Fri, 30 Mar 2012

Multi-sector global recruiter Berkley Group is entering the UK engineering and pharma & life sciences markets with a formal launch next month, Recruiter can exclusively reveal.

The has already been operating in the UK but without a base, and it will launch to the market at next month’s biopharmaceutical industry conference OBN BioTrinity, to be held at Newbury Racecourse in Berkshire.

Joanna Houston, the firm’s EMEA operations manager, tells Recruiter that in a “saturated” market, the firm always looks to be more than just a traditional “transactional, high street offering”, and is using the search and selection method and will “engage closely with our customers”.

She also says that as the firm globalises more and more, it will continue to increase its focus on the global oil & gas industry.

Across industries, Houston comments that the markets the firm will work within in the UK are “very much directed by regulation and external governance changes”, meaning that when an agency like the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) comes up with a new piece of compliance regulation “everyone is in the race” to find ways of operating in a changed environment.

As such, she says that “you need to be really able to know your industry”, especially given a pharma industry seeing increasing levels mergers and collaborative working – which again increases the need for solid understanding of relevant compliance and regulation.

The firm, which has nine offices across Europe and Asia, last month appointed Ena Vieira, former business development manager at Impellam-owned SRG UK, to set up the new London office of the firm.

She adds to Houston’s comments saying that the firm wants to avoid the “very uniform way of recruitment” she says is common in the industry, and work in a “much more consultative way”.

Vieira is joined by consultant Farzaana Khan, who comes from pharma specialist recruiter SynerGem.

Houston also tells Recruiter the firm is looking to expand to a Manchester base and then onwards to other locations in the UK.