1999
My name is Chris Hyde, and I am the Managing Director of Headhunter Legal & Professional Limited. I began my career in 1999 as an IT recruiter for a newly formed company called Recruitment Zone, with offices in Bolton and Edinburgh. The business specialised in IT recruitment, focusing heavily on the contract market as well as permanent placements. I leaned more towards permanent roles and spent the first five years of my career with this business. Only three years ago, this business was acquired by Outsource UK due to its phenomenal growth over approximately 25 years of trading—a huge success for the owners Andrew Barton and David Bedford.
2004
At age 26, in 2004, I set up my own business, Resource 1, which also focused on IT recruitment. Unfortunately, before the recession of 2008, the business had shifted towards motor trade recruitment. We had also expanded into an overseas office just before the downturn in the global economy, making the business no longer viable. It was a big lesson learned. I was keen that when I returned to recruitment, I would find a sector more resilient to market conditions and one that promotes a headhunt-oriented approach, rather than relying on advertising and hoping for a good response. I wanted to offer a more guaranteed success rate for clients.
2016
Eventually, in 2016, we started to work in the legal sector, and this has now become our core business focus for over four years. We have achieved incredibly high Trustpilot recognition as the 11th most highly rated recruitment business out of 1,136 UK-wide, covering all sectors. We are the most highly rated legal recruiters.
2024
Our consultants are very well remunerated with better-than-standard basic salaries. They have every tool imaginable to enable them to engage effectively with the best talent in the market. We headhunt for clients and find the perfect roles for candidates who work exclusively with us, seeking their next ideal move.
We are continuing to expand and, as of 12/08/24, will have 18 full-time staff, including myself, an Accounts Manager, and an Operations Manager. We also have part-time data administrators to keep our information in excellent order.
Headhunter Legal & Professional is a boutique legal recruitment firm with many success stories of growing clients’ profits and enriching the working lives of legal professionals
