Member Article

A 200 Mile Cycle Race, Pitching to Theo Paphitis and Now a New Recruitment Business

Quite a Journey for New Business Founder, Shayne Wilson

Shayne Wilson has had an exhausting year. The former Head of Talent at leading digital and marketing recruitment business, Adam Recruitment, started the year by qualifying to represent team GB in Triathlon. Next, he cycled 200 miles from Manchester to London to raise over £4000 for Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, whilst racing a team of people undertaking the same distance on static bikes. This resulted in pitching his exploits to Theo Paphitis and over 70 attendees, in a nerve wracking presentation at this year’s Many Hands Campaign. Now, on the back of this success, and with support from his previous employers, Shayne has founded a new ‘recruitment to recruitment’ business, Kanso, a new player in the competitive recruitment to recruitment market.

“Kanso will be a disruptor” says Shayne. “The rec to rec market is heavily candidate driven. Recruitment businesses are continuously ‘sold’ candidates as ‘the next big thing’ which often results in candidates being placed in roles that don’t suit them and businesses suffering the consequences. According to statistics, staff turnover in recruitment is as high as 43% in some businesses! Kanso aims to eliminate that problem by providing an honest, transparent and simple rec to rec solution.”

Kanso, taken from the Japanese word meaning ‘simplicity or elimination of clutter’ was born from Shayne’s passion for developing recruiter talent. As former Head of Talent in a fast-growing recruitment business, Shayne helped shape company culture and drive business growth through the recruiters he brought into the business. Shayne looked after every part of talent management, from creating an enticing employer brand to sourcing people who fit the business’ culture, moulding an induction process to reduce time to profitability, to creating engagement and recognition strategies.

“Through my work with Adam Recruitment I’ve got a vast knowledge of both the candidate and client recruitment market in the North West. Kanso will use that knowledge to help other recruitment businesses grow through talent acquisition and development. We’ll provide an honest view as to a candidate’s suitability to their business. We’ll also provide consultancy to help clients shape their employer brand and put in place the processes to recruit, retain and engage their team.

From a candidate perspective, we’re here to help recruiters work out what they want from their next role, whether that be financial reward or work life balance, autonomy or teamwork, mentoring or a drive for leadership. We’ll then work confidentially, to find candidates the ideal home where they can achieve their aspirations, providing our honest view as to whether career opportunities are the right fit for them.

We think there’s a big market for this kind of personal and honest service and have exciting plans for the growth of the business over the next three years.“

In terms of his charity exploits, Shayne has another endurance event on the horizon. “Our 200-mile race from Manchester to London was gruelling but it was for a fantastic cause and it was a brilliant, though nerve wracking experience pitching our campaign to Theo Paphitis. Next on the list is an Iron Man next year where I will again be racing the team at Adam to raise money for their chosen charity.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mike Pye .