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New to Market

27 May 2025
Creative/Digital/Media, Industrial/Manufacturing

NEW TO THE MARKET: 27-30 MAY 2025

• Aston University has announced a new initiative, guaranteeing all full-time master’s students a professional internship as part of their studies. Launching in September 2025, the Postgraduate Guaranteed Internship Scheme will be available to students enrolled in MSc, MA and MBA programmes at both the Birmingham and London campuses.

This scheme is designed to enhance employability by providing high-quality industry placements lasting between one and six months. These internships may be conducted in-person, remotely, or in a hybrid format, and will be facilitated through Aston’s global network of employers. The initiative is available to both UK and international students.

• Worcestershire-based Four Squared Recruitment has launched its new Recruitment Academy, a strategic initiative aimed at developing early careers and entry-level talent. The Academy supports new entrants with structured training, mentorship, and hands-on experience to prepare them for the demands of a competitive job market. Three new team members have also joined Four Squared as a result of the programme. The initiative helps close the gap between emerging candidates and evolving industry needs.

• Gi Group UK, part of global company Gi Group Holding, is strengthening its position in the recruitment and HR sector by delivering forklift and material handling equipment (MHE) training. With warehouse operative roles in high demand across the UK, the company provides essential upskilling opportunities to meet the growing needs of the logistics sector. The MHE training programme supports up to three candidates daily and is RTITB-approved, ensuring high standards of safety, compliance and operational efficiency.

• Technology recruitment provider itris has launched itris X, a cloud-based CRM and applicant tracking system (ATS) built specifically for recruitment agencies and staffing professionals. The new platform is designed to streamline the entire talent acquisition process with a focus on automation, scalability, and ease of use. itris X addresses core operational challenges in recruitment by offering AI-powered automation to reduce repetitive tasks, advanced reporting tools for performance insights, and personalised candidate communication features. The system is accessible across devices and integrates with a wide range of recruitment tools and platforms. Key features include lead and marketing management, user-friendly design and comprehensive customer support. itris X is scalable for use by both small agencies and large global firms, maintaining performance and usability regardless of company size.

• ManpowerGroup has launched the Work Intelligence Lab, a new global initiative designed to help employers and workers understand and adapt to the impact of AI on jobs and skills. With over half of employers (53%) already using AI in hiring and onboarding, the Lab provides real-time insights into how automation is transforming the labour market. The Lab leverages Manpower Group’s workforce data, drawn from millions of placements over 70 countries, and integrates real-time hiring trends, employer demand and worker sentiment. It aims to give organisations clearer visibility into emerging skill requirements, role changes and workforce dynamics.

27 May 2025
Oil & gas/Energy, Engineering

Energy recruitment firm launches in Aberdeen

Founded by Alan Golightly (pictured), an experienced recruitment professional with more than 27 years in the industry, the company targets small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) requiring tailored support for complex hiring needs. 

The firm provides permanent recruitment solutions for technical and engineering roles, as well as short-term internal recruitment assistance to help businesses manage hiring fluctuations without increasing fixed costs. Agilient also offers custom recruitment strategies that align with clients’ specific values and growth plans.

Golightly previously worked for, among other oil & gas recruiters, NES Fircroft, and launches Agilient from global energy recruiter Simpson Booth.

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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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14 November 2023
Creative/Digital/Media, Legal, Executive search, Industrial/Manufacturing, IT/Telecoms, HR, Apprentices/Grads/School leavers

NEW TO THE MARKET: 13-17 NOVEMBER 2023

• Code First Girls has launched a Mid-Level Accelerator (MLA) course aimed to develop and accelerate women’s technology careers. The 12-week MLA course is aimed at those with over two years of experience in tech. It will support women to upskill and progress into a mid-level engineering or developer roles whilst also having the opportunity to re-skill to a new specialism or develop mid-level specialist tech skills.

• US-based Creative Talent Endeavors, a retained executive search and HR advisory agency, has launched Fairantee, an algorithm that uses AI and data to allow companies to understand how much they should be paying for an executive search before they sign a contract. The technology will take into account the difficulty or ease of each search assignment by measuring how factors, including total compensation, location, workplace environment and title of the role, affect how much effort will be required to fill the role. Fairantee allows companies to get a quote for their search upfront, and keep that quote for five days as they make the decision for their company.

