Meet the Yorkshire recruiter whose upbringing motivates him to help good people
James Smethurst was still in his 20s when, in 2017, he co-founded his first business. Novo, a Leeds-based recruitment provider specialising in science and compliance, now has 10 employees.
He’s also a co-founder of KERV Capital, a venture capital investment group that has co-founded and invested in over a dozen companies, supports ambitious recruiters looking to grow their own business and employs over 80 people.
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Hide AdIt’s not bad going for a working class lad from Pontefract who was diagnosed with ADHD as a youngster and didn’t go to university.


James believes his success is rooted in his working class upbringing in West Yorkshire.
“My dad was a miner and my mum was a midwife, so I had good working class values drummed into me from an early age. They both had a fantastic work ethic. My dad would work 12 hour shifts down the pit and he’d come home black with soot. They worked hard to make sure we had a good lifestyle.”
This rubbed off on James whose first job as a teenager was working for £2 an hour in a local takeaway on a Saturday night.
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Hide Ad“I got a free dinner as well, so they looked after me.” He did a string of other jobs including working in a local pub and a brief stint selling shoes.
As well as being hardworking, his parents also helped foster dozens of children.
“From the age of 11 through to when I left home I shared my room with a guy and we’re still in touch now,” says James. “As a family we spent a lot of time together. I’ve got a really good relationship with my mum, she’s such a solid person in that she’s reliable, well balanced and funny. And it’s the same with my dad, who taught me that hard work and having a strong sense of purpose which is aligned to what you do is important. It was a very safe and nurturing environment which meant we gave a really nice home to the foster kids.”
But if his homelife was warm and loving, he found school a bit more challenging. “I remember a primary school teacher saying to me and my mum ‘your son will never amount to anything – he’s the worst child I’ve ever taught.’ It was a real dressing down and we both left in tears.”
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Hide AdHis restless energy concerned his mother and led to James being diagnosed with ADHD back in the 90s. Having the diagnosis helped him and his parents. “I remember my mum saying I came home from school one day and asked if I could help her to build a rockery in the garden. We planned it together and she said she’d never seen this side of me – she could have cried.”
There was still the small matter of what he wanted to do with his life. He started his A-Levels but dropped out and went to college to do a BTEC in travel and tourism. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do other than I knew I wanted to travel.” Such was his desire to go and work abroad that he left before he finished the course.
Having saved up enough money he headed to Australia when he was 18. He spent the next four years living and working there, as well as South East Asia, Turkey and France, meeting lots of other interesting and inspiring young people along the way.
“It was a great experience and it really gave me the foundations for what became a more expansive mindset. What I learned was that sometimes you can only be as great as your options allow, so I learned to always expand my horizons.”
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Hide AdJames returned to the UK in 2012 at the age of 22 ready to forge a career. Here he was influenced by two of his uncles who were the “business aficionados” in the family. “One was in network marketing and sales and the other was a marketing director at Fox’s Biscuits, and their charisma and success influenced me in gravitating towards sales and marketing.”
He got a job in recruitment with a start up in Leeds and quickly made his mark working as a generalist across multiple markets, recruiting executive positions for small and large businesses in the UK. Having honed his skills he wanted to specialise in a particular area so he could stand out from the crowd.
“I like science and technology so that felt like a good place to start and I wanted to be part of a business that was more people focused than product focused, so that lent itself more to business services than manufacturing.”
This led him towards the TIC (Testing, Inspection and Certification) sector. “I kept speaking to people in the TIC market who were saying there were no real recruiters specialising in this area, and it had a need for more recruitment support.”
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Hide AdSpotting a gap in the market he focused on this. “Recruitment is an incredibly saturated market so to do it well you have to be an expert in an area and the go-to person for something. To be successful in recruitment you need word of mouth recommendations and referrals, it’s definitely been a huge help for me.”
Like all successful entrepreneurs, James, who is married with a young family, has that innate knack of being ahead of the curve and sensing opportunities early.
Equally important is having the right mindset. “I’ve always believed in working with people you feel are ahead of where you are so that you can learn from them and develop. I think it’s important to always stay teachable and to be open to new ideas,” he says. “Having a good work ethic is crucial too, along with building a good network and having an innate curiosity about people and businesses. If you have that curiosity, ask lots of questions and put yourself in different environments and learn from good people, then the chances are you’ll be successful.”
James, who is also an investor in other ventures including property development and e-commerce, is looking at ways he can help other would-be entrepreneurs. “Helping good people and businesses on their journeys is what motivates me. You get to a point where material things motivate you less and I’m at the stage where I want to help people to utilise my skills and experience.”
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