Name: Ward Hampton
Role: Founder & Lead Consultant
Location: Peruvian Andes

Bio: Ward lives on the side of a mountain in Peru. He is a recruiter and data centre nerd. Looking back, this was always going to happen. A chemistry graduate (that’s the nerdy bit), Ward served his time in some great businesses and some bucket shops; 15 years in recruitment, 7 in data centres. He knows recruitment and data centre talent inside out, warts and all. The ‘Peru’ bit is harder to fathom because he’s terrible at learning languages and loves his native Manchester. You’ll often find him around a Peruvian campfire, humming The Stone Roses and checking the Man City score on his phone.

Name: Neil Ward
Role: Head of Delivery
Location: Brighton, UK

Bio: We searched the entire globe for the perfect addition to the Ward team. We scoured the foothills of the Himalayas, the Mongolian Steppes, the mid-west, the north-north east, the southern hemisphere and the Arctic circle. In the end, we found someone from the north of England called ‘Ward’. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Neil brings a wealth of IT recruitment experience and specialist knowledge. He has been a software developer, a mainframe hardware broker, a games collector and an Ultravox mega-fan. In our world of data technology nerds, he’s easily the nerdiest. When he’s not dancing with tears in his eyes, he’s enjoying his favourite – a classic Sunday Roast. We may call Neil ‘Yorkie’ from now on, to avoid any confusion.

Name: Pete Ames
Role: Interim Operations Director
Location: Nottingham, UK

Bio: Pete has an unhealthy obsession with process. It makes him a bit of a bore at parties but one heck of an excellent operations director. He honed his skills as a business analyst and product owner in financial services before becoming a consultant for recruitment firms. He’s father to two children and a cat, an eager skier and has been described, on more than one occasion, as having ‘golden retriever’ energy. He also declares Guinea Pig “Tastes like rabbit. But sadder”.

Name: Yaliza Burgos
Role: Executive Assistant
Location: New York, USA

Bio: Yaliza moved to New York City from the Dominican Republic as a child and graduated in Business Administration before working at a financial firm for four years. Another born nomad, she spent the pandemic sunning herself in Mexico and now lives there part-time. She says she loves to try new foods, but we’re not so sure; she has yet to join us at the Guinea pig rotisserie.

She has an innate ability to juggle multiple hobbies, tasks and deadlines – yet she can barely ride a bike or do a handstand. Her life and work are well-balanced, even if she isn’t.

Name: Ensar Alijmi
Role: Executive Search Resourcer
Location: London, UK

Bio: Ensar Alijmi is an Economic Graduate & maths genius who loves world politics and chess. His brain is not like the rest of us. He’s one of the brightest people you’ll ever meet and his grand-master-style foresight to think 10 moves ahead of his competitors means that he knew I was going to write that. Mind you, he supports Manchester United, proof that nobody is perfect.

Name: Dhruv Sharma
Role: Senior Research Analyst
Location: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Bio: Most people make some half-hearted claim to be ‘driven’. Not Dhruv.  He’s a Business Administration graduate with a specialisation in automobiles, so he does the driving.  Like most of us at Ward, he has itchy feet. Unlike Craig, that’s not caused by a rash – it’s caused by an insatiable travel bug. He inhales books like most of us breathe fresh air; he breathes fresh air while camping and horse riding, while most of us just read about it in books. He thinks differently, does Dhruv, and we love that.

Name: Hamid Khan
Role: Senior Research Analyst 
Location: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Bio: Hamid started his career in the glamorous Mumbai real estate industry. Whilst he loved the communication side, his brain was getting restless and he craved a more analytical role. He plays basketball at district level and loves European football. Like the rest of us, his favourite club is ‘the one that’s beating Manchester City’.

Name: Nitin Rathod
Role: Senior Research Analyst
Location: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Bio: Nitin claims to love sport. So, we were surprised when he said he was a Spurs fan. Alongside the sport, he loves travelling solo. Perfect for a Spurs fan, then, His biggest passion, though, is world music. When it comes to eclectic musical instruments, he definitely knows his Ashiko from his Erhu.

Name: Siddhi Pandit
Role: Research Analyst
Location: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Bio: Siddhi is excited by machines, robotics, AI and Gothic literature. That’s a potentially terrifying mix so we’ve already voted her ‘most likely to recreate Frankenstein’s monster’. Outside of these dastardly pastimes, she loves music, chess and drawing (it’s always the quiet ones isn’t it?)

Like the rest of us, she’s trying to learn a few European languages. Unlike the rest of us, she’s succeeding. She adds to her broad world view with sector-focused knowledge after a degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA in Human Resources.

Name: José Santa Cruz
Role: Research Analyst
Location: Peruvian Andes

Bio: José is a multilingual Andean rasta rapper, spitting lyrics in Quechan English and Spanish (he also dabbles with a bit of French and Portuguese). When it comes to food, his taste is more like Phil Collins ‘he’s a ceviche lover’ (Sorry). But there’s much more to José than crazy words and zesty fish. He is our internal advisor on Peruvian affairs, founded a non-profit organisation that promotes languages to kids in the Sacred Valley, and is a better source of knowledge than most search engines.

Name: Zaid Khan
Role: Research Analyst
Location: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Bio: Zaid is a nerd. We love a nerd here at Ward. Nerds get mildly obsessed with detail and that’s the kind of thing that sets us apart. He joined us knowing all the cheats in Fortnite, COD and FIFA and with an all-consuming obsession with Anime. He says he’s looking for ‘the one piece’. We’re pretty sure he’s talking about Manga, rather than pizza. He applies this granular dedication to resourcing – and wears his Xbox headset for conference calls so it ‘feels like a mission’.

Name: Craig Robinson
Role: Recruitment Copywriting
Location: Suffolk, UK

Bio: Craig spent most of his early career working in recruitment marketing agencies as a writer; he’s won every recruitment copywriting award going. He thought he’d escaped the dark arts of writing job ads, but Ward lured him back with tales of mountain climbing and guinea pig eating. He suspects this is all just a vivid cheese dream and that Ward is some kind of internal metaphor for the life he wishes he’d led himself. He lives in blissful isolation in the muddy lowlands of Suffolk.