Scott Parsons
Forsyth Barnes
“Consistency is what our people crave.”
Scott Parsons has been named to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, the annual award recognizing up to 100 leaders in each category of talent acquisition. Honorees are nominated by peers or found by committees that look for excellent work wherever it happens, then chosen for the depth of their craft and their impact on hiring. This is Scott's story.
Scott Parsons had hired an AI consultancy to tell him which CRM to buy. Over four weeks in 2024 they sat with all four Forsyth Barnes offices, mapped every system and process, benchmarked the options and sketched out what the tech stack should look like. Then, almost as an afterthought, they floated a curveball: or you could build your own.
What happened next can be read two ways, and Scott says so himself: "Smartly or naively, whichever way you want to look at it." He and co-founder Roheel Ahmad engaged the same consultancy to build a proprietary AI CRM for the firm rather than buying one off the shelf. Fifteen months into its existence, the system is doing a really good job. There were teething problems along the way, as there always are. There was also, in his reading, no other route to the thing he actually wanted: technology built around how his people already work, rather than people rebuilt around someone else's software.
Selling Soda, Then Smoothies, Then Software
The entrepreneurial instinct arrived long before the industry did. Scott was the kid at school and then at college selling cans of soda, sweets and confectionery to anyone who would buy them. He moved into a software business. While he was still studying, he ran a chain of milkshake and smoothie bars. What he did not know at that point was that talent, recruitment and staffing existed as an industry in its own right.
He found it in 2009 and absolutely loved it. He became a top biller. The business he had joined ran a strong management programme, and he came up through it into leadership. It also handed him the single most consequential introduction of his career: a colleague working the interim and contract side of the desk while Scott built the permanent side. Two different markets, one good working relationship, and a shared suspicion that the model could be done better.
That suspicion became Forsyth Barnes, founded in 2015 with bases in London and Nottingham, and now ten and a half years old. The founding thesis has not moved since: use AI and technology hard, but keep people and relationships at the front of everything. "That's how we built our success," Scott says. Running his own business, after years of running small ones, gave him something he prizes as highly as autonomy, which is a clear sense of direction. He and Roheel have stayed aligned on what the firm should be, and on the idea that everyone inside it should feel they are running a business of their own within the wider one.
The Hires That Changed The Shape Of The Firm
The list of people Scott credits runs long, too long, by his reckoning, to name in full. Roheel is the obvious one: the partner he met on the other side of the desk and has built alongside ever since. But he is just as quick to credit the hires who changed the shape of the company after it existed.
Corin Stabler, who runs global operations for the firm, came from Robert Half. Scott calls her an amazing hire who has made a huge impression on the business. James Murphy, the finance director, arrived from outside the industry entirely, by way of KPMG and then Manchester United Football Club, and has had what Scott describes as a huge impact. Blake, Grant and Harry, the firm's sales leaders, get the same billing.
Then there are the clients and the placements. His mind goes first to drinks and dinners in New York, the kind of relationships that were good for the business precisely because they were good relationships first. It is a consistent tell in how he talks about the work. The technology gets his attention. The ledger he keeps is a ledger of people.
A Career Spanning Digital Transformations
Scott missed the era of faxing CVs by a few years, though colleagues told him about it. What he has lived through since 2009 is two or three digital transformations of the recruitment industry: the shift through COVID, the pivot to video, and now a working world with a great deal of automation and AI ingrained in the day to day. Fascinating is the word he reaches for. He will not pin himself to either excited or frightened.
Inside Forsyth Barnes, the practical expression of that is Imagine AI, a sourcing engine that takes the top three to five bullet points of a job requirement, scours sources including ZoomInfo and LinkedIn, runs initial outreach by email and SMS, and sends Microsoft Teams links so candidates connect directly with consultants. The automation does the searching and the first touch. The consultant does the conversing. That division of labour is deliberate, and Scott says it is doing a great job.
The industry-wide problem, as he sees it, is authenticity. Everyone is grappling with AI-written CVs and with the growing work of verifying that people are who they say they are. Interview tricks and AI-assisted techniques have multiplied. His position is not prohibition. The best talent can and should use AI, he argues, provided they use it in the right way rather than replacing themselves with it. The obligation runs both ways: "It's on us as an industry to make sure that we always stay one step ahead, that we are bringing the best talent to the forefront."
Advice For Talent Leaders In 2026
Scott's counsel to other leaders fits into four words and then takes some unpacking. Stay adaptable whilst consistent.
The adaptability is the obvious half. AI is ever-changing, the economy is ever-changing, the world of talent is ever-changing, and leaders who cannot move with it will not last long. The consistency is the half he thinks gets neglected, and the half he considers more urgent. At a moment defined by uncertainty, what people inside a business are looking for is something steady to hold onto: consistency in how leaders show up, consistency of process, consistency in the quality delivered to clients.
It is a discipline argument dressed as a leadership one. Standards do not get to flex just because the tools are changing weekly. For a firm that chose to build its own AI infrastructure rather than rent someone else's, the logic tracks neatly. Change the machinery as often as the market demands. Do not change what the people on either side of the desk can count on.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Scott. We are honored to welcome Scott Parsons to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Scott. Welcome to the Talent 100.
About the Talent 100
The Talent 100 is an annual list spotlighting the leaders who push HR and talent acquisition forward, organized by Noon AI. Honorees are selected through peer nominations and independent selection committees. Selection is entirely merit-based, with no fees or pay-to-play requirements.
