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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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20 April 2020

Campaign launches to Keep Britain Working during Covid-19 crisis

The campaign, which aims to preserve lives and protect livelihoods, looks to redeploy UK workers from struggling sectors into in-demand ones and help people who have lost their jobs find news ones. 

It launches today [20 April] as a result of cross-industry business leaders and politicians coming together in the wake of predictions by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that the UK economy could shrink by 35%, resulting in a total of 3.4m people becoming unemployed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the OBR predictions, this would mean 2m people losing their jobs this spring.

The campaign has been launched on keepbritainworking.com. It will encourage businesses and workers to make pledges to #KeepBritainWorking both during the crisis and beyond, a statement from the campaign said.

James Reed, chairman of the REED recruitment business, is co-founder of Keep Britain Working. He said the potential economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic could be disastrous, and businesses should work together, sharing ideas, resources and support. 

“We’re on a mission to Keep Britain Working,” Reed said. “We’ll do this by sharing the best ideas, advice and guidance to support businesses and workers, by connecting those who have lost their jobs from sectors that are struggling to those that are in demand, and by inspiring people across the nation to focus on how, where and when we work, once we move away from the current challenges.”

Supporting the movement are Lord Alan Sugar; James Timpson, CEO of Timpson; Severn Trent CEO Liv Garfield; and JCB’s Lord Bamford. MPs Penny Mordaunt, Steven Brine and Caroline Nokes, and MSP Jamie Hepburn, and the CBI are also on board.

The Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) also support the drive.

Recruiter has contacted the campaign to obtain details about how the effort will be carried out. We will update you once we have further information.

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20 April 2020
Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Transport & logistics, Agriculture, Creative/Digital/Media, Engineering, Charity & not-for-profit, Legal, IT/Telecoms, HR, Hospitality/Leisure, Healthcare/Medical, Apprentices/Grads/School leavers

NEW TO THE MARKET: 20-24 APRIL 2020

• Alexander Mann Solutions, a global recruitment process outsourcing and talent acquisition consulting services firm, has released its first self-developed technology platform. Hourly by Alexander Mann Solutions enables organisations to hire hourly workers faster and more precisely through a completely conversational experience from explore-to-offer, in a single built-for-mobile solution.

• Recruitment software firm Candidate.ID has developed TalentPipe.org, a free CRM matching initiative. Recruiters, recruitment marketers and sourcers can sign up to receive job alerts from employers. Employers looking for these skills can log their vacancies, and candidates are notified when there is a match. Employers can also request a list of potential candidates.

• Credentially, a software platform that helps healthcare companies hire and onboard clinical staff by automating the validation process, is offering its services free of charge to all NHS and UK healthcare organisations. Co-founder and CEO Dr Kit Latham, who is also an A&E doctor, says Credentially has been integral in hiring more than 2,000 volunteer GPs to the Covid Clinical Assessment Service (CCAS).

• The launch of Skills Miner from Enginuity has been brought forward from the summer to allow thousands of people in lockdown to have fun – and find out if they’ve got what it takes to transit from the virtual to the real world of engineering.

Enginuity, supported by The Princes Trust, is the new engineering skills organisation charged with creating skills solutions for individuals, educators and employers to help close the skills gap in engineering. Players of Skills Miner, which is based on Minecraft and aimed at all ages, will be guided to various levels, given assessments of their cerebral and dexterity strengths (which crucially they may never have realised) – then given a call to action to help them make an appropriate move through the gateway from the virtual to the real world of engineering and manufacturing.

The free game, set in an electric car showroom and factory, goes live on Tuesday 28 April. It is aimed at young people and in particular may benefit the 800,000 young people in the UK who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and would not otherwise be assessed by anyone in education, training and employment. Their talents often go unnoticed and unharnessed, and are of particular interest to game supporters – The Prince’s Trust.

• GeekTalent, a North-East provider of skills, talent and recruitment software solutions, has launched its GoCareer app, a career management tool designed to support those looking to reskill and secure a new job role in the uncertain employment market.

The app’s launch date was brought forward in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and is free for the first three months. GoCareer allows users to identify their core skills and build a unique CV, which the app then matches skills to job roles.

• Technology start-up inploi has expanded its online platform to stimulate workforce mobility during the current crisis by connecting jobseekers displaced by the Covid-19 pandemic with employment opportunities in essential industries across the UK. Initially focused on the hospitality sector, the inploi platform now includes jobs across industries ranging from agriculture to logistics and warehousing to charity and voluntary work.

• A new jobs initiative has been launched by North Wales-based JVP Group in response to the urgent demand for essential and key workers, and the impact on unemployment in North Wales due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Launched by JVP Group, Jobs in North Wales is a job site is focused on directly connecting jobseekers with employers in the region. JVP Group is now providing the online platform to employers to advertise key worker and essential roles, including volunteering opportunities, completely free of charge during the Covid-19 crisis.

• Konexo, a division of Eversheds Sutherland, has launched Resourcing+, an evolution of its existing resourcing service, which will be rolled out across its global network. Resourcing+ gives clients immediate and high quality legal talent on an hourly basis with the flexibility tailored to clients. Clients will be able to hire immediate, ad hoc support as an extension to their in-house team without having to commit to specific timeframes.

• Snack, a video chat roulette, has launched as a way for teams working remotely to stay in touch with each other. Snack is a Slack bot that enables teams to have virtual coffees: spontaneous, time-restricted video conversations with icebreakers.

According to developer Gajus Kuizinas, the lottery mechanism adds a fun and organic element to conversations because you never know who you will be talking to until after you see each other in the video room – just like how you would never know who you’ll bump into at the water cooler.

