Meet the Co-Founder - Jase

Where do we start with Jason... a Dad to his son Finley (who celebrated his first birthday a couple of months ago), and partner in crime to Finley’s mum, his best mate, Lucy. They both deserve a medal for Jason’s relentless passion for Dad jokes, which started a long time before actually becoming Dad.

He loves to keep fit and has recently formed an obsession with a new sport called Hyrox (he would happily put you to sleep talking about it), as well as other outdoor endurance events. He loves to travel (it's like having our very own Judith Chalmers if you are old enough to remember “wish you were here”), especially exploring the great British countryside, different beaches across the south coast, attempting to surf and has a goal of owning his own campervan before the summer of 2024 and continue the wild camping dream with his family around the world.?

Jason is a lover of pretty much all sports, although rugby was his game growing up, playing at a competitive level and pursued his higher education in Cardiff to challenge himself at one of the top ranking universities for rugby. He hung up his boots a few years after finishing university at his local club Maidenhead RFC and then decided it would be a good idea to take up a new sporting hobby, boxing. He had a handful of white collar boxing bouts, which says all you need to know about his competitive nature and being a sucker for punishment.

Like most, Jason took an unconventional route into recruitment / talent management, admitting he didn't grow up dreaming of working in this industry. However, the appeal came from some of the characteristics and strengths that associate itself with the industry. From the competitive nature that is often required, creating positive change for others, the chance to work with people from all types of backgrounds and helping people find a new role or career path, which in some cases can be life changing, as it has been for him.

Life in talent started at a tech-focussed boutique agency, who were not afraid to take risks in supporting early stage start-ups, pushing new initiatives on how they engage and work with their clients. It's here where Jason learnt about what it takes to become successful; understanding the needs of customers; clients and candidates alike, being credible through extensive research of the technology landscape (emerging technologies, industries...), supporting scale-up growth of clients and so much more.?

After almost 10 years working in an agency, change was knocking on the door, a new challenge was needed, offering new learnings and he quickly found himself working for a technology company in the digital transformation / cloud consultancy space, where he spent almost 5 years. This was a business with ambition, a high bar when it came to modern engineering and where values were genuinely lived and breathed throughout the culture. Growth & people were high on the agenda, Jason and his team achieved year on year growth which saw the business double in size more than once, opening 4 additional offices across the UK and in 5 years grew from 120(ish) people to more than 700.?

The achievements and stories by Jason and his team were extensive, from transforming a recruitment model to one that would scale for exponential growth, to achieving the highest growth year through the pandemic, whilst also being acquired from one of the biggest companies in the world during this period. Working with the wider business on how to protect the culture through high growth / onboarding, driving strategy around diversity hiring, through to a business rebrand post acquisition.... the list goes on.?

Then came redundancy (a slight curveball),? opened the door to bring all of this experience together, along with two former colleagues and great friends in Kate and Toby and founded Inara. This is an opportunity to bring Jason and the Inara founding team's experiences together, offering something different to the industry, with fresh perspectives on how a talent partnership with Inara can leave a lasting impact on everyone involved. This will no doubt be the MOST exciting chapter of the story so far, which we can't wait to see unfold.