Celebrating 20 Years of Maxim Recruitment
Posted by Steve Thomas , Construction Recruitment Director, UK & Canada on Wednesday, January 25, 2023
LinkedIn reliably informed me this morning that I have worked at Maxim Recruitment for 20 years! I’m not one for great outpourings of sentiment but it does seem a reasonable moment to take a brief look back on the evolution of the Maxim business and the ways in which we have helped our customers over this period of time. After all, its almost half a career lifetime! Let’s briefly reflect and also have a look at the present and to the future.
The First Years of Maxim Recruitment
Back in 2003, recruitment in UK professional technical construction was dominated by a few big ‘employment agencies’; names like Hays Montrose and Anders Glaser Wills. I had worked at BBT for 18 months or so and moved over to Anders Glaser Wills with the promise of a management role but also the promise of actually having a computer at my desk - quite a thing at the time! At the start of my recruitment career in 1996 the fax machine was very much the main method of getting a CV in front of a client. Receiving CVs by fax and post remained commonplace for many years after. I spent 5 or so happy years at what became Anders Elite, and then joined up in partnership with Mark Guthrie who I had met at BBT to establish Maxim Recruitment jointly together.
The vision behind the establishment of Maxim Recruitment in 2003 was both to be our own bosses, but was heavily linked to the opportunity to harness the power of the internet and build a high-quality website to be a visible ‘shop window’ to jobseekers and employers alike. Thanks in large part to Adrian Tennant and his brilliant team at Alchemy Digital, Maxim won the award for the best Small Recruitment Agency website in 2004 and the business hasn’t looked back since.
Given that LinkedIn didn’t gain traction in the UK recruitment space until around 2008, we had a great head start in the world of digital recruitment advertising and marketing and to this day look to post live jobs and useful blog content that will be of value to our employer clients and potential jobseekers alike.
Recruitment Growth to International Locations
Once the Maxim website became well indexed and optimised, we began handling international jobs and candidates with ease, filling roles in exotic locations such as Suriname in South America, Jamaica, Hong Kong and the up and coming Dubai in the UAE. The team really enjoyed adding value and offering new ideas and locations for candidates to consider and these often also provided excellent career opportunities.
As early as 2004 an alliance was struck with Richard Poulter at Connect Middle East in Dubai, which soon became a close working relationship leading to the merging of both businesses together in 2011 and the opening of the Hong Kong office and the capacity to recruit locally across Asia.
In 2018 the Canada office of Maxim Recruitment was opened in Toronto and our local capability to supply construction professionals into Canada from overseas and candidates sourced locally within Canada has continued to grow ever since.
Maxim Recruitment Today
Our core business in 2023 revolves around our UK, Hong Kong and Canadian operations with each office in Leicester UK, Central Hong Kong and Toronto Canada serving long term repeat employer customers and remaining well connected with the premium construction professionals building their careers in each of these locations.
We have never wanted to be a massive corporate company as our elite team of well trained construction recruitment consultants in each of our offices have the best interests of our candidates and employers at heart. We hope that the repeat business we enjoy from most of them indicates that we are doing a decent job.
The Future of Construction Recruitment Consultancy
Since 2003 the death and obsolescence of the specialist construction recruitment consultant and its associated business model has been predicted many times over due to:
- The advent of automated job boards
- The arrival of LinkedIn
- The rise of employer’s internal talent management teams
However, Maxim Recruitment is still here despite all the above technological disruptions and changes and of course not to mention a few recessions, a global financial crisis and a recent global pandemic too.
What lies ahead is anyone’s guess, but we are confident in our plans in place to maintain our dominance in key areas of website and internet marketing, and to maintain and grow our staff expertise and knowledge to the next level. We are rather expecting that it may well still be a while before you can get a more informative recruitment conversation from Chat GPT than from me or one of the elite members of the Maxim Recruitment team; here’s hoping anyway!
Thanks to all our customers and contacts over the last 20 years and the Maxim team look forward to being in touch again soon!
Steve is responsible for Maxim Recruitment in the UK and Canada. He is based in the Maxim head office in Leicester, UK and the Toronto office in Canada. He regularly travels to meet employers and job seekers and attend construction industry networking events in the UK, Canada and worldwide. Steve has over 25 years of experience in construction and property recruitment and enjoys working with many repeat clients. He manages dedicated search and headhunting assignments for a range of premium UK, Canadian and international clients.