Meet the MD: Coleman James founder Andrew Mackay on striving for the unobtainable, relationships over transactions and core values

Newcastle native Andew Mackay hasn’t looked back since choosing his home city as the base for his venture.

The founder of construction and built environment recruitment firm Coleman James, Andrew specialises in working with customers nationally and regionally from the company’s base at Hoults Yard.

Andrew took the time to speak to Bdaily about his serendipitous route into recruitment, his core values as a business leader and the achievements of the business.

Can you tell the readers about yourself first of all - i.e. your background, where you are from etc?

“I was born and raised in Newcastle, the place I still call home. It’s a great city to live, work and raise a family.

“At Dame Allan’s and Queen Elizabeth High School, Hexham, where I went to school, I fell in love with rugby. I played for the Falcons Academy before an injury led me to defer a place at university and head off travelling around the world for two years.

“I returned to Newcastle in 2004 and fell into recruitment, with an excellent company called Hill McGlynn, then the leading national niche construction recruitment company. It had a great training and development programme, which I capitalised on.

“I loved the recruitment sector and decided not to pursue university. I knew it was the right decision, especially when I won a key company award at the Monaco conference in 2007.

“Not long after I was headhunted to join Anderselite, another national niche construction recruitment business, as branch manager at the age of 25. I went on to win the President’s Award whilst working there, after propelling the Newcastle office to ‘Office of the Year’ in 2010.

“After that, I moved to Elliott Browne International to take up my first directorship in 2013 and after three successful years decided to leave and start my own business in June 2016.”

What does your role entail?

“As founder and managing director, I’m in charge of our overall business strategy, as well as keeping a close eye on the day-to-day management of the firm.

“I focus on identifying and executing our high-growth strategy across the north of England, working with my trusted team of advisors on everything from our finances to IT to legal expertise.

“I drive our business development strategy with the support of my senior management team and of course, play an active role in recruiting the very best talent to Coleman James. I also take a lead on our executive retained search service.”

When was Coleman James set up, and how has it grown since then?

“I founded Coleman James in June 2016 and we’ve since grown to a team of 12 with two more recruits due to join us in the summer. We delivered a multi-million turnover in 2020, which we’re forecast to double in 2021.

“The business won North East Small Business of the Year in 2019 at the regional business awards and was taken forward to the national awards in London to represent the North East Chamber of Commerce, of which I’m very proud.”

What is it about the organisation that motivates and excites you the most?

“Our people are our greatest asset. We’ve built a fantastic team encompassing over 100 collective years’ of recruitment experience, who are extremely loyal and “on the bus” with our vision.

“I’m also proud of the way we’ve built our brand. When I started the firm I wanted to upend the traditional image of a recruitment consultancy. We’re known for the added value service we offer our customers, which differentiates us from many of the transactional recruitment agencies out there.

“We also actively head-hunt top talent and often secure unobtainable candidates who would be otherwise off the books.

“We focus strongly on our core values of relationships, integrity, knowledge and excellence. They’re part of our culture, everyone who works here lives and breathes them; it helps drive ownership and accountability to deliver for our clients.”

Looking back on the past year, what has been your biggest achievement?

“Working tirelessly to ensure we have the right people in the right roles, doing the right things, not to forget winning Small Business of the Year.

What have been your biggest challenges during your time at Coleman James so far, and how have you overcome them?

“Finding the key partners we now have in place and seeing the benefit that has had on the business, from accountancy to banking to IT.

“We also have a policy of hiring well and firing well – but thankfully we haven’t had to do the latter very often. We live by our core values and ensure the culture is right. It’s vital to deliver a superior service offering and our partnership proposition.”

What does the future hold for your company? Any exciting projects in the pipeline we should know about?

“We appointed Rachel Young as a director in January 2020. Rachel, along with myself, is establishing our rail division which will be a high-growth area – attracting a national client base due to our industry insight and the Coleman James network.

“We’re also continuing to grow our facilities management division nationally, which is going from strength-to-strength.

“Growing our brand across the North of England and opening a second office will be our next step, with the location dependent on the requirements of our key client base.”

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