Why listen and learn with James?

Below is a bio on James and some insight into his story 

James came from humble beginnings, he had a disruptive childhood having attended seven different schools growing up. To this day, it is this volatility that he believes was what gave him the foundations to be a “people” person and have the confidence to always meet new people, network, be curious and adapt his style to many different cultures. 

He started his career in a B2B sales role in the advertising and media sector before moving into the recruitment industry with a well known corporate. In these early years he was operating in a very low value market in the east of the United Kingdom with low skill level roles and salaries as low as $15,000 a year! 

After learning the basics, he then moved to a boutique consultancy in London where he started working in more white collar level roles across finance and supply chain in the UK but quickly saw a gap to replicate this market across Europe as it was significantly less mature and paid higher levels of compensation. 

After establishing a client base in this area and billing around $250,000 a year for two years, he moved to another firm at a larger scale with more resources where he built a team around him and billed $400,000 in his first year and $600,000 in his second year after moving into more retained search. 

Having now secured his place as an expert in his field he decided to start his own business (Walter James) named after James’s grandfather and himself. He partnered with recruitment industry serial investor James Caan CBE and his VC investment firm (Recruitment Entrepreneur). Over the next 7 years he built the business to over 30 people and circa $20 million in revenue operating across Europe, Asia, Latin America and North America.

James was the first ever £1 million biller in the portfolio and his best year was £1.7 million in 2021 before he sold to US based ZRG Partners for an eight figure sum. 

ZRG Partners is a private equity backed end to end talent advisory firm with a focus on executive search, interim consulting, RPO/Embedded Recruiting and a consulting division that focuses on culture, assessments, coaching and leadership development. 

In his first year post acquisition, he was in the Top 5 billers out of 600 consultants having achieved $3 million in billings. In 2023 he was the top biller in the company having achieved over $5 million personal billings and generated over $10 million of revenue for the business across all business lines. 

His average fee went from $5,000 when he started to over $250,000 now. 

In June 2023, James was promoted to Chief Commercial Officer for ZRG Partners and now leads the major account development, strategy, business development and all go to market activities for the business. 

James is also a broader investor and has sat on numerous boards as an investor working with other entrepreneurs.

He has consulted and worked with the C-Suite of large global powerhouses like Unilever, PepsiCo, Campari, Kraft Heinz, Colgate Palmolive, J&J, GSK, Novartis and many more as well as numerous other Private Equity clients and family owned businesses.

James wants to share his expertise and has a passion to help other ambitious professionals in the recruiting, internal talent acquisition, staffing and headhunting sector to be the best they can be. His belief is that is that the possibilities are endless in this industry if you think big enough and have the humility and ambition to listen and learn. 

Success is not Final, failure is not Fatal: it’s the courage to carry on that counts 

”Winston Churchill”