Finding vetted security personnel for your business or development.
Hornsman Group is a London-based security recruitment practice. We identify, screen and vet security personnel for permanent appointments in corporate organisations, permanent appointments with private clients and households, and fixed-term appointments on business premises and development projects. A candidate is presented only once we are satisfied that their history, their credentials and their conduct will withstand scrutiny.
Hornsman Group is a London security recruitment practice. We take the brief, work the market, screen the candidates and present a shortlist. The person you appoint is engaged directly by you, on your own contract and on your own payroll, whether the post is permanent or for a fixed term.
Assignments are taken selectively. The consultant who takes your brief is the one who works the market, makes the approaches and presents the shortlist — not a resourcing desk you have never spoken to, and not an account manager relaying messages between you and whoever is actually doing the searching.
Security is poorly served by volume recruitment. A licence is quick to verify and settles very little. What decides an appointment is whether a history withstands checking, how somebody conducts themselves when holding a line is inconvenient, and whether they are still in post a year later. None of that is reached by working at scale.
We are an employment agency rather than an employment business: candidates are introduced for you to engage, not supplied under our direction. No work seeker is charged a fee at any stage, which is a statutory prohibition rather than a matter of our policy. Candidate information is held on our own systems in the United Kingdom.
Four lines of work, each taken on its own terms and against a brief written for it. Across all four we recruit officers, supervisors and managers on permanent and fixed-term appointments, engaged directly by the client.
Each assignment is conducted on an engaged and exclusive basis. Rather than advertise a vacancy and wait for applications to arrive, we map the relevant market and approach suitable individuals directly and in confidence. This is how we reach people who are already in post and are not reading job advertisements, and who no advertisement would therefore ever have reached.
Every candidate is screened against the standard the role genuinely requires rather than the standard that happens to be most convenient. You receive a shortlist upon which you are able to act, accompanied by confirmation of each candidate’s screening status, their availability and their remuneration expectations.
Where an assignment cannot be completed to the standard required, we will tell you promptly and explain the reason, rather than allow a search to continue indefinitely.
Each candidate is submitted with a written profile setting out how they meet the brief, confirmation that screening is complete, their availability, and their remuneration expectations. Nothing is forwarded without the candidate’s agreement on that occasion.
Terms of business are agreed in writing before any candidate is introduced, so the basis of the fee is settled before either of us has committed anything to the search.
You will not receive a stack of unscreened curricula vitae, and you will not be asked to sift. That is the work you instructed us to do.
We are instructed on both, and the distinction matters because it changes which candidate is the right one. An officer who will hold a corporate post for years is rarely the officer who wants eighteen months on a development. In every case the individual is engaged directly by you, on your own contract and on your own payroll.
Heads of security, security managers, control room and CCTV supervisors, corporate front of house and in-house officers, appointed permanently to commercial organisations that would rather hold the capability themselves than contract it out.
Close protection officers, security drivers who are licensed to protect as well as to drive, and residential security teams, appointed permanently by principals, families and family offices who want the same faces year after year rather than a rota of strangers.
Site security officers, gatehouse and access control, supervisors and site security managers, appointed for the duration of a build or a defined programme of works, on a fixed-term contract issued by the principal contractor or the developer.
Four conditions are pressing on the market for security personnel at once, and each of them raises the standard expected of the people in post.
Data centres, energy generation and distribution schemes, transport works and the physical infrastructure underpinning the Government’s technology programmes are proceeding concurrently. A site of material value requires a security establishment from the day the hoarding is erected, and it requires officers who may be trusted in the proximity of plant, materials and personnel long before the asset is occupied.
Protective security is no longer confined to a reception desk and a barrier. Commercial organisations now carry exposure across their premises, their executive population, their events and their supply chain. The individuals holding that line frequently constitute the first control that functions once another has already failed.
A licence issued by the Security Industry Authority establishes that an individual has completed the prescribed training and satisfied the licensing criteria. It does not establish how that individual has been occupied over the preceding five years, whether the history they have given withstands verification, or how they will conduct themselves within a private household. Screening exists to close precisely that gap.
An officer who fails screening after commencement, or who departs within the first month, imposes cost upon the assignment twice over and leaves a post uncovered in the interim. Diligence at the shortlist stage is materially less expensive than expedience at the offer stage.
Screening is conducted to BS 7858:2019, the British Standard governing the screening of individuals employed in a secure environment.
In practice this establishes identity against documents examined directly; a continuous five-year employment and activity history, with any discontinuity explained and evidenced; verification of the right to work in the United Kingdom; confirmation of a current and appropriate licence issued by the Security Industry Authority where the role involves licensable activity; and written references obtained rather than merely requested.
Criminal record checks are commissioned at the point at which you wish to proceed with a named candidate, and are charged at cost. They are not undertaken speculatively. No candidate is charged a fee of any kind at any stage, in accordance with section 6(1)(a) of the Employment Agencies Act 1973.
Candidate records and screening files are retained on systems under our own control within the United Kingdom. They are not held on shared cloud recruitment platforms, they are not sold or circulated to other agencies, and every determination concerning a candidate is made by a person.
Standards & screeningPlease tell us the position you are seeking to fill, its location, and the standard of screening the role requires. If the assignment falls within our competence we will say so and set out how we propose to conduct it. If it does not, we will tell you so directly and, where we are able, suggest a firm better suited to it.
Suite RA01, 195–197 Wood Street, London E17 3NU
Every enquiry is read and answered personally.