In 2013, recruitment expert and former Dragons’ Den star James Caan set out on the search for the ‘Next Recruitment Entrepreneur’ offering an investment of up to £500,000 and the support and mentorship of his successful Venture Capital engine.
There was an overwhelming response with 13,000 budding entrepreneurs showing interest from all over the globe, from Southampton to South Africa. The variety of business plans covered everything from Media to Military and from traditional recruitment through to disruptive online models.
James Caan is now accepting applications for the Recruitment Entrepreneur of 2014.
Visit[ilink url=”http://www.recruitmententrepreneur.com”]recruitmententrepreneur.com[/ilink] for more information on how to enter. Applications open Monday 3rd February 2014 at 9am and close Friday February 28th 2014 at 5pm.
The first successful applicant of the 2013 initiative was James Downie, with his Oil & Gas business JDi Energy, based in London. Before approaching Hamilton Bradshaw, Downie was a Sales Manager with 5 years’ experience across the Engineering and Oil & Gas markets globally. Downie successfully set up and grew the Manchester branch of a well-known Recruitment Group, hiring and running a team of 10 contract sales consultants. His sales team had a projected turnover of £6.5 million and £1.3 million gross profit for 2013/14. Downie won the Manchester Young Talent Award for Recruiter of the Year 2012.
Due to the huge success James has had with start-ups, his vision over the next three years is to back an exclusive group of recruitment entrepreneurs across the globe. His motto is ‘investing in people with passion’ and he is dedicated to finding those with the same drive and ambition he had to give them the financial support and mentoring to build something as exciting as his first recruitment company, Alexander Mann, which he launched from scratch, and was sold for £260 million in 2013.
To date, Hamilton Bradshaw has an unparalleled success rate in backing start-up ventures in recruitment. Between 2010 and 2013 James’s six existing start-up ventures turned over a combined total of £125 million and as a result he is always on the lookout for new talent to further that success.
