Recruiters Live Lounge | Get Inspired! | Weekly Interviews with the best Recruitment Business Leader

Today’s Live Lounge guest is Karinna Shields, Director and Co-Founder of Concur Recruitment based in Coventry.  Karinna has worked her way through the ranks of recruitment, starting her career age 17 as a receptionist, moving up to resourcer, recruiter, account manager, then managing multiple branches before setting up her own agency - all within 7 years!  She feels that one of her biggest achievements in that time has been winning a million pound account during her role as an account manager, quickly followed by setting up Concur Recruitment with her business partner, completely self-funded at the age of just 21. Karinna is well known by her friends and colleagues for her determination which I think will go a long way to helping her achieve her mission which is for Concur to become a household name and the biggest recruiter in the UK for industrial, engineering and IT recruitment.

Abigail started her 18 year recruitment career in Houston Texas at the age of 22 and when returning to the UK in 2003 she continued in the industry with a brief spell at a national staffing firm, 8 years at an independent boutique agency and also some time working as an Internal Recruiter. It was whilst in this role she that she created what is now Openingz.com with an emphasis on providing a quality service to the video conferencing and visual solutions industry, and in July 2015 Abigail began running Openingz.com independently from her home based in Thatcham, Berkshire. It’s been a strong start and her model is based around a true partnership approach called Focuz which is proving to be very effective and which Abigail is going to tell us more about!

Steven Convery is the Owner and Director at Concur Engineering based in the Midlands.  He started his career off as an old school recruiter – meaning without a “computer” and relying on old school methods, just a phone and the yellow pages. Times have obviously changed since then and Steven has become a highly accomplished man Manager and Owner/Director of his 2nd recruitment business.  Steven has a strong experience in turnarounds and start-ups and currently invests his time in his newest venture ‘Concur Engineering’ with business partner Karinna Shields.  Since moving on from his old school recruitment methods Steven now insists that the 21st century modern technology is at the heart of his business with the latest cloud based products assisting the back office and business functions with a major focus on his brand through all social media platforms.

Tony Chapman started his recruitment career in 2007 as a Trainee Consultant at a boutique agency in London, initially specialising in infrastructure technology before specialising further into the Linux and Open Source space, quickly becoming the company's highest producer. A brief stint setting up a division at one of James Caan's brands then led him to branch out on his own setting up LinuxRecruit. LinuxRecruit are now widely seen as a market leading and pioneering agency within the Open Source and DevOps industries and have successfully built whole engineering teams for the likes of ITV, Net-A-Porter, Ticketmaster and dozens of other companies including many Tech City start-ups. The company were shortlisted for newcomer Agency of the Year in the 2014 Recruiter Awards.

Liz Longman is the Managing Director of TEAM (The Employment Agents Movement) and has been involved in recruitment for over 20 years. Before her current position she worked her way through the ranks to become a Regional Director heading up a region for a generalist agency covering every sector from supplying temporary workers, permanent placements at an Executive level and a Managed Service Contract.  Joining TEAM in 2006 was a natural progression having worked for the founder Member of TEAM and made engagement with other Members to increase the bottom line of the Agency.