Profile

With extensive recruitment experience across our specialist sectors, we are able to assist with all levels of appointments from Graduates looking for their first step on the career ladder through to Board Level Directors responsible for strategically planning and steering the continued growth of a business.
We can offer a combination of approaches; database searching, networking, advertising and targeted headhunting to suit the complexity of appointment. We are proud to have achieved consistent success utilising each of these methods and would be happy to provide advice on best practice to ensure you achieve the results you are looking for.
You are experts in your field of business, we are experts in recruitment. Recruitment can be time consuming and detract from your core functions; it can also be expensive. Let us prove the value of our services and allow us to work with you as a planned and professional partnership to deliver the results you are looking for.
Our Experts
It's quite a statement but it's true. Since establishing VPss back in 2005, Nigel Venables has partnered with an array of small-medium sized businesses & brands helping them to grow and to get them to where they want to be across the domestic market as well as the global stage. Working closely with Founders/CEOs to appoint crucial key players, as well as building teams from zero. With his enviable sector knowledge, he has developed strong relationships with the major nationals and international brands and retailer head office teams, often working on confidential search assignments as well as contingency campaigns.
As Nigel's reputation grew, so did the need to invest and grow our team capacity. Ali McQueen (Reffell), a long-term colleague, moved internally and joined Nigel to bolster our ability to deliver, network and continue to promote our name, reputation and brand values. Working harmoniously they have made a superb team; focusing hard to make your job easier and take the pressure out of recruiting so you can focus on what you're good at, making beauty magic! Ali’s niche is working with brand clients across all product categories delivering a consultative service as a trusted partner.
Like every good beauty concept, our team continues to develop and Matt Venables joined the Health & Beauty team early in 2018, following a highly successful recruitment career which begun in 2016 within another specialist field.Towards the end of 2023 Brendan Blacker joined the Health & Beauty team to lead the wider and rapidly growing VMS and Pharma categories, stemming from a Key Account Management background and working with a variety of clients from ingredient and componentry suppliers to contract manufacturers and brands within this complex sector. Driven, sharp and detailed in developing better understandings and genuinely wanting to help individuals build and develop their careers, he forms strong, trusted relationships, core to the values of VPss.
As 2025 kick started, Harvey Bolton joined the beauty team to work alongside Ali and work together with our established brand Clients along with expanding reach across the ever-evolving sector. Following 5 successful years with an independent Estate Agent, these skills transition perfectly and people are his thing, listening, advising and forming trusting relations as he helped you on a journey of search & exploration in finding, what is, a life-impacting decision.
Nigel Venables, Managing Director
- nvenables@vpss.co.uk
- +44 (0)1473 685588
Ali Reffell, Principal Consultant
- areffell@vpss.co.uk
- +44 (0)1473 685588
Matt Venables, Business Director
- mvenables@vpss.co.uk
- +44 (0)1473 685588
Brendan Blacker, Recruitment Consultant
- bblacker@vpss.co.uk
- +44 (0)1473 685588
Harvey Bolton, Recruitment Consultant
- hbolton@vpss.co.uk
- +44 (0)1473 685588
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