ABOUT MARTIN

Martin Dangerfield is the founder of the embedded talent acquisition firm, immersive.

Where it's going...

Whilst 2023 was a tough business year for Martin, his team and his business, 2024 looks brighter.

With an engaged community of over 30,000 talent acquisition professionals, Martin is ready to re-engage with TA leaders globally, supporting their TA operating model - whatever it looks like.

From a single employee to creating an enterprise-capable Talent Acquisition consultancy, Martin’s fast-growing firm, immersive, has already made a dent in the space.

In 2024, there will be more thought leadership around talent acquisition, AI, and doing more with less to support TA leaders in developing effective hiring models globally.

Where it began...

Martin started his ‘grown up’ career at 18 (he was working from 16), repairing computers, printers and tape drives in West London, quickly working out that the way to get on was to work hard, volunteer to do the things no one else wanted to do and ask awkward why do we do it this way questions.

He moved into service delivery and team management, balancing a P&L with the contractual commitments made to the customer in what was a 24/7 operation.

Envious of his sales colleagues, Martin moved into a number of services and consulting sales roles before thinking that there might be an alternative to selling more data centre capacity.

He teamed up with his friend Matt, found their first client, made their first placement and, within the space of about 7 months, destroyed their relationship, hating the chasing-for-money transactional recruitment business they were building.

Using that experience, Martin built a new agency-led organisation that ultimately became his vehicle for in-house recruitment, interim advisory roles and, shortly before the Covid lockdown, a vehicle to test an embedded model.

His income abruptly ended in April 2020. The COVID lockdown stopped his consulting work, forcing Martin to reconsider what the recruitment sector needed.

Having racked up huge debts, Martin needed a business model that would work now and in the future and offer more value than a single-person consulting business ever could. So in November 2020, he registered immersive.