Page 57 - James Caan - The Real Deal

6 · A Career in Recruitment

couple of months in the West End I was approached by Alfred
Marks, probably the biggest employment agency in the UK at the
time, to see if I would be interested in joining them.
In comparison to City Centre Staff Bureau, Alfred Marks
seemed very sophisticated. Their staff didn’t have boxes of file
cards – they had computer systems and printouts on green
computer paper (I don’t know why it was always green, but that
was cutting-edge in 1980). I was very impressed, and when they
offered me a basic salary of £8k I really started to take notice. I’d
been on £6k at City Centre.
Alfred Marks offered me a job as manager at their Edgware
Road branch, which was one of their biggest, so I thought that
they must have rated me. When they offered £8k I thought I had
an opportunity to negotiate a bit harder. After all, they had
approached me and I had only just moved to the Oxford Street
branch and was making pretty good money. They upped their
offer to £10k, so I said to them:
‘Make it £11k and I’m interested.’
‘But that would make you the highest-paid branch manager.’
Not to mention the youngest.
Anyway, they offered me the £11k I wanted, and so I said yes.
I suppose it was at this point that my dad started to think I must
have been doing OK for myself. He could see Alfred Marks on
every high street, so he knew I was working for a big company,
and being a branch manager had a certain status. It was the only
job I ever remember going home and telling him about because it
was a big deal, but the first thing he said was:
‘Not again!’
He couldn’t believe how often I changed jobs, and I’m convinc-
ed he thought I was flaky.
‘You’ve only been at the other place five minutes!’
However, coincidentally, the following week he just happened
to be in the West End midweek and called to suggest we had lunch

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