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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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23 August 2019
Creative/Digital/Media, Banking/Financial services, HR, Accounting/Finance

NEW TO THE MARKET: 19-23 AUGUST 2019

• Global recruiter Robert Walters, Saatchi Gallery and charity UK Young Artists have launched a national art award for young artists between the ages of 18 and 30, encouraging them to illustrate what diversity means to them.

The inaugural Robert Walters Group UK Young Artist of the Year Award (UKYA) will discover and champion exceptional artists who are representative of contemporary Britain.

Finalists will showcase their work at an awards evening on 7 October, hosted at London's Saatchi Gallery. The winner will receive a cash prize of £10,000 and the artist’s work will be shown at the Robert Walters Group head office in Covent Garden for 12 months and at an international art event with UKYA in 2020. The runner-up will receive £5,000 to help fund their future artistic career.

The deadline for entries is 1 September. 

15 August 2019
Public sector

Serco guarantees interview for qualifying jobseekers with criminal convictions

The public services provider has launched a ‘Guaranteed Interview Scheme’ under which any applicant who declares that they have a criminal conviction will be given a job interview.

In a statement released this morning, the firm added applicants must also meet the minimum criteria for the job and “pass our screening and vetting criteria needed to conduct the role”.

Commenting on the scheme launch, Paul Gaskin, Serco’s HR director, UK and Europe, said: “Serco runs six prisons in the UK and we see first-hand the number of people who reoffend after leaving prison and return to jail. We are determined to help improve the situation and reduce the numbers of people who re-offend on leaving prison where we can by helping ex-offenders to find work.”

The firm is also signed up to the nationally recognised Ban the Box initiative, which is aimed at removing the check box that asks if applicants have a criminal record from hiring applications.

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13 August 2019
Retail, Transport & logistics, Industrial/Manufacturing

Start-up of the Month: Talent Drive

He told Recruiter that after a decade working for other people, the time was right to strike out on his own.

“I’ve always had aspirations to set up on my own – that’s always been an ambition in my life in general. Having worked for smaller businesses that have grown, I think I have had quite a unique opportunity to understand businesses better and how to grow recruitment businesses.”

Smith added his agency’s aim is to find talent quickly through effective collaboration with clients where he becomes a brand ambassador and extension of their recruitment or HR functions.

“I think there is a perception in the market, with the rise of internal recruitment talent acquisition professionals, that there is an almost ‘us and them’ approach and that’s not what I’m about at all. If an organisation is investing with me, I want to ensure I’m collaborating with them… I’d say to people ‘I will give you as much of a service in terms of the marketing, branding, doing the interviewing, writing job descriptions for you. I can be as heavily involved in the interview and recruitment process as you want, or I can just find you the talent and provide it to an HR contact’.”

Looking ahead, Smith says he wants to have a settled team working for him, but to never lose the ‘boutique’ specialist feel of his business. “I don’t want to lose sight of that,” he said.

12 August 2019
Public sector, Oil & gas/Energy, Transport & logistics, Life sciences, Education, Engineering, Construction & property, Commercial & office support, Executive search, IT/Telecoms, HR, Healthcare/Medical, Apprentices/Grads/School leavers, Accounting/Finance

NEW TO THE MARKET: 12-16 AUGUST 2019

• Global talent acquisition and executive search consultancy C4S Search has launched an accounting & finance division, headed up by Marc Harris.

• Birmingham-based nursing recruitment agency CareNow has introduced an initiative that offers agency nurses on its books a range of additional benefits in appreciation of the hours and hard work that they put in to providing patient care.

The scheme, which includes gift vouchers and luxury weekends away, enables nurses to accrue loyalty points according to how many hours they work. These can be redeemed for rewards such as a shopping voucher after 200 hours’ work or a weekend away when they achieve 365 hours.

• Recruitment and distribution firm Challenge-trg Group is offering English lessons to its non-native speaking drivers and warehouse staff in a bid to meet the needs of its culturally diverse team. The training is being offered by Phoenix Training Services, which was acquired by Challenge-trg Group earlier this year.

• US healthcare recruiter Cross Country Healthcare has rebranded its Medical Doctor Associates (MDA) business as Cross Country Locums. As well as introducing a new brand and visual identity, Cross Country Locums has also launched an enhanced website, which will provide a more intuitive job search and application experience for healthcare professionals.

• The Exam Results Helpline provided by the National Careers Service has partnered with charity Mental Health UK to help students make the most of the opportunities their results will provide. The helpline is manned by careers advisers offering free, impartial advice once results are out, and is available to all parents, teachers and students.

People can use the helpline to get advice on what to do if a student does better or worse than expected in their exams, or if they get the results they hoped for but aren’t sure what steps to take next.

The helpline number (0800 100 900) will be available between 8am-10pm from 14 August, the day certain vocational results are issued and close on 29 August, following GCSE results day. Further info can also be found via the National Careers Service website.

• Financial services, private and public sector recruiter Investigo Group has launched Investigo Consulting Solutions – a consulting service that provides long-term project consultancy aimed at transforming and future-proofing businesses from across industry sectors.

Services include full project lifecycle and service delivery, from conception and planning, to solution, on-the-job training and mentoring programmes to address skills gaps and ensure sustained and future growth, plus market intelligence through research and white papers, roundtable discussions and industry events to support the Investigo-client partnership.

• Pan European specialist recruiter NonStop Recruitment has opened an office in Boston, MA. This is the first office outside Europe for NonStop and is a response to increasing client demand, specifically within the life sciences industry. The office is currently headed up by Henry Brodie, with two other consultants.

NonStop also recently opened an office in Bucharest, Romania. Both these new offices are operating under the NonStop Consulting name.

• Digital education and skills provider QA has launched an apprenticeship clearing helpline offering students advice about their options from apprentice alumni and QA experts.

• Insurance specialist Qdos has launched a commercial services division offering consultancy and training services, as well as a range of insurances for agencies, including IR35 insurance and professional indemnity, public and employers liability insurances.

• Life sciences, renewable energy and ICT staffing specialist Quanta Consultancy Services has launched a new brand identity and website. The site features improved navigation with features added to improve ease of use, such as the messaging feature on consultant bios. 

While the firm’s logo remains the same, Quanta adds its motif has evolved into a modern icon that can be displayed in any of the new Quanta colours to represent its team ethos and their five values.

• Project services specialist Rider Hunt International has announced the launch of a new corporate brand identity and name. The organisation, a subsidiary of Wood, will now be known as rhi.

rhi specialises in providing project services to energy and natural resource customers with global expertise in quantity surveying, estimating and projects controls, contract management and recruitment. It operates across the full asset life cycle from concept to decommissioning, through a network of offices in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Singapore and Malaysia.

• Hundreds of local people in Birmingham will have the chance to learn construction skills and help build more than 1,400 new homes on one of the UK’s second city’s biggest construction sites thanks to a new training hub. The £100k hub, funded by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) through the Construction Skills Fund, will offer local people free construction job training and a guaranteed job interview after completing a 20-day course.

It will be based on-site at the Perry Barr Residential Scheme, where £496m is being invested by Birmingham City Council, central government and the WMCA in a bid to regenerate the area and deliver long-lasting benefits for local people.

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