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20 May 2025
Oil & gas/Energy, Transport & logistics

International manufacturer invests £170m in North Wales facility

The UK and Welsh governments have welcomed the investment into a new facility from the international manufacturer.

The announcement comes as the UK and EU hold a summit to discuss future opportunities to boost economic growth.

The landmark development will produce more than 100,000 tonnes of non-combustible rock mineral wool insulation per year and create around 140 direct jobs, with more in local supply chains.

The announcement coincides with the UK-EU Summit that took place on Monday [19 May 2025].

Secretary of state for Wales Jo Stevens said: “This £170m investment by Knauf Insulation is fantastic news for North Wales and our UK government mission to drive economic growth.”

Using UK-First Submerged Arc Furnace technology, the new factory will produce non-combustible, low embodied carbon, recyclable rock mineral wool insulation to support the need for safer, more energy efficient and sustainable buildings.

The UK and Welsh government-backed North Wales Growth Deal and the Flintshire and Wrexham Investment Zone collectively support the decision by Knauf Insulation to lo-cate a second plant in the area.

As leaders in the production of sustainable building materials, Knauf Insulation’s expansion further supports the growing advanced manufacturing cluster in North Wales.

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20 May 2025
Creative/Digital/Media, IT/Telecoms

Human skills as important as ‘oven-ready’ tech skills

So says the CEO of the CIPD, the UK’s professional body for HR, learning & development, Peter Cheese.

Speaking last Friday [16 May 2025] at the Houses of Parliament launch of the UK Hiring Taskforce, Cheese told the 200 attendees that at the same time, however, instead of filling skills gaps, employers are also looking for potential in applicants through characteristics such as “attitude, aptitude to learn human skills like collaboration and communication, and critical thinking. The more we debate the future of work, the more we debate about AI impacting jobs and skills in the future, the more we are coming back to these core skills”.

Humanities knowledge is part of building such capabilities into organisations, Cheese said: “People talk now about the half-life of job skills is somewhere between three and four years. In other words, every three or four years, we’re going to have to retrain half of our workforce.”

Access to and retention of talent are a top issue for business leaders around the world, with “almost every organisation saying they can’t find all the skills. But then you question them on that, they say yes, we’ve been getting too focused on hiring what I’ve often described as ‘oven-ready employees’ and they don’t exist – partly because we are changing the nature of jobs at an ever-increasing rate”, Cheese said. “So, the reality of how we approach recruiting has got to be expanded from the point of view of the employers as well.”

He asked the audience: “So why do we seem to be reverting back to saying ‘I just want tech skills’? We know the world is not, unfortunately, going to be a better place if all we have are a lot of tech people. Frankly, we need humanity to work alongside that as well.”

Cheese has been appointed to the UK Hiring Taskforce steering committee.

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19 May 2025
Life sciences, Creative/Digital/Media

UK Hiring Taskforce launches to develop new hiring strategies

With 200 hiring leaders, recruiters, rec tech leaders and more in attendance, including Recruiter, the hiring taskforce kick-off also delivered the news that an association for recruitment technology providers is planned to launch in November “to have one voice with government, to give high risk assurance that they are people of good standing and to help us develop a rec tech roadmap”, said Keith Rosser, who as chair of the Better Hiring Institute is leading the joint force of parliamentarians and hiring leaders. 

“We want a national hiring strategy,” Rosser said in his address at the event. “What do we think the future looks like if we could start again – forget the baggage, forget the medieval CVs, the Victorian references, the industrial revolution, job adverts – and think about actually, what would starting again look like?

“And finally, a technology road map. What would rec tech look like if we had a magic wand? What do we need to consider? What do we need to debate?... What we want from you is your help shaping what needs to be considered, how we need to go forward, what are the things we really should be looking at?”

Organisers are hoping to gather concepts by November from the respective work groups, formed of people who sign up to participate, for strategy, technology and policy. “Those three work streams with then end in those three deliverables later in the year,” Rosser said.

