You may follow them on LinkedIn, but who are the Invenia Group team and what are they really like? Get to know the people behind the profiles in our ‘Meet the team’ series.
James Webb is an Executive Search Consultant at Invenia Group, working with early-stage ventures in the gene therapy space. You may know that he helps start-ups developing gene and cell therapies build their executive teams; you may not know that he used to be a ski instructor and dreams of living on the road…
You can watch the interview here or read the whole conversation below:
To start off James, can you introduce yourself?
Hi, I’m James, I’m a Principal Consultant here at Invenia. I mainly focus on the cell and gene therapy space in the US and I’ve been with the company since October last year, so coming up on about a year now.
What are your day-to-day roles?
So, my day-to-day has been shaken up recently, obviously with the move to America to open our New York office. At the minute I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at potential spaces for us to work and actually getting out and meeting clients and candidates face to face, which has been a nice change from behind the ‘Zoom’ and the ‘Teams’ camera.
What do you have on your toast?
I have avocado and eggs, probably on sourdough toast.I It’s a bit of a fad at the minute, but it’s tasty, so you can’t knock it.
What drew you to the recruitment industry?
My old football coach posted on Facebook saying, “If anyone needs a job in Leeds, drop me a text.” Turns out he was a rec2rec, which I didn’t know at the time; I texted him and he sent me off to a few interviews and then I found myself in recruitment.
What drew you to the gene therapy industry?
I guess the excitement of the science itself! I find it so interesting to be able to learn from the individuals founding these life-changing companies and companies who are genuinely having a positive impact on the world and can really change the way things are done. It’s maybe not what drew me to recruitment, but it’s certainly what’s kept me in recruitment.
What’s something people don’t know about you?
I was actually a ski instructor before I got into recruitment. I was living the ski lifestyle out in Austria but COVID actually brought me back and I was meant to go out to Japan to be a ski instructor out there for a while, but I fell into recruitment and started enjoying it, so here I am a few years later.
How do you use the company’s flexible working?
It might get a bit more difficult going into the winter now, but during the height of summer I used to use my flexible working to play a lot of golf. I’m not particularly good, but I’ve been playing for the last couple of years or so on Mondays and Fridays and then also if you get out early enough in the evening during the week you can still get 9 or 18 holes in.
What’s the most used app on your phone?
Probably Twitter or Spotify, I’d guess. Every day I cry with laughter at something that’s on Twitter, it’s so funny.
What’s something you’re really proud of?
Although it’s still early days, I’m really proud of getting the New York office up and running. I think I’ll get prouder as it becomes a bit more successful, grows to more people, and I begin to manage that and scale the company. But I think just even getting something up off the ground in a transatlantic move is something to be proud of really.
What’s the best part about your job?
My favourite thing about the job is the people. Certainly at Invenia, there’s a really great culture, everyone’s very collaborative and tries to help each other out. The leadership have worked very hard to pull that together and sustain that environment as we’ve grown. My favourite thing about my actual day-to-day job is learning about the science and the technology from the leaders of these incredible companies and start-ups that I get to work with.
How do you like to start your day?
I mainly start my day with some music, to be honest. I turn my alarm off, turn music on and get myself up and ready, ready to get out of the house and then off to work. Since moving to New York, I like to get out for a walk to explore a new city and get my bearings with things a little bit.
What are your professional goals?
One of my professional goals before I even started in a in a proper job was to be able to travel with my job and to be able to move around and meet loads of new people. So in some ways I’ve fallen on my feet in that sense: I’ve been able to move to New York and open our new office and every day I get to meet with really interesting individuals, discuss their own careers and help them in certain ways as well.
What would you name a book about your life?
I think I would call my book “Have you got a minute to talk about dreams?”. As a management team we recently did a personality test and I showed my insights to a couple of friends and family and one thing they all pointed out was where it said, “When communicating with James, do not sit down with him and to listen to him talk about his dreams unless you’ve got a lot of time.”
What advice would you give to an aspiring recruiter?
Just persistence, I think. I think if you genuinely keep doing the same things over and over and you know you’re doing the right things, eventually it’ll happen and it’ll all come together.
If you could trade places with someone for a day, who would it be?
I’m not sure on the specific person that I’d like to trade places with, but I think the best job in the world would to be a music producer for really big artists, because you’d get to create really cool music, sit in the studios with the best music artists in the world and listen to it happening in front of you and make really sick beats.
Who’s your favourite artist?
So, I think my number one for my ‘Spotify Wrapped’ last year was Stand High Patrol, who are a French dub reggae group, and then number two was David Gray. So, throwing it back.
What’s on your bucket list?
I think I’d love to just live in a van or live on the road and be able to travel around and do my job. I think I’d love every second of it, and then whilst I’m not working, I can explore and do loads of fun things.
Follow us on LinkedIn to see the rest of this series and – if you’d like to join the Invenia Group team – email your CV to info@inveniagroup.com.
