WITH £6,000 and the determination to ditch their nine-to-five jobs two North-East women set out on the road to becoming owners of a multi-million pound company.

Sunderland-born Caroline Cassap and mother-of-two Samantha Leeds, of Hartlepool, joined forces with two more friends, Sarah Ellis and David Slater, to set up Complete Recruitment Solutions (CRS), a recruitment firm which now supplies engineers to the food industry throughout Britain.

CRS is now thriving, with more than 6,500 workers and 1,000 companies on its books, having defied the odds to come a long way in such a short time.

Ms Leeds, 33, was pregnant with her second child during the company's early stages, while Ms Cassop suffers with severe dyslexia.

Neither proved to be obstacles, and CRS made £750,000 in its first year and £1.2m in its second year, which it expecs to almost double by the end of its third year.

Ms Leeds, who was on the phone to the office less than an hour after giving birth to Libby, now 18 months old, said: "We all worked in the same office and one day we just looked at each other and said 'we could do this'.

"It took a few months of planning but, since handing in my notice and setting up in business, I have never looked back.

"It was quite tough starting off. They were long and stressful hours setting up the business and, as we are growing all of the time, the work-load is continuing to increase.

"We have employed four more staff and, hopefully, one day it will all have been worth it."

"The recruitment industry can be very stale. It can be a case of getting a job in, finding a worker and putting the two together.

"The thing is a lot of companies who use recruitment agencies for their staff just expect this sort of service and nigh on accept it.

"A company can pay us £5,000 to fill a vacancy, so it makes sense to get the right person and have that company come back and use you again and again."

For Ms Cassop, dealing with dyslexia has landed her with the unlikely role of proof-reading documents.

The 32-year-old, from Roker, was not diagnosed with the condition until she went to Leeds Metropolitan University, having struggled through her GCSEs and A-levels.

Caroline recalled: "I handed my first essay in at uni and the tutor looked at it and said he was sending me to be assessed for dyslexia. From the way I constructed sentences and mixed words about, he could tell what was wrong.

"When you are in a school of thousands of kids, then it is understandable that they overlook one girl who can't spell very well.

"Now I see it as an asset. My work has benefited in that I double and triple-check everything and rarely make a mistake."