Gain exclusive access to industry data, insights, trends, and best practices to help you and your business save time, improve efficiency, increase profitability, make more placements, and keep you ahead of the game.
Following demand we’re bringing this acclaimed events to Cardiff. Tired of travelling to events in London, Manchester, or elsewhere? Then this event is for you!
An event by recruitment leaders, for recruitment leaders. Attend if you are a recruitment agency owner, founder, MD, team leader, future leader, FD, head of ops or marketing or a key decision-maker within a recruitment agency.
In addition to fantastic speaker content, you’ll have the chance to meet peers, collaborate, and build relationships.
An action-packed day with seven dynamic speaker presentations, panel discussions, and and fireside chats to ignite personal and commercial advantage for 2025 and beyond.
Some of the implementable takeaways from the day:
- Legal and employment update: what you need to know to remain relevant
- UK economy insights: Trend secrets that will help you plan for the next two years
- How to win new business without needing to hire more staff
- Tech & AI: tech stack MUST HAVES to maximise opportunity and what the future holds
- Marketing: top tips to ensuring your brand remains relevsnt and stands out
- Future proofing your recruitment agency against any unseen challenge and hit goals!
- Ops: whatever size your business, practical advice on what great modern ops looks like
- How to expand your talent pool to recruit more relevant people and make more money
This event will end with networking drinks and the chance to ask questions to our expert speakers.
Tickets include lunch, refreshments, networking drinks.
“I’ve now attended two Summits and have to say they are the best recruitment events I’ve been to. Great speakers, loads of useful content, and professionally run.” Kelly Fenna, Business Director, Anderson James
“Hands down the most informative recruitment leader event in Manchester for years!” – Janine Owen, Co-founder, Talent Crowd
Maria Vavoulas, COO, Fractional COO, Facilitator
Barry-born Maria is a passionate and execution-driven Chief Operating Officer with over 15 years of experience in both sales and operational roles. Highly skilled in scaling operations and optimising internal processes to transition small businesses into medium-sized enterprises.
In addtion to being the event’s MC, Maria will introdue her unique collaborative style that concludes with a session to ensure you not only enjoy the day but implement all the relevant learns into your business to drive success.
Kate O’Neill, Recruitment Coach, Trainer & DISC Specialist
Kate is a seasoned recruitment professional with over 12 years of experience. She has successfully run her own recruitment coaching and training business for the past four years, specialising in business development and the training and development of rookies.
In October 2024, Kate launched her Rec2Rec agency, dedicated to introducing pre-trained talent to the recruitment industry, ensuring we create our success stories of the future. Known for her passion for business development, she has trained hundreds of consultants across different experience levels, empowering them to thrive in their careers.
In October 2024, Kate launched her Rec2Rec agency, dedicated to introducing pre-trained talent to the recruitment industry, ensuring we create our success stories of the future.
Talk Title: Building a Sustainable Business Development Culture in your Agency for 2025
This talk will cover how you can create a proactive, client-centric approach to business development in your business, helping you foster a culture where everyone in the agency understands and contributes to growth.
Key areas:
Modernising the Business Development Process – Introduce tech tools, CRM strategies, and data-driven approaches that streamline BD efforts.
Upskilling Consultants in Client Acquisition – Practical tips on training consultants to feel confident in BD, including managing objections, networking, and building strong client relationships.
Developing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) That Drive Results – Guidance on creating meaningful KPIs that encourage positive behaviours without overwhelming consultants with hard sales tactics.
Building Long-Term Client Partnerships – Strategies to move from transactional relationships to deeper partnerships, resulting in higher retention and repeat business.
Leveraging Employee Branding for Attraction – Tactics for making you and your consultants more attractive to potential clients through a strong, differentiated personal brand.
Darren Westall, CEO, Paiger
Following a decade of success as CTO of Broadbean Technology, Darren established Paiger, the dynamic recruitment marketing product enabling recruiters to market their candidates, market their jobs and build their brands without taking them away from selling to candidates and clients.
A techy at heart, Darren is perfectly placed to help recruiters make the most of their technology, save time and money, and make more placements.