“We want this to be the beginning of a new dawn,” he added. “We want to get leadership once more for the UK in hiring… It’s hard to imagine actually that once upon a time, the UK was a leader in this stuff… We just really haven’t moved forward. Today is our commitment to gain leadership once more.”

Viscount Camrose, shadow secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, will be the honorary president of the rec tech association when formed. 

Speaking on Friday at the taskforce launch, he said: “I’ve been worrying for years that the job market is too inefficient, but that it can be reduced in some sense, to a data problem. And I would love us to start making progress together in that director because actually, in a weird way, although it is a data problem, digitalisation and AI have made it worse. They have made it more difficult rather than less difficult, and I think we can go for some way this afternoon to starting that journey to correcting the problem.”

As examples, Viscount Camrose said: “Far too many jobs are far too overapplied; we see candidates receiving no response – even late on in the process, no response comes. And there are such huge advantages to all of us for doing that. First… if we are going to grow as an economy, we need to be more productive… and just placing people in jobs to which they are genuinely committed is going to boost productivity. 

“Second, economic inactivity. We have too many people who are economically inactive now, and how many of those people remain economically inactive because… it’s just too difficult to embark on the process of finding the next job. The easier we can make it [is] to everybody’s benefit. The third advantage is just national happiness.”

Also speaking at the event was Lord Chris Holmes, Paralympian swimming champion, who in 2023 introduced an AI regulation bill to address concerns about its development, fairness in use, privacy and other issues. He has since reintroduced it, terming it “light touch, right size regulation”, and believing that it has significant potential application in hiring. “If we get fairer hiring, if we get faster hiring, the aim for all of us today and for every day, we can truly have in the world the finest hiring ecosystem we can bring to bear,” he said.

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14 May 2025
Creative/Digital/Media, Engineering

NEW TO THE MARKET: 12-16 MAY 2025

• Global specialist recruitment company Eames Consulting has opened a new office in Philadelphia, focusing on technology and digital enablement. Located at the Wanamaker Building, 100 East Penn Square, this is the recruiter’s second US location, following its New York office, which opened in 2022. The Philadelphia team will be headed up by Steven Stahl, a highly experienced recruiter. Also joining are Sam Youngberg (managing consultant) and Callum Stainer (senior consultant), data and AI recruitment specialists.

• Eightfold AI, which helps organisations recruit and retain top talent, and upskill/reskill their entire workforce, has added two new foundational AI products to its portfolio. Expanding its capabilities in talent acquisition, Eightfold introduces AI Interviewer to automate candidate engagement and assessment, enhancing responsiveness and selection outcomes. The company has also launched Digital Twin, a personalised AI model that captures and applies employee knowledge across systems to drive real-time productivity and decision-making.

• SF Recruitment has opened a new East Midlands headquarters in Castle Donington, strategically positioned next to East Midlands Airport. The new hub unites the company’s Leicester and Nottingham teams, with the company broadening its expertise into STEM fields, including technology and engineering, alongside its core areas of finance, private equity and corporate services. Over 40 team members will be based at the new headquarters and plans for European growth are underway, according to the company statement.

25 September 2017
Retail, Transport & logistics, Creative/Digital/Media, Engineering, Charity & not-for-profit, Industrial/Manufacturing, IT/Telecoms, HR, Healthcare/Medical, Accounting/Finance

NEW TO THE MARKET: 25-29 SEPTEMBER 2017

West Midlands online recruitment advertising agency Candidate Source has relocated to larger premises at its existing home at Chantry House in Coleshill, taking up 1,000 square feet of office space.

Recruitment technology specialist Volcanic has moved to ensure its platform is General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) compliant.

The move ensures that from the middle of next month Volcanic-designed recruitment websites using their platform introduce a candidate dashboard enabling candidates to log in and give their consent using tick boxes to confirm they agree to their data being received and stored by Volcanic.

• Job search engine Adzuna has relaunched its ValueMyCV tool. Originally launched in 2015, the new tool tells candidates what their CV is worth, so they know what salary they should command, helps gets candidates’ CV battle-ready to land interviews and provides career recommendations from more than 1m live job ads.

