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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.

4 May 2023
Public sector, Social care, Creative/Digital/Media, Engineering, Legal, Executive search, IT/Telecoms, HR, Healthcare/Medical

NEW TO THE MARKET: 2-5 MAY 2023

• A new recruitment service has launched to provide services for senior and technical roles in the informatics sector. 32 Stripes has been launched by informatics and information systems specialist Zach Harris, and will support businesses seeking to recruit informatics expertise. 32 Stripes provides expertise in sourcing informatics candidates across all industry sectors. This includes technologies beyond the lab, to source senior level staff to lead enterprise resource planning (ERP) and digital customer relationship management programmes.

• Recruitment firm Extrastaff has launched its future leaders programme to identify and develop internal talent to fill management positions across its 51 locations. The programme will include a mix of classroom-based and practical training to help participants progress their careers within the company.

• Global marine energy solutions provider KPI OceanConnect has launched “get fuelled”, a new two-year global trainee programme to foster and inspire the next generation of marine fuel traders. The programme will provide new hires with an “immersive” learning experience including comprehensive training in marine fuel trading, supply and logistics, and the opportunity to work with industry-leading experts. Trainees will also have the chance to relocate to one of KPI OceanConnect’s 16 offices worldwide, where they can learn about different cultures, establish their own network and work with colleagues from various backgrounds.

• International legal search firm MRA Search has launched a New York practice. Bally Aujla will head up the new legal recruitment practice to assist its growing client base. With more than 13 years’ experience, Aujla has placed associates into top 100 law firms across London, New York, Dubai, Paris and Moscow. Before joining MRA Search, Aujla founded and ran a boutique legal recruitment agency for several years and co-created a social app for the South Asian Community.

• Healthcare agency Ocean Healthcare plans to employ 200 additional nurses and carers over the next 18 months. Ocean provides essential support to private nursing homes, hospices, hospitals and residential homes across Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.

• Warsaw-based technology firm SmartyMeet has announced its UK expansion with ‘Boe’, an inventive AI chatbot hailed as your “best AI buddy”, designed to transform video meetings into productive work sessions. With investment from LT Capital, SmartyMeet provides support by its virtual assistant Boe, both before, during and after the virtual meeting.

• Tengai AB has developed an unbiased human-like screening software that engages candidates, streamlines the screening process, and collects important candidate data. With the new AI recruiting software, talent acquisition professionals can screen multiple candidates at the same time, communicate efficiently and provide personalised feedback while mitigating unconscious bias.

19 April 2023
IT/Telecoms

Indeed adds new tier of service with pay for performance pricing

This includes pay per application (PPA) and pay per started application (PPSA). This will be in addition to its pay per click (PPC) option.

This pricing offering is intended to deliver quality applicants that meet an employer’s preferences and charges them only when they receive an application, rather than when they receive job ad clicks. 
 
Employers can review the price per application, set an application limit based on their budget, and automatically reject applications that don’t meet their needs by setting predetermined requirements. Additionally, employers have 72 hours to manually reject any application before being charged.

With PPA, employers who post jobs directly to Indeed pay when they get completed applications. With PPSA, employers only pay when applications are started from higher-intent job candidates. PPSA primarily supports large employers whose jobs are available on In-deed.

Indeed said that most employers (51%) selected Pay for Results as the top pricing model when compared to Pay for Clicks (12%) and Pay a Flat Fee per Job Post (33%). In addition, 79% of employers also report they believe they should only pay when they receive a quality candidate from an online job site.
 
Indeed’s Pay for Results options are already available, and they will soon be available to more employers in the US and UK, the company said. Pay for Results options to employers around the world will come later.

Read more about changes at Indeed in the May-June issue of Recruiter.

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19 April 2023
Life sciences, Education

Major recruitment drive for Marine Biological Association

Founded in 1884 and based at Citadel Hill, Plymouth, the MBA is now looking for candidates for top jobs in marine biology, with the creation of two new senior job roles and additional research posts.

A new director of science role will provide strategic oversight to the expanding and diverse research programme.

The MBA has also announced a new director of association post, which will lead on commercial and charitable business efforts, including the promotion and development of the learned society, membership and training activities.

In addition, there will be opportunities for new research fellows roles in marine microbiome, coastal ecology and ocean biology.

The MBA has recently invested in a £5m laboratory refurbishment to create a Marine Microbiome Centre of Excellence.

This new world-class research Centre will facilitate “discovery and inspiration”, the organisation said.

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18 April 2023
IT/Telecoms, HR

Jobbatical’s automated platform aims to speed up relocation

The launch follows regulatory approval from the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) to provide immigration services in the UK. 

Jobbatical’s UK operations will be headed up by Adarsh Girijadevi, a leading UK immigration expert, qualified solicitor and OISC Level 3 adviser.

Jobbatical claims its platform speeds up and makes it less expensive to move talent from one country to another by automating the labour-intensive parts of the relocation process. Its offering combines technology and in-house, and local immigration experts to “streamline the employer licence application and employee visa and permit application form, as well as facilitating fast information exchange between employers and employees and providing personal employee relocation”, the company said.

Karoli Hindriks, CEO and co-founder of Jobbatical, says it is essential to digitise an archaic migration system that hasn’t kept up with where in the world top talent is coming from.

“Skilled migration is still a world-away from where it should be,” Hindriks said. “It’s taking some business leaders months to muddle through the unnecessary bureaucracy and burden of relocation; this puts many off from even thinking about hiring internationally or offering relocation as an option for existing employees in other countries.”

As the UK issues 145,000 work visas annually, with an average visa case taking 10 to 12 hours to process, almost 200,000 working days are spent on employment visa cases in the UK each year, Jobbatical estimated.

Jobbatical’s board members include Patty McCord, former chief talent officer at Netflix, and author and innovation specialist Alec Ross. McCord was responsible for creating the now-famous Netflix Culture Deck. Ross served as senior adviser for innovation to the Secretary of State during the Obama administration in the US.

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