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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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21 September 2023
Construction & property, Industrial/Manufacturing

Construction firm coalition unites to tackle diversity in the industry

The Construction Inclusion Coalition (CIC) has been established by CEOs at organisations including Aliaxis, Baxi, Bradfords, Highbourne Group, Ibstock, Knauf, Travis Perkins, Wavin, Wolseley, the Builders Merchants Federation (BMF) and the National Merchant Buying Society, to raise sector standards on equity, diversity & inclusion (EDI), with an immediate focus on gender representation in its first year.

The Coalition is being launched alongside new polling which shows that only one third (36%) of British people would feel confident that their female family or friends would be safe and respected if they joined the construction industry. The research of over 2,000 adults also outlines the opportunity for the sector, with nearly half of people (46%) saying they’d be more likely to actively seek out employment opportunities in the construction industry if it demonstrated a stronger commitment to diversity & inclusion.

Recruiter’s Investing in Talent Awards is also highlighting those recruitment companies – not just in construction – who are leading the field in attracting, recruiting and retaining diverse talent.

Construction Inclusion Coalition chairperson and Toolstation managing director Angela Rushforth says: “There is no doubt that the future of our industry is at risk if we don’t create an environment where all our colleagues feel safe, empowered and confident. I want all young women to see the construction sector as I do – full of opportunity.”

“We aren’t attracting and retaining from a diverse pool of talent, because many think the construction sector is not for them. These are industry-wide challenges that require industry-wide solutions, which is why the Construction Inclusion Coalition has been set up to improve EDI. We are calling on businesses across the sector – no matter how big or small – to join our Coalition and commit to taking action in their organisations.”

The construction sector has one of the most rapidly ageing workforces in the UK, with research showing that close to 1m construction workers – around a third of the UK’s total workforce – are set to retire in the next 10 years. Despite this, the industry is currently only made up of 15% women and 6% from ethnic minority backgrounds, and faces challenges attracting and recruiting from a diverse pool of talent.”

The organisations involved are urging businesses across the industry to join the initiative and take the Built on Better Pledge. The pledge covers seven areas members commit to working on.

Organisations will work together to enhance the impact of their individual EDI initiatives, by fostering collaboration and establishing a network to share knowledge and resources across the industry and co-creating solutions that will make a difference. Progress will be tracked annually and shared in a public report.

The Coalition has been endorsed by the Construction Leadership Council, the body that draws together business leaders from across the construction sector and links them with the UK government.

The Coalition was launched in front of hundreds of businesses across the construction sector at the Builders Merchant’s Federation annual conference at the Birmingham NEC on 21 September 2023.

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20 September 2023
Agriculture, Banking/Financial services, Executive search, Industrial/Manufacturing, Accounting/Finance

NEW TO THE MARKET: 18-22 SEPTEMBER 2023

• London-based specialist recruiter and executive search consultancy Camino Group has opened its new central London office near Liverpool Street Station. Camino had previously been located in Cowcross Street, near Farringdon Station. Established in 2011, Camino Group operates two recruitment brands: Camino Search, which specialises in international financial, private equity and M&A markets; and Camino Partners, which supports other recruitment companies non-sales professionals.

• Telford-based recruitment firm Swift Temps has announced its move to a new office following ongoing growth. The firm specialises in placing temporary workers in agricultural and industrial roles across the region.

18 September 2023
Marketing & Sales, Banking/Financial services, Legal, IT/Telecoms, HR, Accounting/Finance

The SR Group launches specialist IT consultancy Keller West

The new brand will initially focus on the DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) region, according to a company statement. This comes at a critical time for the German economy and the future development of its IT sector, the statement said. Plans are already underway to further deploy the brand across the group’s global office network.

At the end of 2022, Germany had a shortage of 137,000 IT professionals according to technology trade body Bitkom. The same study found that it takes an average of seven months to fill a vacant IT role, highlighting the scale of the challenges faced by businesses in the DACH region, the statement said.

Headed by Alex Gerritsen, the Keller West brand sits alongside The SR Group’s other search and recruitment brands (Brewer Morris, Carter Murray, Frazer Jones and Taylor Root), which currently serve international businesses across roles in tax, treasury, finance, legal, risk and compliance, marketing, sales and human resources.

Gerritsen has over 20 years in the recruitment industry, and previous experience in launching and growing recruitment brands in Germany and other European markets. 

Over the past five years, The SR Group has placed more than 15,000 employees into businesses across more than 55 markets.

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18 September 2023
Banking/Financial services, Legal, Executive search, Interim recruitment

94LEGAL and 94TAX search firms merge to form Bishop Rock Partners

The newly-merged entity will be led by Ed Stevens (managing partner) pictured above, Robert Loder (partner), Hugo Potts (partner) and Thomas Clarke (finance director). The merger is taking place this month [September 2023].

94LEGAL and 94TAX have offered specialist search and selection for the legal and tax markets across the UK and US since 2017. 

A company statement said professional services firms have since then optimised service line structures and now have medium to long-term strategies to invest significantly in their legal and tax practices.

Bishop Rock Partners covers contingent search, retained service and interim solutions. 

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