AdvisorLink Showcase: meet the advisors and see what they can offer your business

John Bissell

Owner, LBA

Specialisms

• Growth Management & Business Planning - Having bought or sold over 350 recruitment businesses and opened over 200 recruitment branches, John is ideally placed to advise owners on buy and build strategies.
• Merger, Acquisition & Exit Planning– John is the longest established mergers and acquisitions specialist in the UK recruitment industry. He has helped hundreds of owners to plan and execute their acquisition and exit strategies.
• International Expansion – John has considerable experience in the Middle East and Gulf recruitment markets.
• Financing & Funding Growth - Through his work in M&A, John has built an unrivalled understanding of the principles of financing both acquisitions and business expansion.

John has had unrestricted access to thousands of recruitment businesses over four decades. He has unrivalled insight into all
aspects of running, growing, buying and selling all types of recruitment businesses.

Steve Carter

Co-Founder & Director, Carter Squared

Steve has had a 35-year career building and managing global recruitment firms at CEO level and serving on their global board.

Starting his career in Australia, Steve has forged a global career on constantly seeking change and improvement in the recruitment industry, challenging the norms , learning from other sectors and getting the best out of people by empowering and enabling them.

Having been at the Exec/Board level of global recruitment businesses, Steve launched his consulting practice in 2015, working alongside recruitment industry Directors and owners who are committed to building businesses that are not restricted by the conventional thinking in the sector.

After meeting Paralympian Liz Johnson through his consulting work, they co-founded The Ability People, an organization committed to creating ‘parity of opportunity’ in the world of work for disabled people and in 2019 was awarded a fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts for his work in social change.

Ian Knowlson

Owner, Talence

Ian has had an impressive career to date, spanning over 35 years in recruitment, talent acquisition, solution sales and training sectors. His track record of establishing, growing and revitalising failing recruitment businesses across the UK and Europe, in a myriad of sectors including IT/Technology, Engineering, Telecoms and Public Sector/Not-for-Profit, gives him a wealth of personal experience to draw upon.

Having worked as a UK Sales Director for Hays Specialist Recruitment for 11 years, Ian understands the complexities of corporate resourcing and constructing high return client relationships. He has led the sale and delivery of Managed Services contracts with values of up to £20M per annum, and delivered numerous long-term, high-value partnerships and business critical high-profile projects.

As a strategic partner to many blue-chip organisations, Ian has worked at board/cabinet level to assist strategic decision-making in skills availability within regions, sectors and countries. The organisations Ian has helped with his innovative solutions-focused approach include Barclays Bank, Clerical Medical, NHS Connecting-for-Health, DWP, MoneySupermarket, AXA-Direct and Leicestershire County Council.

Kai Murray

APSCo Advisor, KAICONSULTANCY.COM LTD

Kai specialises in guiding business leaders and their teams to play a bigger game effectively and sustainably.

She has a real passion for helping leaders who are serious about change, and is familiar with the often-lonely challenges facing the entrepreneur. She brings a wealth of experience and a strong track record of building highly successful teams and implementing structures and systems to improve long-term performance.

Kai spent over 10 years as Managing Director of Search Consultancy, becoming part of the management buy-in/buy-out team in February 2000. Whilst firmly establishing Search as the leading independent player in Scotland, the successful foot print was rolled out south of the border, opening locations in Manchester, Crawley, Leicester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and London, and increasing staff numbers from 170 to over 600. As a result, Search was recognised as one of the UK’s 100 fastest growing private companies in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ ‘Profit Track 100’ and Kai was acknowledged as Business Women of the Year.

The company turnover on exit (end 2007) was over £120m and NFI had grown at 20% year on year for the previous 5 years.

As well as supporting businesses to accelerate growth Kai has also helped a number of her clients to sell their business either through a trade sale or MBO. She is currently a Non Exec Director for Be IT resourcing, Firefish Software and PMP plc.

Kai has an MBA from Edinburgh University Management School and her dissertation title was ‘Managing Change in the Pharmaceutical Industry.’

Tara Ricks

Founder & Director, Consulting Eve

Tara is a highly experienced recruitment professional with over 20 years’ experience in the sector. She has a proven track record in leading and growing successful teams, developing strategy and driving new business lines and markets. Tara is now working as an NED and strategic advisor, mentor and coach to several companies in the UK market.

She was included in the 2015 Global Power 100 Women in Staffing list.

Tara’s specialisms include:

• Growth Management & Business Planning - Developing both strategic and operational plans and roadmaps - to scale businesses, achieve the objective of a capital event and/or international expansion.
• Organisational Design & Development - Extensive experience in the SME sector, both as a recruitment business leader and subsequently as an NED and board advisor.  
• Merger, Acquisition & Exit - Advising on the due diligence required for an exit, what “good” looks like and how to achieve it, strong portfolio of legal and corporate finance experts.
• Executive Coaching - Practitioner diploma via the Academy of Executive Coaching.  Utilising my business experience and coaching academics to support the development of business leaders.

: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-ricks-4b17112?min

Stephen Rookes

Business Advisor , SRC Consultancy

Stephen has an outstanding reputation as a leader in promoting best practice in Risk & Compliance for the professional recruitment sector, both in the UK and internationally. For over 16 years, he was the Group Commercial & Legal Director of US$2bn global recruiter NES Fircroft. During his long association with APSCo, Stephen has served for a total of 8 years on the UK Representative Committee and twice as the Chair in 2011-2012 and 2020-2022, during which he was also an active member of the APSCo Global Representative Committee.

Stephen’s passion for managing risk and extensive experience enables him to help businesses in the professional recruitment sector to mitigate their risks and achieve compliance so they can enhance shareholder value through the adoption of best practice. His areas of specialisms include: M&A Transaction & Integration; Contractual Risk & Insurance; Compliant Contractor Engagement; and Management of Litigation & Mediation.

In January 2023, Stephen became a freelance consultant and established his own consultancy business - Strategic Risk & Compliance Consultancy Limited (trading as SRC). As a professional business advisor, he will be using his wisdom, experience and wealth of expertise through AdvisorLink to champion best practice in Risk & Compliance for the professional recruitment sector.