Headhunting honcho
Daring in Dubai
Indeed, no part of the globe appears to escape Hamill’s radar. He recently blazed another trail by making inroads into the Middle East through the acquisition of Ingram, one of the United Arab Emirates’ top recruitment firms. It’s a deal he claims will give Imprint a strategic foothold in the buoyant Dubai and ‘Gulf Cooperative Community’ markets.
‘First mover advantage there is key,’ says Hamill excitedly, ‘and we are the first of the listed players in our particular industry to go into Dubai, though Michael Page has now opened there too. There’s so much growth to come in Dubai and to sustain that growth, the region will need to bring in people from outside.’
Acquiring Ingram will provide new routes to market for the 400,000 candidates on Imprint’s database and Hamill gets the whiff of huge opportunity once more. He expects rival firms to follow Imprint’s lead. ‘Dubai is the world’s biggest building site and the Middle East is developing as a financial centre thanks to the rise
of “petrofinance”, with all the big investment banks now moving there.’
Considering his experience, who better than Hamill to forecast the fortunes of his sector? ‘Traditionally, the recruitment market goes in seven-year cycles,’ he elucidates. ‘The period 1994 to 2000 was a great time and now we are about three years into an upturn, so as far as you can predict these things, I don’t think the market will go down next year.’ Having Hamill at the helm, with sector insight like that, is a key reason why Imprint has so successfully made its mark.
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Vital statistics
Name: Brian Hamill
Title: Chief executive, Imprint Plc
Status: Married with three children
Biggest regret? ‘Opening an Imprint office out in Shanghai in 2003 after I was lured by the Chinese dream. We moved too early as it turned out and I had to close it down’
Business hero? ‘Warren Buffett, the down-to-earth American investor, businessman and philanthropist’
Admired sector peer? ‘Michael Page International – it’s the Coca Cola of international professional staffing, and the company has never really dropped the ball’
Rule of thumb? ‘In my opinion, you have to have integrity in business. If you are lacking in it, you are stuffed. People need to trust you. If they don’t, you have a problem’