1. News
  2. New to Market

New to Market

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.

• Comment below on this story. Or let us know what you think by emailing us at [email protected] or tweet us to tell us your thoughts or share this story with a friend.

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.

• Comment below on this story. Or let us know what you think by emailing us at [email protected] or tweet us to tell us your thoughts or share this story with a friend.

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.

• Comment below on this story. Or let us know what you think by emailing us at [email protected] or tweet us to tell us your thoughts or share this story with a friend.

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.

24 May 2023
HR

NEW TO THE MARKET: 22-26 MAY 2023

• The Freelancer and Contractor Services Association (FCSA) has launched a contractor payslip review initiative to educate and protect contractors and give them a voice in the industry. Umbrella employees can upload their payslip and reconciliation statement, which will be checked by FCSA via an independent payslip verification service. This will tell them if the calculations are correct, and ensure contractors are properly informed of the deductions their umbrella provider has made. As a result, they’ll be assured that they’re meeting their tax obligations.

It’s available to employees of any umbrella company, not just those who are FCSA Members. The service is also completely confidential, and the user’s identity will never be disclosed to umbrella companies without prior permission. Initially, results will be aimed to be given within seven working days.

16 May 2023
Sales, Life sciences, Creative/Digital/Media, Engineering, IT/Telecoms, HR, Hospitality/Leisure, Graduates/Apprentices/School leavers

NEW TO THE MARKET: 15-19 MAY 2023

• Tech recruiter 5Values Consulting Group has opened its new headquarters in Bristol. The expansion will create numerous job opportunities for graduates, experienced consultants and salespeople in Bristol. The recruiter rebranded last year from Paratus People to 5Values Consulting Group.

The group encompasses three sub-brands: 5V Tech, 5V Video and 5V Media. At the core of 5Values Consulting Group lies its commitment to five fundamental values: inclusive, sustainable, authentic, attentive and considerate.

• London-based recruitment consultancy Alexander Lyons Solutions (ALS) has launched its specialist biotechnology team, which will be led by managing consultant Paul Shaw. Shaw is an experienced recruiter with 15 years’ experience in the consolidation of executive leadership teams within the biotechnology industry. The new team will focus on supporting the hiring efforts of clinical development within biotechnology companies and global pharmaceutical companies with a key strategic focus across the EU and Switzerland.

• CandidateX, a UK-based provider of a DEI-centred hiring platform, has launched to tackle recruitment bias in the labour market. Founded by a team of ex-frontline London recruiters, CandidateX reduces unconscious bias in the recruitment process, widens access to career opportunities for under-represented groups and elevates the jobseeker experience.

The CandidateX platform uses AI to anonymise the job application process by removing identifying factors such as gender, ethnicity and even socio-economic background. CandidateX’s platform ensures candidates have the confidence of knowing their talent is doing the talking. The anonymised diversity data generated from the CandidateX community – registered jobseekers within the platform – provides vital insights to employers from their talent pools, enabling them to constantly improve inclusion within their hiring practices and talent attraction strategies.

• Part of the SThree group of companies, Global Enterprise Partners (GEP) has launched its first office in Japan. The launch of the Tokyo office sees GEP, a specialist enterprise technology staffing agency, capitalise on the strong opportunities it has identified across Japan and the Asia Pacific (APAC) region.

• Staffing AI company Globus.ai has launched its ChatGPT-powered staffing feature. The latest addition to its AI-first offerings, the platform is built to streamline the recruitment process for both talent and recruiters. This includes automatically generating compelling campaigns and suggesting the best timing for campaign launch, ensuring they reach candidates at the most opportune moment.

• As the hospitality staffing shortage continues to dominate the news, Manchester-based hospitality recruiter Sixty Eight People has opened a new office in Euston, London. Founder Abi Dunn and managing director Charlotte Kemp are heading up a five-strong team, who are talent managers Matt Powell and Jack Bradfield, and talent consultants Oliver Beetlestone, Katie Thompson and Jack Perry.

Dunn told Recruiter: “Our move to London has been incredible. What a city! We have been inundated with project requests, clearly highlighting the industry’s need for something new. With a new team of five people, we are delighted to finally be able to support existing and new clients in the city and deliver a support network for the sectors incredible talent. Our purpose remains to revolutionise the industry through people, and we have some exciting plans that work towards that over the next 12 months. Watch this space!”

11 May 2023
Creative/Digital/Media, Executive search, IT/Telecoms, Graduates/Apprentices/School leavers

AI-technology recruiter Ocho launches in Belfast

Spearheaded by Phil Gamble, Ryan Quinn and Aaron Somers, who have almost 50 years of combined technology and recruitment experience, Ocho places the latest AI technology at the core of its operations.

Ocho’s AI platform automates the recruitment process and provides personalised journeys, status updates and scheduling tools. The company enters the market having secured a number of partnerships and an international partnership that will be revealed over the coming weeks, a statement from Ocho said.

Ocho’s team includes Naomi Jackson and Kamila Pas, who bring a wealth of technology recruitment experience to the company.

Ocho provides permanent, embedded and contract recruitment solutions for all types of roles in the technology industry, from C-suite level to graduates and intern placements. Ocho is also looking forward to expanding its team of technology recruiters in the coming months.

• Comment below on this story. Or let us know what you think by emailing us at [email protected] or tweet us to tell us your thoughts or share this story with a friend.

11 May 2023
Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Creative/Digital/Media, Commercial & office support, IT/Telecoms, HR

NEW TO THE MARKET: 9-12 MAY 2023

• By leveraging its newly-launched Clu’d Up toolkit, employers using skills-based inclusive hiring platform Clu can now also identify weak points around recruitment inclusion and accessibility, and correct them before they impact the selection process. According to a statement from Clu, it has helped almost 7,000 jobseekers from marginalised groups to find work in the UK job market.

• Recruitment agency Connect Appointments has launched a new job search app, helping to streamline the recruitment process and offering a user-friendly experience for jobseekers across Scotland. The app is available on both iOS and Android platforms. Paired with its user-friendly interface, the app also includes interview preparation advice, CV tips and tricks, industry insights and a career advice section to help jobseekers make informed decisions.

• Tech provider of recruitment solutions HireBuddy has launched HireBuddyGPT, an AI integration for its all-in-one recruitment CRM. The technology empowers recruitment agencies to streamline their operations while providing a “superior” experience for both clients and candidates.

• Kura, a customer service outsourcing business, has announced a new partnership with Scottish Friendly, creating new careers in Glasgow. Kura will work with the friendly society to provide call centre outsourcing services to its customers, utilising their expertise in the insurance and financial sector.

• McGregor Boyall has launched its new global recruitment website featuring application technology and integrated AI automation components to support the application process. The website includes Recite Me assistive technology, which removes barriers for those with neurological conditions from engaging with McGregor Boyall’s content online. The website hosts a comprehensive library of supportive documentation and market insights for clients and a contractor hub to support McGregor Boyall’s current and future contractors.

Recruiter Magazine

SUBSCRIBE TO PRINT
VIEW PAST ISSUES
Top