks, along with Leah Allen as head of marketing and Megan Buckley as marketing executive. Cooke said he expects the team to grow to 10 by the end of this year, creating roles for recruitment consultants, back office and support staff, market research specialists and a non-executive director. Sowena Group focuses on senior finance posts in high-growth and private equity and venture capital-backed businesses across the North-West and beyond.

3 April 2025
Creative/Digital/Media, Executive search

Dragon-backed Chapter 2 boosts talent offering with transformation service

Backed by Steven Bartlett (from BBC Dragons’ Den and his Diary of a CEO), this strategic expansion aims to solidify “Chapter 2’s 360-degree talent solutions offering, delivering comprehensive, data-driven solutions to the most pressing talent challenges facing businesses today”, according to a company statement. 

Spearheading the new service is talent strategy director David Brammer. The Transformation & Advisory practice will tackle every area of talent acquisition, from capability and capacity to hiring process optimisation and workforce planning. The practice will also provide talent strategies to prepare businesses for AI-focused roles for the future of work.

As part of this offering, Chapter 2 will conduct in-depth talent and hiring audits, identifying opportunities and reducing hiring-related challenges, through structured hiring diagnostics and benchmarking. 

The service also includes recruitment efficiency assessments, policy and risk evaluations (including IR35 compliance) and contingent workforce strategy development.

Leo Harrison, founder and CEO of Chapter 2, says: “Establishing the Transformation Advisory completes our 360 offering, making sure that we’re able to provide solutions to both common and uncommon challenges that companies face in not only today’s workplace, but the one of the future.”

With 26 years’ experience leading global talent acquisition strategy for brands such as Boots, Kingfisher and Ocado, Brammer will be supported by experienced hire Marta Wasowicz, as the director of advisory and transformation.

L-r: Steven Bartlett, Marta Wasowicz, David Brammer, Leo Harrison ©Chapter 2

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15 May 2017
Construction & property, Executive search, HR

NEW TO THE MARKET: 15-19 MAY

• Specialist staffing company 2B Interface has opened an office in Poland, located in Kamienna Gora, Lower Silesian Voivodeship.

The branch will be jointly run by chairman Justyna Mikolajczyk and vice chairman Arkadiusz Burek, and will be known as Agencja Pracy Meeritt.

• Graduate recruiter XL Graduate Placement has rebranded as Graduate Talent Solutions following its 2016 its acquisition by talent management specialists Nicholas Associates Group.

The rebrand also sees a new website launched, while the firm has also opened an office in Sheffield.

Nicholas Associates Group’s companies including Stafforce, Nicholas Associates Professional, Ashley Kate HR, Nicholas Associates Software and Nicholas Associates Consulting.

• Professional network LinkedIn has launched two new features, Inmail analytics report and Today’s Job Matches.

Available from today on LinkedIn Recruiter, the InMail analytics report aims to use candidate insights to help recruiters improve response rates and have more strategic data-driven conversations with stakeholders.

Today’s Job Matches is a LinkedIn mobile app, available in coming weeks, which gives members a personally curated daily list of jobs matches and insights based on their personal preferences, salary highlights, skills and location.

• Niche technology recruiter MRL Group has introduced a paid sabbatical scheme as part of its employee wellbeing package. Recruiters at the Brighton-based firm can now benefit from a month off (fully paid) and a £1k one off payment, after every five years of service.

David Stone, CEO of MRL Group, says the initiative will help address the notorious ‘burn-out’ rate the recruitment profession suffers from, as well as assist the company’s recruitment and retention strategy.

• Global network of retained executive search firms Penrhyn International has launched its new global technology, media & telecoms (TMT) practice group.

The group is led by Yanouk Poirier, managing partner of pan-Canadian firm Leaders International.

• IT, media and engineering recruiter Premier Group has redesigned its website. The new site offers jobseekers the ability to create job alerts, while a new section about working for the firm has been added providing an in-depth view of what it is like to work for Premier.

• Kent-based recruiter Red Eagle has moved into new head offices in Folkestone, which is double the size of its existing office.

It will provide administrative support for Red Eagle’s other branches at Sittingbourne, Bexley and London, as well as its on-site operations in Dover and Thanet. In addition, the offices will accommodate the Folkestone staff, as well as the construction division, site labour supplies and Red Eagle’s chosen charity Donations with a Difference.

A new training room will provide free training for its workers, offering courses in Maths, English, manual handling, food safety, and health & safety.

• Recruitment tech start-up firm SymbaSync has secured six-figure funding to launch its job matching and recruitment platform.

The platform, launched by University of Edinburgh students and supported by the University’s commercialisation team Launch.Ed, aims to eliminate early stage recruitment bias and speed up initial recruitment processes to ensure a better candidate fit.

