GroTech Founder Thomas Warner Named to the Talent 100 Class of 2026
I’m really pleased to share that I’ve been named to Noon’s Talent 100 Class of 2026, an annual list recognising 100 people making an impact across talent, recruitment and hiring.
It’s a great piece of recognition personally, but it also gave me an opportunity to reflect on the journey behind GroTech, how much recruitment has changed over the last few years, and where I think our industry is heading next.
From recruiter to building GroTech
I didn’t have a grand plan to build a recruitment business when I first entered the industry.
Like a lot of recruiters, I learned the job by doing it — sourcing candidates, building a desk, winning clients, making plenty of mistakes and gradually understanding what good recruitment actually looks like.
Eventually, that journey led to launching GroTech Search.
Since then, we've built GroTech around a fairly simple idea: specialise in the markets we know, build genuine relationships with the people operating within them, and try to become a recruitment partner that clients actually want to work with.
The business has evolved significantly since those early days, but that principle hasn't really changed.
Recruitment is changing quickly
One of the biggest topics in my Talent 100 conversation was, unsurprisingly, AI.
There’s a huge amount of discussion about what AI means for recruiters. Will it replace sourcing? Screening? Outreach? Recruiters altogether?
My view is slightly different:
“AI's not going to get rid of us. It's going to get rid of elements of our job.”
And I think that's a good thing.
There are parts of recruitment that have traditionally taken up enormous amounts of time without necessarily being where recruiters create the most value.
Research, administration, formatting information, building scorecards, analysing markets, creating content — there are now much better ways of doing many of these things.
At GroTech, we've embraced that.
We use AI extensively behind the scenes to make us faster, better informed and more productive. But there are areas where we deliberately don't want technology replacing people.
Automate the admin, not the relationship
Recruitment is ultimately a people business.
A hiring manager explaining why their last hire didn't work out. A candidate telling you what they actually want from their next move. Understanding why someone who looks perfect on paper probably isn't right for a particular company.
Those conversations matter.
The opportunity with AI isn't to remove them. It's to remove enough of everything else that recruiters can spend more time having them.
That's the direction we're taking at GroTech.
Use technology to research markets faster. Understand companies better. Analyse information more effectively. Reduce repetitive work.
Then use the time we've gained to speak to more candidates, understand our clients properly and build stronger networks within the markets we recruit into.
What the recognition means
Being included in the Talent 100 is obviously something I'm personally very proud of.
But I also see it as recognition of the direction we're taking GroTech.
We're still building.
We're continuing to develop our specialist GTM networks, invest in technology and look at how we can deliver a better recruitment experience for both clients and candidates.
The tools available to recruiters will continue to change incredibly quickly.
The fundamentals probably won't.
Know your market. Know your clients. Know your candidates. And build relationships that last longer than a single hiring process.
That's what we're going to keep focusing on.
Read my full Talent 100 profile on Noon:
https://www.noon.ai/talent100/thomas-warner