Martin Dangerfield

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You have to be in the game...

If you read my blog then chances are that you know me or know of me.  If I am lucky you may have seen me talk, met me, even hired me to do something for you.  As you will have seen from my Linkedin and twitter updates I have been doing some promotion for a new product talentpuddle.

Talentpuddle as a name has been in the making for years.  The name first appeared as part of a bid to run an RPO with a management consultancy.  They got the idea of talent pools but couldn’t work out how to make the most of them, partly because the technology wasn’t there an mostly because the pools were huge.  As a management consulting business in construction, project managers are a huge pool.  So we (A chap called Chris and me) thought the pool was too big and created a puddle.  A talentpuddle.

Roll on a bunch of years and here we are with me launching a software product complete with artificial intelligence to analyse candidate and job information and machine learning that will continue to learn what the matches were and why as well as why you call a plumber a plumber and someone else calls them a leak reduction operative. 

My motivation is simple.

In recruitment, I love what I do.

I love recruitment.   

I love the clients I get to work with, I love the people that I have hired and with my 'People' hat on, I love the organisations that look a little better because I sorted some things out.  The challenge is that I can only give 50 to 60 hours a week.  On occasion, the ‘DANGERFIELD’ team grows with interim/contract recruiters working with my clients and that helps but is tricky to scale.  So I need a product to sit alongside my skills and experiences.  When people buy talentpuddle they will get some real world experience of how to deploy it effectively as well as access to the other services I can provide.

So whilst talentpuddle serves a purpose and will help global organisations make better hiring decisions and automate some things that need automating the reality is that I’ve spent enough time around scale-ups that I want to do the same.   I realise it might not ring true for a lot of recruitment professionals but If I haven’t been there and done it myself how can I ever know what it feels like to construct a business with a product and get out there and do it.  

I was talking to an insurtech CEO only last week about this.  He has spent the last few years flying the world in the name of business growth and industry disruption and acknowledged he was taking the bulk of the business risk and that as an interim supporting him, it would never be the same life journey.

So here we are.  I have the product, it works and is in saleable format.  I need clients and investment to round off the edges, make a more effective dashboard and start working some more on the hiring analytics.  I had the verbal go-ahead last week for a global business which is exciting news as it will open the doors to more and it will open the door to investment (Ask me for my investor pack if you are interested).

This blog has always been about recruitment.  About me, if I’m honest and now I hope there is a space for this next phase in my life and that talentpuddle will be the success I hope.  Expect more here about progress and how I feel about what is happening.

M.

About

I have a background in executive search and selection, headhunting and senior level recruitment combined with people and business management experiences. My focus has always been on the IT services, technology and management consultancy sectors on a permanent and interim basis where I have developed a personal portfolio that covers areas such as EVP, social recruitment and the successful creation of talent pools as well the management and leadership of corporate talent acquisition teams.

Currently working across Europe with high growth, high tech organisations to develop effective blended onshore/offshore recruitment models, covering full commercial engagement, transition and ongoing delivery management.

I am an avid blogger, writer, public speaker and traveller of trains across the UK.