8 May 2017
Public sector, Transport & logistics, Education

NEW TO THE MARKET: 8-12 MAY 2017

• Beatrice Bartlay, business coach and founder of staffing agency 2B Interface, has launched a series of seminars to mentor the next wave of entrepreneurs.

Bartlay is offering four seminar programmes to help recruitment entrepreneurs achieve goals and become self-confident. The programmes are: ‘Work smart, not hard’, ‘The alchemy of financial freedom’, ‘Liberty: women mean business’ and ‘The gold winning team’.

• The Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) have revealed new guidance for each body’s members around teacher recruitment.

NAHT members will be offered guidance on working with teacher supply and recruitment companies, and will be introduced to APSCo’s new Code of Conduct for its education recruiter members. The code, sets out how professional recruitment consultancies will conduct themselves and what schools and academies can expect from APSCo members.

• Recruitment and marketing analytics platform ClickIQ has launched. The platform aims to intelligently improve campaign performance whilereducing spend by up to 40% by using big data analytics and machine learning to analyse response patterns to pay-for-performance recruitment ads, against budget use, media placement, role and location.

The platform uses this data to automatically place bids in direct proportion to the likelihood of success, with the aim of ensuring its customers do not overspend on easy to fill roles or underspend on hard to fill positions.

• Teacher job board Eteach.com has opened an office in Stevenage. The company said the move is in responding to the “urgent” demand for permanent teaching staff in the East of England area.

• Midlands-based recruiter Encore Personnel is launching a specialist driving division at its Derby branch. The Derby team will be recruiting both qualified and aspiring drivers across the Midlands region and will be led by branch manager Dave Walter.

Elsewhere, Encore is introducing a new service aimed at recruiting more senior roles for its supply chain and logistics clients. The new division will predominantly be based in Encore’s Birmingham office, but will also support the firm’s other nine offices across the Midlands, Yorkshire and the South.

• Nationwide recruiter Gi Group UK has opened a new office in Warrington. Gi Group Warrington, formerly based at Dolmans Lane, has moved its business to The Lodge on Tanners Lane, Warrington.

The branch will feature the company’s new branding and signage and will be led by branch manager David Toller.

2 May 2017
Construction & property, IT/Telecoms, Hospitality/Leisure

New to the market: 2-5 May 2017

• Bespoke staffing solutions provider Arthur Jackman Associates has moved into offices in Narborough, a small village located South of Leicester City Centre.

The office will also house the firm’s AJA SME Solutions, which was launched in March, to focus on finding talent for small and medium-sized businesses.

• Technical and engineering staffing specialist Gattaca has opened an office in Mexico City. The office is led by Mathias Mieville, the firm’s regional director for Latin America, who has been working with the company in Mexico since 2008.

• Job board Jobsite has launched a campaign aimed at educating office workers on the importance of IT professionals to the business.

The campaign is entitled ‘You Just Don't Get I.T.’ and features video revealing the first-hand experiences of IT workers and every day frustrations and stereotypes they face and tips helping IT professionals communicate their importance.

• Specialist Solutions UK has rebranded to Rice Technology. The rebrand also sees the forensic technology, science, environmental, technical sales and marketing staffing specialist unveil a new logo and website, while ‘recruitment experts’ has been added to the company’s tagline.

• Job board Temps in the City has launched. The site, launched by Emeca Beckford, who has experience working in the hospitality and customer service and commercial property industries, advertises jobs in hospitality, IT and general customer service industries across London.

24 April 2017
HR

New to the market: 24-28 April 2017

• Multi-sector recruiter C&D Group has rolled out enhanced benefits to its temporary workforce across the UK.

Company benefits include £50k of personal accident insurance, 24/7 GP services, both over the telephone or online eConsultations, medical specialist referrals, and health cash plans for discounts on glasses, dentistry, physiotherapy and chiropractor treatments.

Further benefits include 24/7 access to wellbeing services, fitness and nutrition helplines and advice, and high street discounts.

The firm has also announced it is now offering drivers negligence cover on clients’ fleets of 3.5-tonne multi-drop vans.

• Specialist engineering and manufacturing recruiter Jonathan Lee Recruitment has launched an asset management division, led by associate director Les Hines. The division will recruit across specialist engineering, management and director level positions across private equity, energy and infrastructure markets.

• Recruiterater has launched. The site, founded by Tim Consolazio, provides tools to rate, review and compare recruiting experiences.

• Business partners Nick Langley and Sarah Bennett have launched recruitment-to-recruitment agency The Rec2Rec Clinic.

The agency will initially offer training, as well as contingency recruitment services to SMEs across the North-West, Yorkshire, Midlands and South-East, ahead of rolling their services out nationally.

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