Rob was born in 1970 in Scunthorpe (“Sunny Scunny”). On reflection his taste for being linked to engineering sprung from being born into a steel making family. After leaving secondary education he decided not to follow in his father’s foot steps, but went on to sixth form college, technical college and then University (or Polytechnic as it was in the day) to study Industrial Design (Engineering meets creative styling) in Sheffield.

Whilst studying, Rob funded his newly found “big city” social life by tackling a number of part time jobs; shelf stacker, school cleaner, hospital porter and a process op in a baby bio factory. But every summer he went back to work at Pontins in Weymouth; not as a blue coat, but as a kitchen porter, waiter and bar person. On leaving university, with a huge debt to pay off and after one more summer in Weymouth, Rob started to apply for jobs - any job in fact, preferably in Sheffield where he had settled.

After a number of unsuccessful interviews for “random” sales roles, he was offered a position selling classified advertising space over the telephone for the local newspaper; The Sheffield Star. For the first 3 months Rob took bookings from people wanting to sell sofas, cars, etc, whilst selling feature ads to local retailers; something Rob found he could do with some success. Recognised as a seller, he was moved to the entertainments department, where he sold advertising space to concert promoters and live music venues etc.

After only 9 months, Rob was offered a position as a field sales rep on the Sheffield Star’s big brother, namely The Yorkshire Post. The fact that the new position came with a brand new company car and that the company sponsored his beloved Leeds United didn’t sway his decision in any way! It was during his time at the Yorkshire Post that Rob was introduced to the recruitment industry. In fact this introduction occurred whilst trying to sell support advertising to the Regional Manager of Reed Employment. Following on from this meeting, a somewhat blunt offer of employment was made and Rob wound up working as a recruitment consultant for Reed’s Leeds office.

During his three years with Reed Employment, Rob spent time on both a temporary and a permanent desk. With marked success on both, he found it refreshing speaking to people who had a genuine need for what he was selling, compared to media sales, where he had to create that need!. After 18 successful months as a consultant, Rob was then given the position of Branch Manager at Reed’s brand new Sheffield office. This proved to be a great success, with 2 temporary consultants running at 4000 hours per week and 2 permanent consultants billing on average £10,000 per month.

Rob was eventually lured away from “high street” recruitment by a good friend who worked in “specialist” medical / dental sales & marketing recruitment. Back on a desk as a consultant, Rob started to develop new recruitment methodologies such as direct search (head hunting) and retained. He looked after the dental wholesale and retail markets across the UK, Europe and the US. The highlight of this period was the successful placement of a UK Sales Manager for an American dental implant company, which resulted in a fee of £22,500.

Missing the day to day management of a team, Rob’s next move involved a brief flirtation with Public Sector recruitment, where he worked as a Branch Manager at Initial Personnel in Leeds. Rob found this to be both an interesting and frustrating market; one that was dependant on tenders / bids. In hindsight, it wasn’t his most enjoyable period of time. However, his brief time in this sector was not a total waste of time as Rob met his wife to be, Nikki.

And so onto another key period in Rob's career; his next role was General Manager of Bateman Skilled & Technical, a Huddersfield based supplier of blue collar temporary labour. Rob excelled with this company as he understood manufacturing processes and relevant skill sets from his time at university, as well as his family links with the steel industry. Armed with this knowledge, Rob was confident that this new sector was for him and within six months he was recruiting and placing machinists, welders, fitters and electricians with the best of them.

The learning curve was steep, yet enjoyable and one that has stood Rob in good stead, especially in his present role with Kinetic. Being a General Manager of a small family owned company exposed Rob to more in depth P&L issues than he’d faced previously, i.e. forecasting, budgeting, and cost analysis as well as tax implications. In essence, he was running a business rather than a branch. Incidentally, it was during this period of time that Rob was diagnosed with a life threatening brain tumour. Thankfully this was successfully removed in 2001. Following a long period of recuperation, he made a full recovery, but is now profoundly deaf in one ear.

Following redundancy and a brief spell with a local direct competitor, Rob had the opportunity to use his recruitment / business acumen in a different environment. He took on the remit to recruit 150 sales staff and open 15 new offices for a Leeds based estate agent. This autonomous project grew somewhat and also saw Rob managing a 50 seat contact centre in Manchester city centre. Additionally, the project also required him to return to his roots to manage the staffing and opening of an office in Scunthorpe. This role always had a limited life span once the offices were opened and fully staffed, so a move back into mainstream recruitment beckoned.

Rob's entrance on to the Kinetic stage came on an early summer's evening in May 2005, where he met with Jim Sloan, the then Midlands / Yorkshire Business Manager to discuss the vacant Huddersfield Branch Manager's role. Rob remembers that his perception of Kinetic in Yorkshire was that they were a generalist recruiter, with an industrial bias. But Jim spoke the same engineering language as Rob and detailed his plans to focus on the supply of blue and white collar engineering personnel – a sector that Rob wanted to return to. After a final interview with Jo Hestletine and Simon Reid, an offer was made and Rob started with Kinetic on 13th June 2005. His first day was somewhat different, as it was to attend the Kinetic annual conference in the Lake District. He was given an address to turn up to and told to bring a towel?!

Despite this strange start, Rob’s success in delivering a budget for West Yorkshire was quickly forthcoming; being one of the few regions to deliver on target performance 05/06 and 06/07 continued in the same vain. Later that year Rob was given the opportunity to manage the South Yorkshire region as well. This was really the sign of things to come, as in October 2007, following a period of research and development, Rob opened the central Yorkshire regional office in Barnsley. The move proved to be immediately fruitful, with the Yorkshire Skilled & Trades and Search & Selection teams gelling to go from strength to strength. 07/08 was another on target performance and despite the economic gloom, 08/09 is also looking very promising.

In September 2008, Rob increased his responsibly by taking on the Midlands management role as well. He truly feels that not at any time has he regretted joining Kinetic. His involvement with the company has been really exiting. As well as the general buzz of recruitment, he enjoys the extra management responsibilities of recent projects such as organising / costing the office move, being involved in writing training courses and strategically adding to corporate re-structuring / re-branding. Rob feels that his opinion really does count and that his addition has helped to shape and steer Kinetic into the success that it is today.


Away from work, apart from the trials and tribulations of being a Leeds United fan, Rob enjoys playing squash (badly!) and occasional carp fishing trips. However, his real passion is travel; Rob is currently trying to visit 40 countries by the time he is 40 in 16 months time. He is currently at 36, with a trip to Cyprus in December being number 37.