Healthcare recruitment company Windsor Recruitment is tackling the recruitment consultant crisis by opening a training academy to ‘grow its own’.

The firm said it was investing over £300,000 in the first year in a bid to combat the shortage of quality consultants and prepare new recruits to thrive in the competitive world of recruitment.

Based in York, the training academy aims to “take the bull by the horns”, according to the firm’s managing director Alex O’Neill, “to address the widely accepted problem of the shortage of dynamic and well-skilled consultants in the recruitment industry”.

The first 25 trainees on the scheme, chosen from 600 candidates, were taken back to basics over the two weeks of the course. O’Neill said they had been shown the realities of life as a consultant, the fact that it wasn’t a nine-to-five job, and that it could be tough.

He said: “Trainees are shown how skilled, educated and industrious people who are able to listen, prioritise and juggle many balls at the same time, will succeed in the long run.”

On completion of the process, “it is hoped they will all be offered permanent positions within the branch network”, he added.