• Talent Beam, a strategic talent acquisition (TA) provider to global organisations, which launched last month in Manchester, has added to its feature product, The Talent Calculator – an external deep dive/healthcheck into a TA function.

With the global Covid-19 pandemic currently affecting most businesses, Talent Beam founder and director Neil Martin has now introduced a free short diagnostic tool, which allows any TA team to complete a short survey called The Talent Calculator – Diagnostic’. The survey takes about 15 minutes and will allow any company to rate their TA function and then compare this to a global and industry average. The new tool should help TA leads make decisions on what to prioritise in these changing times.

• WorkTaps, the mobile-first employee referral solution for hourly and deskless workforces, is from today offering its hiring software to businesses at no cost in response to the COVID-19 crisis. WorkTaps is a simple way for employees to tap their personal networks and enable a seamless and rapid recruiting machine. With mobile-first, tap-to-share communication, WorkTaps drives quality applicants faster than ever before.

• Recruiters working remotely may be interested to know that enterprise video communications firm Zoom has announced security enhancements with its upcoming Zoom 5.0 – a key milestone in the company’s 90-day plan to proactively identify, address, and enhance the security and privacy capabilities of the platform.

17 April 2020
IT/Telecoms

Start-up of the Month: NDC Tek Recruitment

The trio, who previously worked together at another agency, aim to stand out in the marketplace due to their sole focus of cloud & DevOps recruitment in the UK and Nordics especially, where they felt there was a gap in the market. In addition, the three founders are working towards cloud certifications (AWS/Azure/GCP), which they say will add credibility for candidates and clients, and be a stand-out feature of NDC Tek.

“By having the same certifications as a lot of their candidates/clients,” a spokesperson for the company told Recruiter, “it is only going to make them more credible when it comes to talking about the technology. They have the recruitment skills and by adding the technology knowledge it will take them to the next level.” 

“In addition, due to their extensive networks, many end-user clients ask them for advice or recommendations when they go to tender for their cloud projects. As a result, they have won many of their consulting/agency clients projects previously and will continue to do so.”

Looking ahead, the agency is looking to build the team with consultants that are passionate about the cloud & DevOps space and continue to cement NDC Tek’s unique place in the market.

The agency has partnered with start-up specialist Davidson Gray to provide its support services.

14 April 2020
Engineering, Executive search, IT/Telecoms, HR

NEW TO THE MARKET: 14-17 APRIL 2020

• Recruitment software firm Candidate.ID has launched ‘Furlough Connect’, a three-month managed service to help support employers inspire furloughed and contingent workforce. Employers provide content to fuel the campaigns and are presented with regular data on all employees’ interactions.

Scot McRae, co-founder of Candidate.ID, said: “Furlough Connect equips your HR and talent acquisition teams with the tools needed to identify, manage and quickly respond to Covid-19 associated risks for internal talent. Visual dashboards provide live visibility of trends across your organisation. With a user-friendly interface and mobile-first design, it has been designed to be easily adopted by remote employees.”

• GatedTalent, a platform that allows executives to share career successes and aspirations with top headhunters, is waiving all recruiter ‘Search and Connect’ and ‘GTMail’ fees for retained executive search firms until the end of September 2020. Click here to take advantage of the offer.

Jason Starr, president of Ikiru People, the company behind GatedTalent, said: “GatedTalent has grown rapidly over recent months, and now it’s time to give something back. By waving all recruiter fees, we are helping our clients and our members – it’s a win-win.”

• Global-Roles, a job board with the aim of making local to global recruitment easier, is now live. The aim is to create a one-stop board with a global reach allowing any agency to recruit locally or globally, with one registration for both agency and candidate.

Global-Roles is currently offering six weeks’ free unlimited job postings to help in the current global epidemic. This will be monitored and possibly extended, in an effort to try to reach out to as many agencies and candidates as possible.

• Global professional recruiting group Hays has launched a free online training portal aimed to help employers and teams grow the skills they need to function effectively and thrive during the Covid-19 crisis. Hays Learning is available to businesses of all sizes and offers three course areas covering remote working, wellbeing and health & safety. The remote working courses are designed to help improve worker efficiency when remote working and assist with planning their working days and working with a remote team.

• Emerging technology talent specialist mthree has launched its Aspire Scholarship, a 12-week online training course to help students graduating with STEM degrees or those taking their first steps on the career leader to become a full-stack java developer. The scholarship hopes to support those looking to secure full-time roles in the tech sector make a start during these uncertain times.

• Norman Broadbent has created a new offering to help stretched HR and talent acquisition teams to enable them to tap into the firm’s resources and expertise in different ways.

By segmenting the end-to-end process of mapping, identification, first approach, interview, final interview and offer, TA professionals can pick from a menu of services, enabling TA teams to manage demand peaks and troughs more effectively. Each stage of the process is optional and can be switched on or off quickly and charged accordingly, so TA professionals only pay for what the use.

• Talent Cloud, a joint venture partnership between Scott Davies (former CEO Hallam Medical and Recruiter Awards 2016 Recruitment Agency Leader of the Year) and Dean Sadler (CEO TribePad), is offering free access to its range of on-demand professional services, incorporating the full suite of TribePad technology, to all SME businesses.

As well as working with SMEs to digitally transform and automate recruitment processes, Talent Cloud recognises that although hiring may be put on hold, furloughed employees cannot be forgotten. To ensure they remain engaged and ready for the bounce, Talent Cloud can help businesses’ furloughed employees stay connected via its Talent Pool Communities, sharing news, company updates, advice and learning.

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