Recruiting Alchemy with Andy Simpson
Moving recruiters from the contingent carousel to repeatable, scalable, productised offerings.
Recruiting Alchemy with Andy Simpson
Recruiting Alchemy Ep.20: Logan Naidu - Two Private Equity Deals and the Culture That Made Them Work
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On Recruiting Alchemy, Logan Naidu, founder and Group CEO of Kernel Global, shares his personal background and path from investment banking at J.P. Morgan and corporate finance at PwC into recruitment, after being fired from his first recruiting role. He founded The Cornell Partnership in 2005, built it to around 30 people, then after a cancer diagnosis in 2010 and disagreements over shifting from a dividend-led lifestyle business to a growth-and-exit strategy, left in 2011 to start Dartmouth Partners. He describes building a high-performance culture centred on making winning “intoxicating,” a long-term “classroom to boardroom” candidate strategy, and growing with a 30% annual growth target. Naidu talkes about private equity, completed PE deals in 2018 and March 2023 (closing shortly after SVB), acquired Pure, grew to 10m EBITDA, paid out a staff pot of about £30m to 170–180 people, navigated post-COVID market shifts, and emphasised in-office culture and US expansion.
00:00 Apartheid Roots
00:26 Sponsor ryvr AI
01:45 Meet Logan Naidu
03:27 Family and Identity
06:04 School and Ambition
08:09 Banking Disillusionment
09:26 PwC and Pivot Point
11:14 Landing in Recruitment
13:22 Fired by Text
16:10 Starting Cornell Partnership
18:23 Lifestyle Business Reality
20:07 Cancer Wake Up Call
23:08 Leaving to Build Dartmouth
23:53 Growth Culture Blueprint
27:50 Classroom to Boardroom
32:29 Kernel Group Today
32:42 Multi Brand Strategy
33:12 Private Equity Explained
34:20 First PE Deal Journey
38:48 De Risking And Growth
40:28 Acquiring Pure
42:52 Boardroom Changes
45:13 Second PE Deal
48:46 Market Turns Down
51:55 Culture And Performance
53:50 Future Plans And AI
57:29 Office First Culture
01:03:40 Vision And Wrap Up
01:05:02 Production Credits
Guest, Logan Naidu:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/logan-naidu-3b10b51/
Kernel Global: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kernelglobal/
Host, Andy Simpson:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andyhsimpson/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyhsimpson/
Thank you to ryvr.ai for sponsoring this episode read more about them below:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryvr.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ryvrai/
Website: https://ryvr.ai/
