Recruitment Leader of the Year 2020

Ryan Adams: Founder, Signify Technology

The judges said Ryan Adams, founder of tech recruitment company Signify Technology, was a great entrant, demonstrating his real focus on people first.

  • One of his inspiring initiatives was setting up the Signify Health League Table, where the team were encouraged to take part in living healthier by exercising, eating well and mindfulness and increasing their awareness of mental health.
  • Ryan completed Tough Mudder London in May 2019 alongside seven of the Signify team, bringing his team together and supporting a charity close to his heart, St. Christopher’s Hospice in South-East London, where his granddad was cared for and passed away. Signify donated £3k to the charity, £1k from Ryan personally.
  • One reason staff find Ryan such an inspiring leader is his commitment to the entire picture, always placing importance and care on every aspect of the business. There’s no part of the business, or someone’s role, that is insignificant to him, and he actively seeks every person’s opinion and input.
  • Ryan organises regular one-on-one sessions with every member of the business, providing the opportunity to talk about their individual challenges and goals. Through these meetings, he has been able to help colleagues who are going through tough times in their lives.
  • Among many other initiatives, Ryan set up Scala in the City, an event run by Signify that brings the best and most respected programme language Scala professionals to the engineers who need them the most.
  • Ryan believes in the importance of diversity and that the industry can be better because of it, and so he’s created a diverse and empowered workforce for Signify.

Judges’ comments: “His personality and drive is infectious with a core eye on keeping his business culture consistent during early stages of growth, and for the next phase to come. He was clearly enthused by his market focus, with a real appetite for embedding himself and company more and more into this.”

Also: The judges said this category revealed a fantastic collection of recruitment leaders at a variety of stages of business maturity, showing how passionate and driven the leaders were.