Judges 2013

Matt Alder is a digital strategy consultant and highly regarded recruitment "futurologist". With a 15 year background in digital recruitment, gained as the Head of Digital for two major Ad Agencies, Matt is now an independent consultant who supports some of the world largest employers with their social, digital and mobile resourcing strategies.  As well as working hands on helping companies define their strategies, Matt spends a significant amount of his time researching the impact social and mobile platforms are having on recruitment round the world and regularly speaks and writes to share his thoughts with an international audience.

Maria has been UK HR Director for E.ON since October 2008.Prior to joining E.ON, Maria spent two years in the public sector as Group HR Director for Transport for London and 20 years with Ford Motor Company. Maria’s last role at Ford was as HR Director for Jaguar Land Rover. In her spare time Maria supports a Brownie pack, enjoys travelling and cooking.

Will is a partner at the top 50 law firm Charles Russell where he specialises in corporate law.   Will is particularly active in advising clients on buying and selling companies.  He has specific expertise in the recruitment, technology and telecoms sectors.

Dean Ball joined leading global recruitment consultancy PageGroup as a Trainee in the Newcastle office in 1988. He spent the early stages of his career managing Accountancy recruitment teams in Manchester and Liverpool. In 1997, he relocated to the United States, as Regional Director to open PageGroup’s first office based in New York and established teams focussed on Banking, Accountancy, and Management Consultancy. In 2001, Dean returned to the UK to set up a number of new businesses and quickly progressed to Managing Director two years later. In 2006, be became a UK Regional Managing Director, his current role at PageGroup, and one that sees him lead 10 of 25 PageGroup disciplines. 

Steve is Finance Director for Semta, an organisation focused on skills development in the engineering sector. This follows varied experience including time with Marks & Spencer and DHL Express.

Nicky led transformational change through a focused strategic approach to client and candidate engagement resulting in the “2012 Award – Best Recruitment Team of the Year”. Previously at KPMG, Nicky drove UK and international resourcing and prior to KPMG led recruitment teams in Banking, Insurance, RPO and a leading recruitment agency.

Alastair has spent over 25 years in recruitment marketing, latterly as UK MD for Advertising and Media for Euro RSCG Riley. He now works independently, advising large swathes of the public and private sector on recruitment, branding and media – print, digital and social.  He is also an award-winning copywriter.

Mark has over 30 years' of experience within the recruitment industry. He co-founded The SR Group in 1987, initially establishing niche tax recruitment firm, Brewer Morris, and legal specialist recruiter, Taylor Root, before launching Frazer Jones in 1996. The SR Group now has 200 employees across London, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney and Melbourne.

In 2008, James was appointed Group Human Resources Director of Hays. Amongst his achievements is the introduction of the first online interactive recruitment game, the Hays Challenge. His previous appointments include Group HRD at Linde AG, The BOC Group plc and PA Consulting Group. James has a variety of board-level HR experience and is currently a Non-Executive Director of the Open University Business School and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

Head of Human Capital & Recruitment sector M&A advisory house specialising in UK and cross-border sell-side transactions, Tim is a chartered accountant, MBA, and has over 13 years of mid-market M&A deal experience. 

Carve is a social business consultancy that advises organisations on the effective, strategic use of corporate social networking.  Carve advises a wide range of in-house and agency resourcing teams, delivering research,strategy design, training and managed services

Following two years in Singapore and Malaysia selling to the Risk Management and Legal communities Guy joined Hudson in 1997 as a Researcher in their Legal business. Leaving 11 years later as Managing Director Guy became Chief Executive of Goodman Masson in 2008 where they have become an award winning organisation and the largest they have ever been. 

Andy has held a variety of positions since graduating both within Consulting and "in-house" specialising in Talent, Performance Management, Employer Brand, Resourcing and Organisation Change. Andy joined the Caudwell Group and was a key player in the integration of Caudwell companies, Corporate 4U and Singlepoint into Vodafone UK - he became Head of Resourcing for the UK business and spent time in a variety of roles including Head of Executive Development and Resourcing and Head of Talent. He left Vodafone in March 2009. At Invensys Andy has Global responsibility for Talent, Resourcing, Performance Management, Diversity and Employer brand across 128 countries.

Matthew Jeffery is a former winner of the Recruiter of the Year Award, author of Recruitment 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 and is Currently Head of Talent Acquisition EMEA & Global Talent Brand for Autodesk.

