Page 61 - James Caan - The Real Deal

7 · The Job That Changed My Life

branch was meeting head office’s targets, but I was never going to
enjoy a detailed analysis of the numbers. Thankfully, there was a
woman called Penny working with me who loved that kind of
detail, and so I made it her job to work out the margins or the
commission. It has been one of my strengths always to recognise
my weaknesses, and another of my strengths is being able to find
people like Penny.
Alfred Marks was very strategic, very theoretical. Previously I’d
been in an environment where I had a lot of freedom to select clients
and candidates; now I got memos saying we were targeting the
pharmaceutical industry in April in the W1 area, or that I had to
focus on my temp margin. It just wasn’t me. The meetings were very
boring, so I didn’t learn anything, which in turn meant I stopped
paying attention. Deep down I’d always been a bit of a maverick,
I’d never really conformed, and by this point I’d learned that I
needed to be given some space. So when those memos from head
office started to fill every hour of the week with a new directive or
monitoring mechanism, I knew I wouldn’t be sticking around for
long. This worried me: why wasn’t I enjoying it? Hadn’t I always
wanted to be one of the corporate guys in a suit? What was missing?
I didn’t have time to find out, because I was quickly offered yet
another job. And although I didn’t know it at the time, my next
job would change my life. I had just placed a lot of candidates with
a financial services company called Reid Trevena, and one day I
got a call from the MD.
‘You’re doing a great job, James.’
‘Thank you very much. Always nice to get some feedback from
clients.’
‘Do you think you could find any more candidates for us?’
‘Sure.’
‘Then why don’t you come and work for us directly?’
I would have been tempted by any offer that took me away from
Alfred Marks at the time, so I went to meet the two guys who ran

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