Oakleaf Partnership: The leading regional HR recruitment business

We established the Oakleaf Partnership regional business at the beginning of 2016 and looking back on the last 2 ½ years the journey we have gone on has been significant. We recognised that to support our clients and build relationships with the HR community we needed to be part of it, so we opened our doors in the Midlands in February 2016.

We now have a dedicated team of 7 consultants working across the Midlands, M4 Corridor, Manchester & North West, Yorkshire, North East and Scotland. We cover interim and permanent recruitment from HR Administration to HR Directors and Leadership roles. We recruit significant numbers of HR business partners across all levels and industry sectors as well as specialist roles across Reward, Payroll, Recruitment and Talent Development.

Our interim business has grown significantly with the growth of our experienced interim team. Sadie Thomas joined Oakleaf from Barclays where she was a recruitment business partner. Sadie now leads our interim business across the West Midlands, North West and West Scotland. Working alongside Sadie is Rebecca Speers who leads interim recruitment across the East Midlands, Yorkshire, North East and Edinburgh. Becci has an impressive 15-year track record in HR recruitment.

Our permanent recruitment team is also impressive with experienced consultants leading in their markets with Amy Sharp recruiting across the West Midlands, North West and West Scotland and Rebecca Lancelles recruiting across East Midlands, Yorkshire, North East and Edinburgh. Ella Milligan has recently returned to Oakleaf to lead our business across the M3 and M4 corridor.

Over the last 12 months, we have seen the market move with an increase in demand for specialist roles in Reward and Senior Payroll positions. We have also seen a significant change in direct recruitment with a number of clients moving away from onsite RPO providers to hiring their own in-house talent acquisition specialists. We have worked with several businesses’ recently recruiting new direct hire teams bringing in talent acquisition in-house. Demand for skilled HR business partners continues to increase as clients want to upskill their HR functions which have also pushed salaries upwards for skilled HR business partners. With the unknown effect of Brexit looming we are also experiencing an increased demand for interim and fixed-term contracts.

We have grown our business by being part of the HR community and building meaningful networks. We host a quarterly HRD Dinner in both Birmingham and Nottingham and we have plans in place to do the same in Manchester in early 2019. In January 2019 we are hosting an exclusive Women in HR Leadership lunch which is a discreet event for a select group of senior HR Directors from our region who we believe are the big female influencers in HR in our region.

We also host the Oakleaf Academy which is a series of four seminars for early careers HR professionals as we are passionate about supporting the development and emergence of exceptional talent in the industry, bringing together talented HR professionals with senior HR leaders in a social setting, allowing them to impart their wisdom and career advice. And alongside these events, we run knowledge sharing events covering subjects such as GDPR, Wellbeing, Gender Pay and Unconscious Bias.

If you would like to find out more about the Oakleaf Partnership and how we can support your HR career or help you hire the best HR talent for your business, then please contact us on 0121 270 4639.

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