What we wanted to do with Chattertons was to take advantage of our pre-existing knowledge, experience, and expertise, and combine that together to provide additional value to companies and candidates in the real estate recruitment market.

Stripping this back, this is what it looks like:

George's expertise in the recruitment world involved him rising to Managing Director of a 45-person recruitment business, specialising specifically in the built environment, with a focus on development, construction, and project management.

George made way over 100 placements in project management, development, and construction in junior roles all the way up to C-Suite. So, the foundations of understanding the built environment were there but also the understanding of 'how to do recruitment', and how to provide a great service to clients and candidates. As you can probably tell from 100+ placements, he knows how to nail this!

So, we sat down and thought, okay, George has this background, and at the time, Patrick was working in the UK real estate sector at a global consultancy. In this role he had developed skills and understanding across multiple service lines, dealing with all aspects of the property life cycle. Over this time frame, he had generated a strong network. Further to this, actually working in real estate had helped Patrick to generate an understanding of what skills and attributes make a good candidate for various roles. This cannot be truly learned without working in the industry. This is learned through observation of walking an office floor (a non-biological form of osmosis – absorption through observation).

For example, Patrick was never a natural at valuations or cash flow modelling, but from working in valuations (specifically BTR & PRS) and working on cash flow models, has a genuine understanding of the skills required to make a good valuer, and appreciates the benefits of cash flow modelling skills and where these fit within roles.

Having the unique ability to combine the 'insider perspective' borne from Patrick's real estate market experience with George's understanding of the recruitment process and the built environment was what led to Chattertons as a business concept. Having the unique brotherly trust and chemistry on top of that was where we saw our value add.

We have combined our two backgrounds together to provide a service which will meet expectations and needs of clients and candidates in the UK real estate sphere, through being able to produce an extremely effective and efficient recruitment process, whilst also importantly being able to have a conversation with a client or candidate and actually understand the discussion, beyond just using buzzwords, jargon, and words from a CV.

Patrick's experience means we actually know how opportunities for candidates will be on the ground, in comparison to their current role, and why one opportunity would potentially be a better move, a sideways move, or even a backwards move, something you can only really know or understand from working in the sector.

So this was the foundation of why we launched Chattertons!

Whilst we are a small business and in our infancy (excitingly), we don't believe there is any additional advantage which scale and size can bring to our business, so we are happy to be small, and for now, wish to remain small.

We have already developed a strong track record and generated a significant amount of repeat business, demonstrating that the concept has genuine legs and works in practice. This real world validation is ultimately far more valuable than the initial plans or assumptions, providing compelling proof of concept!

In short, recruitment is simple. Placing the most well suited candidates into a role. But, it needs to be executed, and we felt (and now we know) that our combined skillsets and experience are the perfect catalysts to put this very (on paper) simple process into practice.

Those who have worked with us already will know that we do this well, and we hope to continue to do this well.

Thanks also to everyone who's been on the journey with us so far – including business associates, advisors, clients, and candidates, and friends and family!