• The Eventus Recruitment Group has expanded its legal recruitment services into Ireland to enable law firms to benefit from a tailored recruitment service that has been found to be effective within the UK. Eventus Legal’s Ireland team is headed by managing director and founder Siobhan Courtney, who has specialised in legal recruitment for 25 years.

• Know You More, a socially driven coaching and training enterprise, has expanded its programmes for young people throughout Scotland with free coaching and training on offer for 18-25-year-olds. The programme is offered free of charge, supported by Know You More’s commercial coaching offering and platform that combines one-to-one sessions with digital technology. After completing the programme, participants can also join the Build Up initiative which teaches fundamental coaching skills to empower young people to pass on what they have learned to others.

• UK-based recruitment firm Membership Bespoke has launched an executive search division, extending its expertise in membership employment. With 25 years’ recruitment experience, Ben Spragg has been appointed head of executive search. The firm is working with two national associations to hire a new managing director and CEO. Membership Leaders, the new online platform, allows stakeholders across boards to view candidates CVs, executive summaries, McQuaig Assessment Results and key competency benchmarking reports.

• Global employment platform Oyster has launched Oyster Embedded and Oyster API to make global employment more accessible for companies, partners and HR teams. With Oyster Embedded, industry partners can now offer global hiring, payroll and rewards solutions in one click, right from their own software. Oyster API helps partners and customers easily connect Oyster with tools of their choice.

• Industrial recruitment specialist PSI Global has launched a new division called PSI Global Training, and is opening a training facility in Liverpool next month. This will be the first location in the North-West of the UK dedicated to running Train the Painter courses. The firm says the new division has been set up following a lack of labour within the industrial services sector due to a skills shortage and ageing workforce.

• Tech recruitment agency Searchability has opened a new office in Sydney, Australia. Searchability was founded by managing director Martin Blythe in 2012 in the UK, and expanded into Australia in 2020. The new office will be located at Margaret Street in Sydney.

13 November 2023
Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Creative/Digital/Media, Industrial/Manufacturing, IT/Telecoms

MSP market report reveals vendor consolidation as trend for 2024

Kaseya, a global provider of unified IT management and security software for MSPs, small to mid-size businesses (SMBs) and mid-market enterprises (MMEs), has released its third annual ‘Datto Global State of the Managed Service Provider: Trends and Forecasts for 2024 Report’, which surveyed 1,575 MSPs worldwide about what keeps them up at night. The survey provides an in-depth look at the current state of the MSP market, demonstrating the critical role MSPs play in the overall success for small and mid-size businesses, as well as how the landscape has evolved and what the industry can expect in the coming year.

An MSP delivers services, such as network, application, infrastructure and security, via ongoing and regular support and active administration on customers’ premises, in their MSP’s data centre (hosting), or in a third-party data centre. Recruitment firms often use MSPs to service their critical IT needs.

“While MSPs have long been the unsung heroes of tech, this year’s survey results clearly speak to a growing understanding of the critical role technology plays in a sustainable business,” said Kaseya’s Holly Bateman. “With revenues and competition on the rise, and a focus on the need for a superior customer experience, MSPs have a front row seat to what makes their customers successful. As a result, these MSPs have a clear view into what keeps a major cornerstone of our economy – small and mid-size businesses – running.”

According to the report, the MSP industry has exploded over the last few years with major growth in 2023, despite a difficult economic climate. In North America, 68% of MSPs experienced a revenue increase, and among them, 38% saw their revenue grow by more than 10%. Likewise, the revenue increase was also significant in Europe. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of MSPs in Europe experienced year-over-year revenue growth, and among them, 37% of those experienced an increase of more than 10%.

At the same time, the survey shows that competition is stiff. More than a third (35%) of MSPs globally cite competition as the biggest challenge, up from 29% last year. While seen as a challenge, MSPs are harnessing this competition to drive innovation and are offering solutions to better meet their clients’ needs, with 91% regarding customer experience as a high or top priority.

