To support its expansion into HR recruitment, Blue Eskimo has recruited a new senior talent consultant, Joanne Treagus. Treagus brings extensive HR-recruitment experience to Blue Eskimo; her sole focus will be on the progressively converging areas of organisational development, workforce planning, and human resources. Her skills complement those of Blue Eskimo's current teams, which remain focused on learning recruitment.

Blue Eskimo director Nick Jones says that the move is a strategic one for the company. "Part of our research presentation at Learning Technologies earlier in the year highlighted that many organisations now see L&D and HR as two aspects of the same thing - the organisation's skills-acquisition strategy. They want to bring these two functions closer together - and we're responding to that."

Blue Eskimo has been steadily recruiting for more HR roles over the last few years. "As L&D and HR have got closer," says Jones, "we've been asked if we can fulfil HR roles in addition to L&D ones. This aspect of our business has grown to the point where we decided to add it as a core part of our proposition. Our team is already flat-out recruiting for learning, eLearning, and learning-and-development jobs, so in order to provide the best service and greatest focus, we've decided to extend the team. This includes a new team leader who’s 100% focused on HR roles to champion the offering within the market."

As the leading specialist-recruitment provider to the learning sector, Blue Eskimo is often the first to spot skills trends and to understand where they lead. Over the last decade or so, organisational learning has changed from being mostly responsive (buying ad hoc courses to fix problems) to mostly strategic (ensuring that the organisation's skills strategy drives the business forward).

At the same time, according to Blue Eskimo, many organisations have begun to see that both HR and L&D provide two ways to resolve the same issues. "Some organisations believe that skills acquisition works best when stakeholder departments work together. This has steadily opened up a whole new line of business for us, and we're now ready to take it to market as a defined offering."

This move will see Blue Eskimo recruiting for a wide range of HR roles, including HR business managers, HR business advisors, heads of people, rewards/benefits managers, organisational development managers, talent managers, heads of recruitment, resourcing advisors, and many more.

"This expansion makes a lot of sense for both Blue Eskimo and its customers," says Jones. "It's a natural extension of what we do now: we've already helped many customers fill HR roles. Our expansion enables us to deliver a more focused service, from which customers benefit from a dedicated HR-recruitment service running alongside our current learning recruitment."