Principal Consultant - M&E Contracting

If you're going to build a successful M&E desk, you might as well build one you can eventually lead as a Division.

This isn't a warm desk dressed up as a business-building opportunity. The desk doesn't exist yet. What does exist is a 24-person Construction recruitment business in an aggressive growth phase, an established M&E Trades & Labour division, strong relationships across commercial fit-out and high-end residential projects and a clear gap for somebody to build the professional M&E recruitment offering alongside it.

Just an open market and the opportunity to make it yours.

Established for more than ten years, this is an ambitious 24-person Construction recruitment business operating from Central London. The company is already well established across its existing markets, particularly commercial fit-out and high-end residential , and is now in a significant growth phase, expanding organically while also exploring acquisition opportunities.

The culture is lively and hard-working, but notably collaborative. Communication is unusually open from the top down, consultants share information and relationships, and the leadership team has deliberately avoided creating the internal politics and territorial behaviour that can make larger recruitment businesses frustrating places to build.

The business works four days together in the office and one from home , with a social culture and an experienced MD who remains closely involved in developing the people around him.

Now they want to add professional M&E recruitment to the business. And they're looking for somebody who wants to build it.

An experienced M&E / Building Services Contracting recruiter with at least three years in the market and an existing understanding of the contractors, candidates and projects that make it work.

You might currently run permanent, freelance/contract or a dual desk. The exact model matters less than knowing the M&E contracting market and being able to create business within it.

You're a strong networker and genuine business developer. This isn't the opportunity for somebody who needs a mature database and a stream of inherited vacancies to perform.

You may already be successful where you are but increasingly frustrated by internal competition, restricted markets or a lack of room above you .

You don't need management experience. You do need to have reached the point where building another £200k or £300k desk for somebody else, with nowhere for it to go, has started to feel limiting.

This suits someone who wants their next desk to become their division .

You'll launch the company's professional M&E / Building Services Contracting offering from scratch. The market is deliberately broad at the outset, giving you the freedom to follow the revenue rather than inheriting artificial boundaries.

That could include:

and other professional appointments across Mechanical and Electrical contractors.

You'll have the flexibility to recruit permanent and contract/freelance appointments and, as the market develops, begin separating successful verticals into specialist desks of their own.

And while there isn't an existing professional M&E desk, you aren't walking into the market completely cold.

ALREADY INSIDE THE BUSINESS

The company has an established M&E Trades & Labour division supplying into the same Building Services market. That creates an unusually useful starting point.

The M&E contractors already known to the Trades & Labour team are potential clients for their more senior professional appointments.

The projects the business already understands across commercial fit-out and high-end residential create intelligence and routes into the management teams delivering them.

And there is candidate crossover too. The companies and supervisors already within the Trades & Labour network can provide introductions, intelligence and potential candidates as people progress into more senior supervisory and management positions.

So although this is a new desk, there is an existing ecosystem around it. Your job is to commercialise it.

From there, the opportunity gets considerably bigger. The ambition isn't for Building Services to remain one desk covering everything.

As you establish the market, there is scope to recruit around you and create further specialist desks across areas such as:

with you progressing from the person who started the desk to the person responsible for the division.