Simon is currently the Regional Recruitment Director at Gartner with responsibility for all talent acquisition across EMEA and APAC. Prior to joining Gartner, Simon spent over 7 years at Deloitte in a variety of senior resourcing roles covering partner, experienced hire and graduate recruitment. His earlier career was spent in in-house Executive Search for PA Consulting and in a specialist financial recruitment consultancy.

Dr. Kevin Lapwood joined the Support Services equity research team at Seymour Pierce Ltd in 2005 having previously headed the European Support Services and Industrial Transportation team at ING. He has been a financial analyst in the City since1985 following a five year career in academic research at the University of Surrey and with the Central Electricity Generating Board. He has held many senior equity research posts at Chase Manhattan Securities, Smith New Court, Charterhouse Securities and Merrill Lynch. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Member of the Energy Institute, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Commerce. He is married with four children.

Kean Marden has 17 years experience as a City analyst and maintains an active interest in the recruitment sector, including writing a monthly column for The Recruiter magazine and participating in industry seminars.

International recruiting and resourcing expert with over 20 years experience. Currently Global Resourcing Director at Unilever where I am responsible for the design and delivery of a locally implemented global approach to resourcing policy, employment branding, assessment and attraction.

Paul is formerly Head of Recruitment for the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games & Paralympic Games (LOCOG) where he was responsible for the delivery of its paid recruitment strategy, from 2007 to 2012. Prior to LOCOG Paul worked in senior recruitment roles at Barclays and Ernst & Young.

Expedia Inc (NASDEQ:EXPE) is the largest online travel company in the world with an extensive brand portfolio includes some of the world’s leading online travel brands including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Trip Advisor, Egencia and many more. Part of Expedia Inc’s Recruiting Management team I am responsible for heading the Talent Acquisition groups for a number of EI areas including Global Technology and Operations. Responsible for creating world-class staffing teams whilst providing thought leadership, strategic vision and being a pioneer of change.

Michele was appointed Human Resources Director for McDonald’s UK in June 2011. In this role she leads a People Team of 110 professionals responsible for Human Resources, Employer Reputation, Education, Training and Development, and Customer Services in a business which employs over 90,000 people in more than 1,200 restaurants.

In addition providing ongoing support to the organisation across this range of activities, Michele is also responsible for the development and implementation of a number of key initiatives which will underpin the next phase of McDonald’s business transformation.

Prior to moving into her current position, Michele had been HR Director for McDonald’s Ireland, a role she had held since 2004 when she joined the business from one of Ireland’s leading financial services organisations.

In 2010 Michele was presented with a McDonald's President's Award, an annual award which recognises the top performing one percent of McDonald's employees globally. She has also received two McDonald’s Circle of Excellence Awards – in 2007 and 2012 – a global award which recognises the members of cross-functional teams that achieve significant and measurable business results.

Michele is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and was formerly the Honorary Secretary of the Management Board of the CIPD in Ireland. Between 2007 and 2011 she was also a Board Member of the Ronald McDonald House Charity (Ireland).

 I was twenty years a main board director of Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance. In the last five years of my tenure I developed as part of my portfolio a recruitment sector division with a structure designed to support 1500 recruitment clients. Lending to these businesses was in excess of £150 million at the time. Three years ago I started my consultancy which is primarily geared to advising recruitment businesses on financing options and advising lenders on the dynamics of the recruitment sector. In the last year I have advised a leading IT recruiter, a medium sized interim provider and a small specialist in the graphic and advertising sector. I addressed the sales and management teams of 3 working capital lenders.  I am also retained by a leading business solutions company, a legal provider specialising in debt management and recovery and recently started a JV with a Merger and Acquisitions broking business.

Dean occupies the first London Boroughs’ joint HR director post. He leads the 28-Council London Boroughs’ Recruitment Partnership, delivered improving recruitment services.  He was PPMA President 2010/11, voted in the top 30 most influential UK HR directors 2011, and was a finalist for HR director of the year 2012

Group Captain Ian Tolfts has served in the Royal Air Force for 29 years.  A wide variety of roles including finance, infrastructure, personnel and media have been interspersed with operational deployments and exercises.  He assumed his role as Head of Recruiting and Selection for RAF in July 2010.  He is also the Chairman of Hounds for Heroes – a charity that provides assistance dogs to injured members of the armed forces and civilian emergency services.

Sue Weekes has been a journalist for more than 20 years and for the past 10 has specialised in the field of recruitment and HR technology as well as management and workplace issues. She writes regular online recruitment and technology articles for Recruitermagazine.