About FUSION
FUSION is an independent recruitment consultancy founded and led by Scott Hemphill and Gavin McBryde.
01 · How it began
Built on friendship and shared standards
We first worked together in recruitment more than 20 years ago. Gavin joined the industry in 2003 and Scott followed in early 2004. We worked alongside one another for a couple of years, then went in different directions professionally while remaining friends.
What stayed consistent was the way we thought about recruitment.
We shared a similar sense of what good service should look like and how people should be treated.
In 2015, we decided to work together again.
Gavin was already running a small local recruitment business, while Scott was working as a manager within a recruitment firm and considering setting up independently. After almost a decade as friends rather than colleagues, we became business partners and created FUSION.
02 · The first ten years
A decade inside the hiring process
FUSION originally operated as a Recruitment Process Outsourcing business across the built environment, supporting engineering, architecture, surveying and related professional disciplines.
At the time, we believed there was a gap for a more involved and better-supported approach to recruitment. Rather than working only as an external agency, we became closely involved in our clients’ recruitment processes, helping them manage vacancies, agencies, candidates and wider hiring decisions.
We are proud of what we built during those years.
The work gave us a detailed understanding of how businesses across the built environment recruit, the pressures hiring managers face and the difficulties that can arise when several parties are involved in the same process.
It also gave us something relatively unusual within agency recruitment: direct experience of sitting on the client side of the table.
We saw examples of excellent recruitment and built strong relationships with recruiters who worked carefully and professionally. We also experienced some of the frustrations that clients often face.
We also saw where recruitment processes could become too focused on the immediate placement, without enough attention being paid to the quality of the advice, the suitability of the candidate or the value of the longer-term relationship.
03 · A new chapter
Using our experience differently
After ten years working within the RPO model, we decided in 2025 to return to specialist permanent recruitment as an agency.
We weren’t leaving that experience behind. We wanted to use it differently.
We wanted to take greater responsibility for the full recruitment process, from understanding what a client genuinely needs to identifying candidates, presenting them properly and supporting both sides throughout. For candidates, that means an honest view of each opportunity rather than pressure to apply.
It also means recognising when recruitment is not the answer.
Clients often speak to us outside a live hiring process. They ask what is happening in the market, whether their expectations are realistic, how they should approach a difficult vacancy or what they may need to change. We value those conversations because they reflect the kind of relationship we have always tried to build.
The fact that clients continue to come back to us, sometimes for recruitment and sometimes simply for advice, is one of the things we are most proud of.
Scott and Gavin
The people behind FUSION
Although we have different personalities, we hold ourselves to the same standards. We take the work seriously, treat people properly and give honest advice, even when that is not necessarily the easiest answer.
For clients, that means considered searches, honest advice and candidates who have been properly spoken to and understood.
For candidates, it means straightforward communication, realistic guidance and complete control over where their details are sent. A CV will never be passed to an employer without the candidate’s permission.
We are not interested in creating pressure where none is needed. We are not trying to turn every conversation into a sale.
We are two experienced recruiters who have spent much of our careers working within engineering, an industry we have come to know and care about. We understand that changing jobs and hiring people are important decisions, and we treat them that way.
When a client or candidate needs our support, we are here to provide it.
That is what FUSION was built to do.