Talk Title: Enabling Recruiters with Technology – making the most of what you already have
- How tech can get you and your recruiters firing faster
- Improving efficiency by integrating tech into existing workflows
- Getting the balance right: Business development, candidates, personal brand
- Tips to know what tech is best for your business – and what you don’t need
- How to make the most from your LinkedIn licence
Emily Thomas, Brand & Communications Manager, Thrive Recruitment Marketing
Emily is a strategic recruitment marketer with a flair for digital marketing and brand building, combining industry know-how with a content-driven, data-backed approach that delivers results. She believes that a great marketer should champion a brand just as passionately as its top salesperson—something she brings to life with content that resonates with clients and candidates alike. Now, she partners with recruitment brands globally to amplify their impact and drive real ROI through Thrive’s bespoke, results-oriented services.
Talk Title: Is Your Recruitment Brand Forgettable or Unmissable?
1. Craft a Value Proposition (VP) that commands Premium Fees: Learn how to develop a VP that moves beyond speed and price, positioning their agency as a unique, high-value choice for clients and candidates.
2. Structure and Productise Offerings for Clarity: What does good look like? Practical strategies to organise your services—exclusive, retained, or embedded models—making it easier for clients to understand and select your offerings.
3. Use Proof Points to Strengthen Your VP: How you can leverage testimonials, case studies, and metrics (e.g., time-to-hire, cost savings) to make your VP more compelling and credible.
4. Align Messaging Across All Channels: How you can ensure your brand has consistent messaging across online and offline channels, reflecting your VP accurately in every client/candidate touchpoint.
5. Keep Your VP Relevant and Aligned Internally: Why you should be updating your VP regularly to match evolving business strategies AND aligning internal teams to deliver on the VP promise consistently.
Simon Bloch, Partner & Head of Employment, JMW Solicitors
An expert at providing solid, pragmatic and effective legal advice to employers and employees in relation to the world of work, Simon is a respected employment lawyer and business networker.
Talk Title: The King’s Speech – How Will Labour’s Employment Law Reforms Affect the Recruitment Industry?
We’ll discuss:
- Zero hours contracts
- Day one rights
- Ending fire and re-hire
- Extending SSP and maternity rights
- Flexible working
- Trade union reform
Jo Phillips, Founder, The Woman Behind The Women
Jo is known throughout the indutry for helping businesses understand the power of attracting women to their databases. As the workplace evolves towards gender balance, it’s never been more important for recruiters to understand what women want from their job seeking experience, and the role itself.
With over two decades of recruiting experience, and an extensive L&D background, Jo will provided a funny and insightful tour through the female lens of job searching, helping you create the candidate experience that females look for, enriching your talent pool, and ensuring you make more plcements with better clients.
Key Takeaways:
- Why women experience societal and systemic barriers and how to be an ally for them
- How to write job ads that attract female talent
- How to prevent women deselecting during the application process
- Helping women close the their pay gap
- Positive, winning, financial benefits to placing women in business
This talk is packed with energy, so many implementable takeaways, and bags of fun.
John Salt, Recruitment Advisor, NED, Tech Specialist, Speaker & Presenter
I build, advise, deliver and execute commercial strategies.
A market tested strategy and operating executive with a successful track record of driving aggressive growth in digital businesses. A hands-on people leader, individual contributor, and entrepreneur with successful P&L management experience.
An expert in internet marketplace, e-commerce and SaaS business models with deep experience in marketing execution, and multi-channel sales. A background rooted in data-driven problem solving as a strategy consultant and working in a top-tier firm across multiple sales channels and industries.
A driver of change within large matrix-organisations (£350M+) as well as a creator and builder of pre-revenue start-ups or SMB’s, leading them as they scale (<£1M).
Talk Title: The UK Recruitment Economy: Why Data and AI are your Recruitment Allies, Not your Replacements
Key takeaways:
- A look at the current economy.
- What does that data tell us and what does that mean to you now?
- How Data and AI can drive your growth. Be fuelled, not fooled.
John is invited to speak at all the RecConnect Summit events because, well, quite simply, he’s awesome!