Philip Poole, former chief executive of Synergy Group, has launched an education recruitment company, Veritas Education. 

While he had no experience in education recruitment, family connections with the industry and intensive research showed there was space in the market. 

“Education is absolutely candidate short,” he told Recruiter. “I haven’t worked in a market this buoyant ever, which makes it quite exciting.”

He went on to explain it wasn’t vendor managed services driven: “It’s all personal relationships, so you’re dealing directly with the head or deputy head, selling a person to a person, who is in turn looking after people and children; it’s all very people-based, which is what made it appealing.”

Vendor managed services had “taken all the fun out of recruitment”, he added.

With two decades of experience in recruitment – mostly at Synergy but also at Eden Brown, both part of the Human Capital Investment Group (HCIG) – he has “always” wanted to run his own company.

He said it was when James Caan’s firm Hamilton Bradshaw sold HCIG through a private equity backed management buyout in November that he decided to take the plunge and set up his own business.

When the business was sold, “as the CEO, I realised some of my share value at the time… but what I was left with in the business post sale was not a significant enough stake to make it an exciting proposition for me, however much I enjoyed working there”, he said.

Veritas was launched in July but only really began trading with the start of the new school year this month. It is currently London-focused.

Co-founders were Joshua Hayes, formerly of Career Teachers, Ashley Fielding, formerly of Tradewind, and Jo Bennett, formerly of ASQ Education.

It was funded partly by Poole but mostly by an unnamed private investor.

• For more, see the October issue of Recruiter magazine, out next week.