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Robert Stiff

British businessman

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ7350075 ↗
Source-derived summary

Robert Stiff (born 24 June 1960) is a Southern Rhodesia born British entrepreneur.

Early life

Robert Stiff was born in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1960, where he was brought up by his English parents – Peter Stiff and Marion Hewson. His father Peter Stiff, an officer in the British South Africa Police until 1972, is the author of The Rain Goddess. The novel draws on Peter's experiences of counter-insurgency along the Rhodesian–South African border during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Robert is one of four children with Timothy Stiff being his older brother and sisters, Sally Jalette-Joy and Penny Streeter OBE

Career 1987 - 2005

Robert Stiff moved to Great Britain in 1978 and enlisted in the British Army. After leaving the army, Stiff joined Prudential Assurance in 1987, working as a senior manager for 12 years before moving into healthcare recruitment.

He joined healthcare recruitment company Ambition Recruitment Services as Sales Director in 1999, working with Penny Streeter. During his six years at the company, Stiff was instrumental in increasing his sales team's turnover from £3m to £75m per annum.

Career 2011 - 2015

In 2005 Stiff started the company Team24 and in May 2011 sold it to one of Britain's largest outsourcing firms, Capita. Stiff agreed to stay on as managing director of the firm until his departure in May 2012.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Robert Stiff” as british businessman. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1960, 1972, 1987, 2005—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1960-06-24. The account is most persuasive where Robert, Stiff and British can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as british businessman. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7350075. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 1972, 1987 and 2005.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Robert Stiff”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Robert Stiff primary sources, Robert Stiff archive and Robert research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Robert Stiff” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.