Associate Director - White Collar Construction Perm

London City | £60,000 £65,000+ Basic | Zero-Threshold Commission to 40% | Team Bonus + Bonuses | Equity Pathway

There is a big difference between managing somebody else's recruitment division and being given the scope to shape what it becomes next. This opportunity sits somewhere between the two.

You'll inherit six established permanent recruiters , split across two successful specialist Construction markets, alongside more than a decade of client relationships, live requirements and an extensive candidate network.

So this isn't a turnaround. And it isn't a speculative team-build starting with you and an empty CRM. The foundations are already highly successful. What hasn't been built yet is the next version of it.

The Managing Director currently oversees the function personally, but as the wider business has grown, it needs a dedicated leader whose everyday focus is performance, people and expansion . Someone who can take what's already working, make it better and ultimately build something several times its current size.

And importantly, someone who gets to share commercially in the value they help create.

You'll take leadership responsibility for two established White Collar Construction permanent recruitment teams , currently comprising six recruiters.

The business operates within specialist Construction markets across the UK and Europe , with particularly strong, long-standing relationships across high-end residential development and specialist commercial construction.

These are relationships developed over more than ten years. You'll have access to established clients, live vacancies, candidate networks and a reputation that gives you a considerable head start.

Initially, you'll also remain a hands-on recruiter. Depending on your own market background and preference, you'll take ownership of an existing area of the business and inherit genuine recruitment activity rather than being expected to manufacture a personal desk around your management responsibilities.

The expectation for the right person is significant personal production, potentially around £300k annually once established, while simultaneously improving the performance and capability of the team around you.

But this isn't intended to remain a six-person team with a billing manager sitting above it. The brief is to grow it.

At appointment, you'll agree clear commercial milestones with the MD covering personal performance, team productivity and headcount investment. Hit them, and the business invests.

That could mean adding recruiters within existing markets, dividing successful desks into more specialist verticals, expanding by role or geography, or identifying entirely new White Collar Construction markets worth pursuing.

And because the existing business operates across both the UK and Europe, you're not limited to opportunities within one economy. Some established clients are increasingly active across European markets, creating the opportunity to follow relationships, projects and hiring demand wherever the strongest commercial opportunities emerge.

The expectation is that within two to three years , a successful leader should have at least doubled the existing headcount. The ambition is considerably greater.

As the team reaches sufficient scale, your role can progressively shift away from personal billing and towards leadership, strategy and commercial direction . In other words, you don't inherit somebody else's finished blueprint. You get to draw the next one.

This is an established specialist Construction recruitment business with more than a decade of experience and a particularly strong reputation across Commercial Fit-Out, Prime and Luxury Residential and specialist Design & Build Construction markets .

Its clients include developers and specialist contractors operating across the UK and Europe, with relationships that have been built over many years rather than acquired through short-term transactional recruitment.

The culture is distinctly non-corporate. It's committed, lively, modern and results-orientated , with an entrepreneurial approach to growth and relatively little appetite for unnecessary bureaucracy.

People are expected to perform. But successful people are also given room to make decisions.

That's particularly important at Associate Director level. You're not being recruited simply to administer an existing structure.

You'll work closely with the Managing Director and have meaningful input into where the division grows, how markets are structured, when teams divide into further specialisms, where headcount is invested and which geographical opportunities are pursued.

There is currently relatively little internal competition because the business is still in the process of building out its permanent capability.

That creates something increasingly difficult to find in established recruitment businesses: successful foundations without all the valuable territory already being taken.

You'll be an experienced White Collar Construction permanent recruiter with a strong personal billing history and demonstrable experience managing recruiters.

You don't necessarily need to come directly from Commercial Fit-Out or High-End Residential. Your background could be elsewhere within professional Construction recruitment, provided you understand the permanent market and can credibly lead experienced recruiters within it.

Ideally, you'll have managed somewhere around four to ten consultants and can demonstrate that your leadership has actually improved performance.

Because this is a player-manager role initially, you also need to be comfortable doing the job yourself.

The credibility to ask recruiters to develop business, manage their markets properly and produce strong numbers is considerably greater when you're demonstrating those behaviours alongside them.

And you may recognise some of the frustrations this opportunity has been designed to remove.

Perhaps you're already managing a successful team but your commission scheme barely recognises what you produce.

Maybe you have responsibility without genuine authority, expected to deliver the number but unable to decide where to hire, which markets to enter or how your division should evolve .

You may be inside a large corporate where every good idea has to survive several layers of approval.

Or perhaps you're in a smaller business with plenty of entrepreneurial ambition but not enough capital to fund the growth you've identified.

You might simply have reached the point where you're asking: If I'm going to spend the next three years building something significantly more valuable, where is my share of that value?

That's perhaps the most important distinction here.

The business isn't looking for someone to protect what has already been built. It wants someone capable of adding materially to it .

And the reward structure is designed to recognise that.