With the IT needs of SMBs and MMEs constantly changing, the main priorities that stood out for IT professionals to keep in mind in the coming year include:

  • Embrace vendor consolidation 74% of respondents said they prefer to use fewer vendors to meet their technology needs – up from 64% in 2022. Fewer vendors mean a streamlined supply chain, improving procurement, delivery, deployment, asset management and services.
  • Expand the service portfolio Top services that respondents anticipate adding to their portfolios include collaboration software (27%), business intelligence or analytics software (22%), and incident response and forensics (22%).
  • Embrace cloud migration Roughly half of the respondents report that 50% or more of their clients are shifting their workloads to the cloud. MSPs in North America anticipate the most significant shift in cloud migration in the next three years, driven by clients adopting Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and migrating databases and email servers to the cloud. Nearly half of the respondents (47%) predict that 75% to 99% of their client base will move workloads to the cloud in the next three years.
  • Address cybersecurity concerns 28% of respondents cited their customers’ lack of concern about cyber-risks as a major cybersecurity challenge. It underscores the pressing need for MSPs to be equipped with the tools and knowledge to educate their customers effectively. 

“As we head into the end of the year and the start of 2024, we can all learn from the stories, challenges and successes of the MSPs shaping the future of IT services. We hope that this report will shed light on this thriving industry that is currently experiencing more growth potential than ever before,” added Pateman.

13 November 2023
Public sector, Education, Commercial & office support, IT/Telecoms

The Protocol Group launches in education sector

The Protocol Group provides staff members for all levels of education, ranging from nursery level, through to school level, all the way to higher education and special education needs.

The roles the group covers include teaching staff and other staff needed for the running of any education institution, such as groundskeepers, lunch staff, cleaning teams and more.

From a team built on nearly three decades of experience, they will be based out of seven offices in London, Manchester, Hertfordshire, Aberdeen, Birmingham and Stamford, as well as its head office in Nottingham.

The Protocol Group recently announced the launch of two of three subsidiary businesses, Bookmark and eSafeguarding, which respectively act as a recruitment database and background checking service.

There will also be a third business within the group announced in December.

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10 November 2023
Oil & gas/Energy, Engineering, Charity & not-for-profit

Green means go for UK jobs

A foundation aimed at supporting the UK’s transition to future green skills and jobs, including the pilot of a green internship scheme next year, has been launched.

Business and civil organisations including PageGroup, City and Guilds, PwC, the Living Wage Foundation, RenewableUK and Lightcast are supporting the Green Jobs Foundation in its aim of accelerating “the awareness and access to green jobs in the UK”.

The charity has been created as a personal drive by PageGroup head of sustainability and corporate treasury Joanna Bonnett.

Formally launched at the Eden Project on 2 November as part of the Anthropy Gathering, an annual event dedicated to inspiring a better Britain, the foundation was formed at the end of 2022. With the foundation’s launch was its first ‘Green Jobs: State of the Nation Report’, which details where in the UK the number of green jobs are growing and their economic value. The report also emphasises skills development and reskilling as part of the requirement to progress.

Bonnett said: “As a nation, we must invest in green skills as the workforce moves towards a skills-first agenda and provide workers with sustainable jobs aligned to their personal values and opportunities they can be proud of.”

The foundation’s focus is on “jobs in this emerging economy, the skills workers will require, how these skills are acquired, and successful pathways from the old to the new economy”, a foundation statement said. “It was formed as a ‘think and do’ foundation with the goal of helping to tackle the practical issues around the fundamental question of our time: how the UK and the rest of the world can successfully move to a low-carbon and then zero-carbon society, whilst leaving no one behind in a Just Transition.”

The report provides case studies of how green skills are being taught at community level in the UK, such as in Maidenhead, where a Green Skills Library is being created. Local residents can access free courses to learn how to upcycle, repair and create, and in future will be offered free group training in organic gardening, reupholstery and common repairs, as a result of recent funding.

Donna Stimson, the founder of the Green Skills Library, is a former councillor and sustainability cabinet member for the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. Stimson said: “Content in the courses can also provide individuals with new skills, which could lead to sustainable green jobs.”

The UK government plans to create 2m green jobs by 2030 and 6.9m green jobs by 2050.

“This transition of employment will create significant opportunities as well as challenges, which we must overcome by working together,” the statement said. “Students looking to enter the workforce and workers of today will be required to reskill and upskill to be match-fit for tomorrow.”

For more about the ‘Green Jobs: State of the Nation Report’ and the foundation, see The Big Story here.

Image credit | Getty

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