Page 109 - James Caan - The Real Deal

10 · The Beginning

– on top of the 25 per cent fee. Then, at the top end, you had
executive headhunters who poached chief executives from one
company for another and charged 30 per cent of the first year’s
salary. What I was trying to do was figure out where I could enter
the market and what USP I could offer. I needed a reason to make
a company use my agency instead of someone else’s. So I kept
doodling until I found my USP.
Then one day I remembered a situation at Reid Trevena when
we had been looking for a finance director. I’d given the task to
the Michael Page agency and they had run an ad, but no one good
enough had applied and we had been left with the advertising bill
but no FD. I reckoned that kind of thing must happen all the time,
meaning companies were landed with the ad cost even though the
agency had failed to find them the right candidate. So then I started
thinking that there must be times when it would be cheaper to pay
the headhunters’ 30 per cent fee than pay the selection agencies’
fee on top of the advertising. Then I reasoned that this would be
even more attractive to clients as they would only pay if the agency
had been successful.
I instantly knew I was on to something: there was a gap in the
market to offer a headhunting service at the mid-range. Let’s say I
had a supermarket client that was looking for a manager for its
new branch. I could place an ad and field the applications, or I
could just call up the managers of other local supermarkets and
ask them in for an interview. And, given my skills, I knew the
latter approach could pretty much guarantee that I’d place a
candidate in the job. Not only would I be providing a service that
didn’t exist at a price that was more competitive than the
traditional selection process, but I could guarantee that the client
wouldn’t pay unless I delivered. I was saying to myself: This has
got to work, why would it not work?
The great thing about recruitment – and the reason why there
are 10,000 recruitment agencies in Britain – is that you don’t need

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