Recruiters Live Lounge | Get Inspired! | Weekly Interviews with the best Recruitment Business Leader

Toby is the Managing Director and founder of Harrington Starr, the London based financial services technology recruitment, events and insight company. He is the Chairman of the FinTech Influencers, The FS Technology Breakfast, and the editor of The Trading Technologist and FinTech Capital Magazines. Harrington Starr launched in 2010 and has grown from 4 people to a market leading position in the global FinTech community and is soon to be launching a number of new brands in the group. He started his career in recruitment in 2000 and has held senior positions in two listed brands before launching Harrington Starr.

Christine Tautari is Co-founder and Director of The Needle, a candidate video interview platform, and they are based on the Isle of Man in the UK. Christine is originally from New Zealand where she started her career in sales and marketing. When she came over to the UK in 2005 she got involved in recruitment which she immediately fell in love with and started a 10 year career in the interim recruitment market. Four years ago she decided to start up her own business and launched The Needle with a partner.

Daniel Mundy is the CEO of anzuk* Teachers a recruitment agency focusing on teaching and childcare placements across Australia, the UK and Asia. At university in Ballarat, Australia,  Daniel completed studies as a Physical Education Teacher and then moved to the UK for three and a half years to teach PE to Health and Special Educational Needs students. Upon making the decision to head home to start a new life Daniel says he was lucky enough to fall into Education Recruitment and when spotting a gap in the market for sourcing and placing teachers between the UK and Australia he created anzuk*. Daniel is passionate about creating a workplace culture that promotes team, trust, respect and fun - it's become the fabric of who he is and how he leads anzuk*. 

Wendy McDougall is a serial entrepreneur, currently making waves and influencing the recruitment technology space with her role as CEO at Firefish Software. Wendy’s first business '9-20 Recruitment' was launched in 2004 and sold successfully 6 months after returning from the amazing Entrepreneurship Development Program in Boston in 2013.  Now focusing on Firefish Software initially spun out of 9-20 in 2010 and after a successful 2 year BETA programme, she's establishing a clear ‘product market fit’ as a sales and marketing platform for the SME Recruitment agency vertical. In July 2014, just under £400k of seed funding was raised to accelerate growth. Employees within the company have increased from 7 to 17 with a hiring plan in place to reach 25 by the year-end with a new office space thrown in.

Abigail’s career started in marketing but after 8 years she ‘fell into recruitment’ with Pertemps and ASA International.  Abigail maintained a constant top biller status at ASA and to her knowledge, still holds the record of highest ever biller! When she was asked if she would like to be part of a management buyout, Abigail realised she did not want to take on someone else’s company and that she wanted to start her own. So in 2000, with a vision of Improving Lives, Abigail created Think Global Recruitment which is now recognised as one of the leading international, accountancy and finance recruitment consultancies.

Glyn Blaize had a promising rugby career ahead of him in the late 90’s playing for Wasps, England Students U21s and Rugby Lions but his rugby career was cut short by a horrific sporting injury which saw him in hospital for six weeks. However this was the catalyst for Glyn to pursue a new career.  He entered the recruitment industry in 1999 and went on to hold Commercial Director, Sales Director and Operation Director positions at fast growing SME recruitment business  and now has over twelve years’ experience improving operational efficiency and sales strategy in Recruitment businesses.  Earlier this year Glyn  set up Addocura with Darren Ryemill (of Opus fame) and together they are building what they believe will be the ‘go-to’ Management Consultancy for the Recruitment Industry.

Andrew Hairs is the Group Managing Director of the Monroe Consulting Group and is based out in Jakarta overseeing the offices in Jakarta, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Santiago and Mexico City.

Andrew has over 15 years recruitment experience starting as a consultant, and then moving onto executive search and working for a company where he was responsible for signing up high volume accounts.

The experience Andrew gained doing volume recruitment is why Monroe Consulting Group asked him to be their MD at a new office in Tokyo. After 10 months he was asked to take on a 6 month assignment in Indonesia to start another office for the group - that was 10 years ago! Monroe Indonesia is now one of the most recognized and successful executive recruitment brands in Indonesia.

Gareth Biggerstaff is a seasoned leader in Technology & Digital recruitment, having started his career with a large national provider over 20 years ago as a researcher and over time progressing to Director and skilfully building a market-leading recruiting team.

Of course working that length of time in one sector means that Gareth has experienced both the positive and negative cycles of change but has always maintained a hands-on approach to team management and client delivery which he believes has is the reason for a large part of his success. Three years ago Gareth made the leap and started his own company Be-IT Resourcing with the aim of building an agency to stand head and shoulders above its competitors. Now with 9 staff and an enviable client list, it looks very much like Gareth is achieving all he set out to do. 

Chris Young is the Owner of FlexiRec and an active recruiter with over 8 years experience placing rising stars and top talent with some of the UKs biggest and best loved companies including Fujitsu, Hilton Worldwide and SANYO. 3 years ago Chris founded FlexiRec as a specialist agency across 3 divisions; Commercial Office Staff, Sales Professionals, and more recently Technical Experts. Chris has big plans for the FlexiRec brand and is with us today to share his journey so far!

Jack Parsons started as a sales apprentice 5 years ago after leaving school and started his recruitment career in the education sector for Morgan Hunt. He quickly went on to win best new comer out of around 250 recruitment consultants and in his few years there went on to continually win award after award. He then spent a little time in healthcare recruitment before founding Recruitment Jack an online platform for candidates to find the latest jobs, industry news and company insight all in one place  – which he now runs as CEO and which he grew to 8 staff in just 10 weeks.