​Alex, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers?

I’m Alex, the Director here for the Technology and Change Management division for the Swiss market. I’ve been working at Oliver James for 4 years, however I have 10 years of recruitment experience, hence the bald head! I currently run a team of 15 people specialising across permanent and contract recruitment within different areas of Technology and Change management.

What made OJ Switzerland attractive to you?

The main reason why the Swiss market is so good is because it has a huge focus on a quality driven approach to business development, which is hugely beneficial to our team who pride themselves on the high calibre service we provide. For us, it’s not about volumes. It’s about the highest quality of work. With this focus on quality comes huge growth potential and career trajectory for our team here in Switzerland. Overall it’s a great relationship driven market to work in.

As the Associate Director of OJ Switzerland, what will you be responsible for?

I’m currently responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of my division, plus growth as we’re looking to expand into the local market by setting up an office in Zurich. As a business we want to give our employees the opportunity for international mobility and our division highlights this well.

Which markets will you be serving?

We’ve broken down technology into a few core areas, so we have platforms which is primarily ERP and CRM which is mainly SAP and Salesforce. We work within the Networks and Security sector which is mainly Cyber and Information security, operational security communication security etc. For our other core area, we’ve amalgamated the more traditional technology markets, where software development used to be one vertical and infrastructure used to be another, we’ve amalgamated these into one market called the Applications Services to give people more bandwidth to develop relationships with a smaller groups of businesses.

What type of businesses do you work with?

Typically as a business we used to traditionally be more financial services centric, however we’ve diversified a lot globally over the course of the last 5-10 years, certainly since I’ve been here. So, although we work with lots of financial services companies and the big blue chips, we also do lots of work with many different commerce industry businesses such as consultancy, manufacturing and engineering, and luxury retail.

What can the Swiss market expect from the team at OJ?

5* service always! Our team delivers a thorough high quality service, it’s not about putting numbers and CVs out there for the sake of it. We’ll present smaller shortlists, but with higher quality and good conversions as we’re a relationship-driven business.

Where do you see the Swiss market in 5-10 years’ time?

I would probably estimate the market to be 2-3 times bigger than it is now in terms of consultants. I only look after the Tech side of the business, there is also Ani who looks after the finance side however we’re both aiming to double our teams in size and explore further geographic locations.

What opportunities are there for people wanting to work at OJ?

Our team at OJ is extremely collaborative and there is something for everyone! One of the best parts of OJ is the opportunity for fast-track into leadership, so people who are coming in with aspirations to lead, manage and build have ample opportunity to do so. These opportunities are not just within the Swiss geographic but for many surrounding areas also. Our current team structure shows opportunities for different leadership positions but we’ll always need more, perfect for those looking to accelerate their career trajectory.