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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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13 November 2023
Public sector, Education, Commercial & office support, IT/Telecoms

The Protocol Group launches in education sector

The Protocol Group provides staff members for all levels of education, ranging from nursery level, through to school level, all the way to higher education and special education needs.

The roles the group covers include teaching staff and other staff needed for the running of any education institution, such as groundskeepers, lunch staff, cleaning teams and more.

From a team built on nearly three decades of experience, they will be based out of seven offices in London, Manchester, Hertfordshire, Aberdeen, Birmingham and Stamford, as well as its head office in Nottingham.

The Protocol Group recently announced the launch of two of three subsidiary businesses, Bookmark and eSafeguarding, which respectively act as a recruitment database and background checking service.

There will also be a third business within the group announced in December.

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10 November 2023
Oil & gas/Energy, Engineering, Charity & not-for-profit

Green means go for UK jobs

A foundation aimed at supporting the UK’s transition to future green skills and jobs, including the pilot of a green internship scheme next year, has been launched.

Business and civil organisations including PageGroup, City and Guilds, PwC, the Living Wage Foundation, RenewableUK and Lightcast are supporting the Green Jobs Foundation in its aim of accelerating “the awareness and access to green jobs in the UK”.

The charity has been created as a personal drive by PageGroup head of sustainability and corporate treasury Joanna Bonnett.

Formally launched at the Eden Project on 2 November as part of the Anthropy Gathering, an annual event dedicated to inspiring a better Britain, the foundation was formed at the end of 2022. With the foundation’s launch was its first ‘Green Jobs: State of the Nation Report’, which details where in the UK the number of green jobs are growing and their economic value. The report also emphasises skills development and reskilling as part of the requirement to progress.

Bonnett said: “As a nation, we must invest in green skills as the workforce moves towards a skills-first agenda and provide workers with sustainable jobs aligned to their personal values and opportunities they can be proud of.”

The foundation’s focus is on “jobs in this emerging economy, the skills workers will require, how these skills are acquired, and successful pathways from the old to the new economy”, a foundation statement said. “It was formed as a ‘think and do’ foundation with the goal of helping to tackle the practical issues around the fundamental question of our time: how the UK and the rest of the world can successfully move to a low-carbon and then zero-carbon society, whilst leaving no one behind in a Just Transition.”

The report provides case studies of how green skills are being taught at community level in the UK, such as in Maidenhead, where a Green Skills Library is being created. Local residents can access free courses to learn how to upcycle, repair and create, and in future will be offered free group training in organic gardening, reupholstery and common repairs, as a result of recent funding.

Donna Stimson, the founder of the Green Skills Library, is a former councillor and sustainability cabinet member for the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. Stimson said: “Content in the courses can also provide individuals with new skills, which could lead to sustainable green jobs.”

The UK government plans to create 2m green jobs by 2030 and 6.9m green jobs by 2050.

“This transition of employment will create significant opportunities as well as challenges, which we must overcome by working together,” the statement said. “Students looking to enter the workforce and workers of today will be required to reskill and upskill to be match-fit for tomorrow.”

For more about the ‘Green Jobs: State of the Nation Report’ and the foundation, see The Big Story here.

Image credit | Getty
10 November 2023
IT/Telecoms, HR

Institute of Job Aggregators launches to support global industry

At the event in Central London, Mike Wall (pictured), chair of the IJA, said: “Having now spoken to many aggregators and experts in the recruitment sector it is great to see there is an appetite for an institute to allow credible players to work together and ensure the industry continues to thrive.”

The inspiration behind the IJA was to ensure jobseeker traffic, “in a world of ever-advancing AI and bots running rampant across the internet”, was validated and the quality monitored, Wall explained.

According to the IJA, the job aggregator industry is a multi-billion-pound industry and a key part of global recruitment. The institute plans to help protect the industry by validating the credible players and giving them a platform to discuss and manage issues that are impacting the industry. 

Wall added that the institute plans to help “streamline multi-used technology to help standardise usage and settings, and it will facilitate issues like bad debtors and action to halt traffic across all platforms and retrieve the debt.

“We are here to support, grow and drive change in the global job aggregator industry and to do this we need our member's expertise, knowledge and support.

“We are now aiming to form a committee of leading industry people and to help them set the agenda of the institute based on common issues and goals.”

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10 November 2023
Creative/Digital/Media, Engineering, Legal, IT/Telecoms

The City Recruiter expands global reach with US recruitment

The City Recruiter’s strategic move opens new avenues for jobseekers and employers on both sides of the Atlantic, according to a company statement.

Heading up the firm’s US division is head of US recruitment Kyle Wilding (pictured), who will be recruiting for both private sector and government roles, based in the Manchester headquarters.

His main focus is on positions that require security clearance. Some of the roles the firm is recruiting for include cybersecurity analysts, cybersecurity engineers, system administrators and incident management teams. 

In the future, The City Recruiter plans to open offices in Washington and Florida to further strengthen its US footprint.

The firm has also unveiled a slew of job opportunities, including positions within the US division.

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