• Indian job site AasaanJobs has launched a healthcare section to its site. The firm says the launch has been driven by the recent boom in the healthcare sector in the country.

• Technology solutions provider Dillistone Group has launched GatedTalent, a new service designed to help executive recruiters manage GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliance. The service also enables users to clean and update legacy data without having to share any data with other recruiters at any stage.

The portal allows users to login, review and update consent with selected single or multiple search firms and create or update their profile in line with best practice defined by authorities, such as the Information Commissioner’s Office, establish ‘consent’ or ‘legitimate interest’ with customisable template text in multiple languages, and allows for the integration with other Dillistone software such as FileFinder Anywhere.

• Global specialist recruiter to the financial services, professional services and commerce & industry sectors Oliver James Associates has opened a Belgium office.

The office is headed up by Thomas Sassi, who joined the firm’s Amsterdam team in 2015 and is now associate director responsible for Belgium and Luxembourg.

• Background check technology company PASS has relaunched under a new management team, led by industry veteran and serial entrepreneur Luke Battah, following its carve out from software company Innovise.

• Construction and rail consultancy One Way is to open larger office in Southampton next week. The move follows the purchase of a 5,000sq ft office, double the size of its previous location at the Basepoint Business Centre.

The firm has also invested £190k in refurbishing the location to bring it up to its required standard and plans to hire around 40 new staff.

• Telephone service company Virgin Media and disability charity Scope have launched ‘Work With Me’, a three-year initiative aimed at understanding and tackling the barriers disabled people face getting into and staying in work.

To support the launch, Virgin Media is funding Scope’s new digital employment support service for disabled people due to be launched later this autumn. The partnership ambition is to reach 1m disabled people with employment information and support by the end of 2020, so they can get into work, stay in work and realise their career ambitions.

After working with Scope, Virgin Media adds it is now looking into how it can better understand and transform the way the company supports disabled employees, including the training it gives to managers to support these colleagues, as well as access to buildings and practical measures such as reasonable adjustments.

The firm has also taken a number of actions to improve the experience of disabled customers, including increasing training for staff so they can offer appropriate help and support, and ensuring accessibility features are built into all new products and services.

20 September 2017
Creative/Digital/Media, IT/Telecoms

Rethink launches Code Nation to tackle digital skills shortage

The new school, located in the city in which Rethink was founded, is the brainchild of the global talent management and recruitment business’ CEO Andy Lord, who revealed the school’s prime aim is to help recruiters, their clients and businesses train more people to tackle the UK’s digital skills shortage. 

The school, known as Code Nation and which will be a subsidiary of Rethink, will charge no placement fee for businesses hiring its graduates. It has also already secured partnerships with Rethink clients who have pledged to support students trained at the school. Initial supporters of the school include home shopping business N Brown, which has offered students advice, the chance to work on live commercial projects and work placements.

Commenting on how this new school will help tackle the UK’s ever-growing digital skills shortage, Lord said: “Code Nation’s been a big ambition of mine for a few years, especially as I’ve seen that skills shortage become more prevalent and bizarrely fall to the back of the queue in terms of business priorities.

“It’s time to change that and Code Nation students will be a big part of the revolution moving forward. I am also incredibly passionate about breaking down the barriers for great talent entering the workforce – hence the introduction of a fee-free structure for businesses offering job opportunities to our students. It’s a model I fully believe in and something I hope the broader sector will embrace.”

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19 September 2017
Legal

Start-up of the Month: Daniel Lewis Law

Daniel Lewis, previously managing director of Longbridge Law, has set up Daniel Lewis Law, an agency that helps clients both recruit and retain clinical negligence and personal injury lawyers. 

Lewis feels he is offering something new by highlighting retention. “What I’m trying to do differently is I’m focusing on two areas – recruitment and retention. I know that sounds strange – most recruiters won’t want firms to retain their staff because they want to headhunt them and they want vacancies. However, I think retention is an important part of recruitment, so I’m going to be running roundtable seminars for clients who want it on how to keep your staff,” he says.

