New Hiring 100 ranking to showcase Scotland's growing firms

A one-year snapshot can mislead as a single good year can flatter a business, and a single bad one can hide years of steady growth.

The Hiring 100 looks at the longer record instead.

It covers every Scotland 500 company with five years of filed accounts and at least 100 staff five years ago.

Each is scored out of 100: 35 per cent on annualised headcount growth, 25 per cent on net jobs added, 20 per cent on growth in the latest year and 20 per cent on the number of years in which headcount rose.

That balance means a 300-person business doubling in size can rank alongside a giant adding a few per cent.

The 100 firms added 40,087 jobs over five years, and 68 grew in every one of those years.

Most are mid-sized and more than four in five had fewer than 1,000 staff five years ago, and almost half employed between 250 and 999.

Recruiter Venesky-Brown tops the ranking, its payroll rising from 189 to 1,138, driven largely by contract staff it places on infrastructure and public-sector work.

Glasgow contractor Morris & Spottiswood is second and hotel and leisure operator Rad third, with ScottishPower fourth and McQueens Dairies fifth.

The list spans the economy, from engineers, utilities and wind-turbine specialists to dairies, pharmacies, hotels, law firms and Edinburgh Airport.

Headcount in company accounts can rise through acquisitions or staff moving between group companies as well as through recruitment. Firms whose figures were clearly distorted by transfers or filing errors have been excluded.

Four firms in the ranking cut staff in their latest year, a reminder that a dip in one year does not undo five years of growth.