Page 143 - James Caan - The Real Deal
P. 143

13 · Learning to Innovate



            recruitment to recruitment market (or rec2rec, as it became
            known) accounted for half of everything Alexander Mann did. I
            can’t emphasise enough how important this became for the
            business. Whenever you’re in a market where you’re the only one,
            it’s like being ten times bigger than you really are. Our name
            spread so quickly because everybody was talking about us. Several
            of my consultants realised there was an opportunity to earn more
            money and moved to our new rec2rec division. That side of things
            just grew and grew, and my dad’s philosophy about the less
            travelled road being paved with gold was proving to be true yet
            again.
               Not only was it lucrative for the company, but, because we were
            constantly interviewing recruitment professionals, if anyone really
            impressed us we could hire them for Alexander Mann. Everyone
            who walked through our door was a potential recruit, and we
            started to employ better and better people, and of course that
            helped us grow our reputation, our client base and our profits.
            What made this even sweeter was that it meant we had virtually
            no recruitment costs ourselves, as 95 per cent of the team we hired
            had initially come in to see us about another vacancy.
               We attracted a lot of attention within the industry after that,
            and I noticed that when I went to industry events and said I
            worked for Alexander Mann, people paid attention. We were seen
            as upstarts and mavericks and, although some people admired us,
            we also got a lot of flak. Not everyone liked us – largely because
            we were placing their best people elsewhere – but everyone in the
            sector had heard of us, and a consequence of being higher-profile
            was that people wanted to work for us. Alexander Mann became
            a prestige name to have on your CV, and that in turn helped us
            hire better and better people.
               The early years of Alexander Mann were extremely creative as
            we tried different angles and different techniques to prise open
            sectors, industries and profits. We spent a lot of time talking




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