It’s vital to spot signs of discontent in a member of staff early, he says. “It’s so important when someone comes to you and says ‘Look, I’m afraid I’m resigning’, because you’ve already lost them. You want to get to people before that happens.”

Lewis’s agency is a one-man band at present, but he is looking to expand. “It’s just me at the moment. I want to grow to three of us at least,” he says.

“I believe that if you help firms with retaining their good staff, they will remember that you’re not just after money.”

18 September 2017
Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Public sector, Education, Engineering, Construction & property, Industrial/Manufacturing, HR, Graduates/Apprentices/School leavers

NEW TO THE MARKET: 18-22 SEPTEMBER 2017

• Specialist accountancy & finance recruiter Butler Rose has expanded its offering in the North by launching a new team in Leeds. The team, led by associate director Peter Bone, will focus on recruiting transactional, part-qualified and qualified finance professionals in Leeds and the surrounding area.

• Online education and learning provider Coursera has launched a series of courses on Virtual Reality developed by the University of London.

The uptake of VR in business is forecast to outpace the leisure use in the coming years, with employers needing to tackle the talent shortage in this specialist skills arena. The Virtual Reality Specialisation, developed by Dr Sylvia Pan and Dr Marco Gillies from Goldsmiths, University of London, comprises five course modules including: Introduction to Virtual Reality; 3D Models for Virtual Reality; 3D Interaction Design in Virtual Reality; Building Interactive 3D Characters and Social VR; Creating Your First Virtual Reality Game.

• International assessment specialist cut-e has launched enAC – a platform that automates the process of planning and managing assessment or development centres. It enables recruiters to create individual and group exercises, using customised content based on the requirements of specific roles.

Using tablets, observers rate participants and take paperless notes. The platform then consolidates all the collected behavioural observations, comments, ratings and test scores for each participant and creates an instantly available competency-based report.

The report highlights their strengths and development needs, with relevant interview questions and notes for structured feedback sessions.

The enAC system can be customised to reflect the corporate branding, competencies, rating scales, processes and reporting preferences of organisations, and is available in English, French, German and Italian.

• Interactive online labour supply company EasyRecruit has launched a permanent division. The new division has committed to make permanent placements within five days using its tried and tested technology and recruitment processes aimed at streamlining the recruitment process.

• Multi-sector recruiter NRG has launched outsourced recruitment solutions business greenbean by NRG. The recruitment outsourcing provider will operate on a project basis, fully account managed and flexible model.

• HM Revenue & Customs has launched a new service aimed at mid-sized recruitment agencies. The Growth Support Service is aimed at organisations in the administrative and support services sector.

This includes vehicle hire companies, recruitment agencies and call centres, with either a turnover of more than £10m or more than 20 employees, and undergoing significant growth. The new service sees HMRC tax experts offer these organisations dedicated, tailored support, which could include: • Helping with tax queries about their growing business • Supplying accurate information and co-ordinating technical expertise from across HMRC • Supporting them to get their tax right first time and access relevant incentives or reliefs.

• The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) has changed its name to the Institute of Student Employers (ISE). The organisation says its name change reflects the evolution of its member needs since it was formed nearly 50 years ago with most of its employer members taking a broader approach to how they recruit and develop emerging talent, hiring school leavers, apprentices and interns alongside graduates.

• UK people analytics company Saberr has launched CoachBot following a period of closed beta testing. CoachBot digitises the team-building work traditionally done by an external human coach to help teams address and improve upon issues ranging from goal setting, to decision making and role clarification. 

The interactive bot, built for team members rather than HR staff, is currently being used by teams at 11 companies, including Unilever, Logitech and the Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT).

• International recruiter Search’s global arm is to launch a legal recruitment campaign in a number of international and regional law firms throughout the United Arab Emirates.

The campaign will aim to cement existing partnerships with international and local law firms across the UAE, generate new business and attract high-level candidates to the region.

• Digital platform SomeoneWho has launched. Created by interims Andrew Saffron, Gary Anderson and Julie Nerney, the service aims to match top quality interims with high quality briefs.

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