Shelf Ventures
Practical data and digital services for recruitment businesses, and for the companies that sell to them.
Two things, done carefully: intelligence on new and emerging recruitment agencies drawn from public records, and straightforward fixed-price websites for agencies that are just getting started.
Recruitment intelligence
Companies House is full of recruitment-coded companies. Most of them are noise.
In a recent 90-day sample, around 160 companies a week appeared under recruitment-related SIC codes. After screening, only around 50 a week looked like plausible recruitment agencies. The rest were contractor vehicles, dormant shells, care providers and consultancies. Telling them apart by hand takes hours, and the useful ones are only useful for a short time.
I've built a process that screens recruitment-related Companies House registrations and checks them against publicly visible trading activity on the businesses' own websites. The result is a short, evidenced list rather than a raw register export.
Signals the process can surface
- New company incorporation and age
- Likely genuine recruitment agency, with the reasons
- Recruitment model: permanent, temporary, contract, search
- Sector and region
- Website status: none found, placeholder, live
- Visible vacancies on the agency's own site
- Temporary and contract staffing signals
- Recruitment founder history, where Companies House data supports it
- Existing business forming a new entity versus a genuinely new agency
- A plain-English reason to contact
Who it is for
Businesses whose customers are recruitment agencies: recruitment finance and factoring, back-office and payroll providers, recruitment technology, and other suppliers who want to reach an agency early rather than late. Each list is filtered to the buyer's sectors, regions and model, with the evidence shown against every record.
Recruitment websites
A professional recruitment website without the cost or delay of a fully bespoke agency build.
Shelf Ventures also builds straightforward recruitment launch websites for new and growing agencies. The structure is designed around how recruitment actually works, with separate routes for candidates and clients, a jobs page you can update yourself, and the forms an agency needs from day one.
It is built around a reusable recruitment-specific site structure and customised with your name, colours, sectors, propositions and contact details. It is not a fully bespoke design, which is why it is quick and affordable.
Recruitment Launch Website
£995 fixed price
- Six pages: Home, About, Candidates, Clients, Jobs, Contact
- Candidate CV form and client enquiry form
- Responsive build for phone, tablet and desktop
- Basic on-page SEO
- Privacy and cookie essentials
- Basic analytics, if wanted
- Domain connection and SSL
- One revision round
- Launch support and a short handover
Priced separately: specialist integrations, CRM or ATS job feeds, bespoke branding and additional pages.
About
Founder-led, and deliberately small.
Josh McLachlan
Founder, Shelf Ventures
Shelf Ventures focuses on recruitment because it is a market I know, and because its practical problems suit practical tools. Both services are built around the workflows recruitment businesses and their suppliers actually run: who is new, who is trading, who is hiring, and how a small agency presents itself to candidates and clients.
There is no sales team and no account manager. If you get in touch, you get me.
Contact
Get in touch
Josh McLachlan
josh@shelfventures.co.uk
Email is the best route. I reply personally, usually within one working day.