RULLIO NOT RESTING ON ITS LAURELS James Saoulli insists he hasn’t quite made it yet because he’s too busy planning the next 100 years for multi-sector specialist recruiter Rullion. Colin Cottell went to meet him ad UK recruitment bosses been in Rullion CEO James Saoulli’s shoes last year they would have been reluctant to step out of what was a very comfortable zone. Why would they? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Not Saoulli though: he can’t stand still. The multisector specialist recruiter posted record profits in successive years between 2013 and 2015 and its CEO is looking to push on. Beginning in 1978, as a traditionally structured company made up of six separate legal entities, each with their own MD and overseen by a company chairman, Rullion grew to become one of the UK’s largest privatelyowned recruitment companies. A consistently high performer in Recruiter’s HOT 100 – the definitive ranking of the UK’s most profitable and efficient recruitment companies – Rullion’s IT business is ranked 8th and its engineering business is 53rd in this year’s HOT 100 rankings. While many recruiters in such a situation
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would have settled for the status quo, it is clear from the very start of this interview at Rullion’s office in the bustling City of London that Saoulli is not that person. After all, what other CEO of a £460m turnover recruitment company would deny they had ‘made it’ in their career, wouldn’t consider the company a recruitment company at all and would be planning ahead 100 years to 2117? Oh, and in an almost throwaway remark, would express annoyance he hadn’t created LinkedIn? It is clear that Saoulli, who took on the position of CEO at the family-owned business at the start of 2017, taking over as boss from Rullion’s founder, company chairman and his father Themis, is very much his own man, exhibiting an independent streak, as well as a desire to leave his own legacy. Asked later for the secret of his own success, he responds: “I don’t want to answer that question. The journey is just beginning. I remember someone saying to me ‘oh, you are CEO, you have arrived’, and I remember thinking ‘I have barely begun’. The day you think you are successful that’s the day you need to retire.” That day looks a long way off, as Saoulli embarks on a five-minute explanation of why despite its powerful market presence and strong financial numbers Rullion can’t afford to stay still. While he acknowledges that the original vision and strategy initiated by his father nearly four decades ago based on separate companies focused on separate markets worked “very well”, he contends that for the scale of expansion he has in mind for Rullion, that old business model and way of working it is no longer fit for purpose. “The numbers were good,” he says, but in his view “they were being derived from past glories”. “The question that any organisation needs
IMAG E | PAUL ST UART
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