Intelligent People

We find and nuture leading talent for Birmingham’s high-growth firms, in the areas of product management, product design & UX, marketing, eCommerce and commerical leadership.

Who are
we?

We’re a boutique Birmingham recruitment agency and consultancy firm specialising in placing experienced and executive level product management, product design & UX, marketing, eCommerce, and commercial leadership candidates within scale-up and enterprise brands based in the Midlands. Our talent search and candidate network extend further afield from Birmingham, across the rest of the UK and EMEA. So, whether you need to hire a leader on a permanent or contract/interim basis, our specialist recruitment agents are here to support you.

Helping Birmingham's high-growth firms

Birmingham’s executive search recruitment consultants manage recruitment projects end-to-end for Birmingham based employers who are looking for the best candidates – either within the city or nationwide.

We’re a Birmingham executive search agency for corporate and scale-up clients. This means we advise on employer branding, candidate profiles, salary benchmarking, search strategy, engagement strategy, candidate assessment, and selection process right through to onboarding. Employers across the Midlands region can benefit from our highly personal, supportive retained recruitment service for C-level candidates or engage with us on a contingency basis as needed.

C-level recruiters in Birmingham for candidates

We’re known to be a different kind of agency, always taking a collaborative and ethical approach to recruitment. If you are an aspiring Product leader, Marketing executive or eCommerce head looking to move to or from Birmingham, we’d be glad to help. With offices in the south, we are also searching for Midlands based talent for our many London employers. Read our dedicated section about help available for candidates.

We work hard to secure our candidates placements within roles where they can achieve their full potential. We do that by understating the vision of our candidates and finding a compatible business culture and a role in which they can thrive.

Local Birmingham employment news

General Election 2024 – West Midlands business leaders react

Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce’s chief executive Henrietta Brealey who has called for stability.

“It’s clear the new Government will be inheriting major challenges – acute fiscal pressures, stagnant growth levels, low levels of investment and a prosperity gap between the north and south that shows few signs of narrowing.

“There will be no honeymoon period, businesses will need to see a clear plan of action that will drive investor confidence and prosperity from the outset.

Read full article here

Birmingham employment and business stats

Birmingham business count

The total number of enterprises in the city decreased by 390 to 36,900 last year
The vast majority of business in the city (89%) are micro businesses, those employing fewer than 10 employees. SMEs which employ fewer than 250 employees account for 99.5% of businesses in the local economy.
Within the West Midlands Met area, Birmingham accounts for 40%of the business base. Birmingham was 3^rd best performing area within the Met area in terms of % change in business numbers between 2022 and 2023.
The city experienced a smaller decline in business numbers last year (-1.0%) than the UK (-1.5%).

Read full data set here

Employers we recruit for

I need to hire

We deliver quickly for our employers, without ever compromising on quality.

Upload my CV

We’re experts at finding our candidates the next step in their career.

Our placement results do the talking

Businesses that trust us

Happy employers returning to us within a year

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Stars from Google reviews

Quality candidates on our database

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What makes us different?

Since co-founders Chris Mason and Doug Bates founded Intelligent People in 2002, we’ve been genuine in our brand mission – to help our clients find expert talent and leaders across product, marketing, and eCommerce, while taking the most exciting career opportunities to our candidate network.

We do this by taking the time to understand the needs of our clients, and aspirations of our candidates. In doing this, we’re highly successful and have become a trusted Birmingham executive recruitment agency to many large and scaling businesses.

Case study: Ben @ Amber River

‘Intelligent People did a brilliant executive search, providing a quality list of very engaged candidates to us extremely quickly. The quality of the shortlist we received is testament to the expertise and service offering within Intelligent People.

We couldn’t be happier with Intelligent People as our executive search recruitment partner for this role.‘

Read full case study

Case study: Product recruitment

‘I trust Chris at Intelligent People to help build first class product management teams for my business. His open and collaborative approach to recruitment is refreshing, with strong knowledge and experience across the product management space that we need from a recruitment partner.’

Read full case study

We support Tree-Nation

As a business, we pledge to to support Tree-Nation with their mission to reforest the world, planting trees to fight Climate Change.

For every candidate placement that we make, Intelligent People pledge to plant 20 trees to help:

protect biodiversity
restore forests
create jobs
support local communities

By working with us as a recruitment agency, you can build high-performance teams for your business and contribute towards Climate Change, reforestation efforts and building a more sustainable future – all at the same time.

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Speak in confidence to a recruitment expert today

Doug focuses on delivering executive level search campaigns for his clients. He is particularly proud that the business is the market leader in marketing, product and eCommerce – genuinely exciting areas which allow him to learn about innovative technologies every day.

Doug Bates
Co-founder, Intelligent People

Chris focuses on leading the team to success, working directly with clients that need help in finding experienced, executive level candidates. Chris gets a buzz from the work he does, solving clients’ problems and changing people’s lives by finding the perfect opportunity.

Chris Mason
Co-founder, Intelligent People

Birmingham recruitment agency

Who are we?