Dragon James Caan Invests In Rising Contract Sales Organisation STAR

April 22, 2009 - PRLog -- STAR, specialist CSO and healthcare recruiter, has won the backing of Dragons’ Den investor James Caan. The highly successful entrepreneur, renowned for his ability to ignite stratospheric growth, is now a shareholder and investor in STAR and a non executive director on its board.

James Caan has a firm belief in investing in people rather than companies and seeks out those whom he perceives to have outstanding talent. STAR’s founders, Lucy O’Neill and Tim Webster, caught his attention; he was impressed not only with the company that they had built, but with their passion, energy and enthusiasm for constantly improving the services that they offer.

He says, “Lucy and Tim epitomise everything that I look for when investing in people and their businesses. They are extremely people focused themselves and are constantly looking to the future to anticipate market changes and how this might affect what their clients need and want. They have already built a business with a highly reputable name in the healthcare industry and I look forward to helping STAR continue as a leading permanent recruiter whilst also accelerating the growth and scalability of their specialist CSO offering.”

James also likes the fact that STAR has focused on becoming a specialist in one industry sector, believing that this is a strong route to establishing a premium offering. The healthcare industry is one of his key areas for investment and he is also no stranger to the recruitment industry, having generated phenomenal success with headhunting group Alexander Mann. Launching the company in 1985, James sold it in 2002 with a turnover of £130m and operations in 50 countries. This injection of more than 25 years’ experience will undoubtedly help STAR lead the way in healthcare resourcing.

Most exciting for STAR, however, is the cross sector experience that James Caan will bring to the organisation. Hamilton Bradshaw, his private equity firm, invests in a broad selection of operations, which will enable STAR to leverage learnings and insight from other industries and markets.

Lucy and Tim are also looking forward to learning more from James personally as he plays an integral role in developing the business. Lucy says, “James has a tremendous ability to play to people’s strengths and we’re confident that having him onboard will also help us to attract the very best people to work with, and for, STAR. His unconventional thinking and approach of ‘watch the masses and do the opposite’ will help STAR do things differently, setting totally new standards as the innovative and specialist CSO.

“Finally, we value his strategic focus in building strong scalability. James will help us to embed our culture and methodologies deeply and to establish the necessary structures so that, even as we grow, our clients will continue to receive the consistently high level of service we deliver, enjoying everything that they currently like about STAR as well as the benefits of working with a larger company.”


                                                                           -ENDS-
For further media information, please visit www.starmedical.co.uk or contact Lucy O’Neill at STAR on 01225 336335 or at lucy@starmedical.co.uk

NOTES TO EDITORS
STAR was established in 2002 to provide permanent recruitment services to the healthcare industry. It quickly built a solid reputation for providing extremely high quality candidates and, in 2007, launched its healthcare CSO division. Since then, STAR has proven itself in resourcing and managing specialist contract sales teams with the reliability and flexibility demanded by today’s constantly changing selling environment.

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STAR, specialist CSO and healthcare recruiter, provides direct to headcount recruitment, and specialist resourcing and vacancy management solutions for the healthcare industry.