Nick Barker
Chief Operations Officer (COO)
Hi nice to meet you I'm Nick, one of the Co-Founders here at Hamilton Barnes, a few things about me:
- Married with 2 daughters
- Placed Sarah (now my wife) as a contractor in 1995, met her in 1997, and have been together ever since – that’s contractor care!
- Love a BBQ
- Love travelling, particularly visiting Las Vegas!
Prior to starting in recruitment, I had a variety of career ideas including –
- Being a dentist
- A geologist
- A surveyor
- A foreign currency trader
- An accountant
- Sales
After studying Economics and Business Economics at the University of Southampton I asked my Dad for some career advice as I was still uncertain on what path to follow. Basically, I wanted to earn money, and quickly, as I was a poor student. He gave me 3 options – start your own company, invent something, or get into sales.
After investigating various sales roles (because the other 2 options weren’t viable) I found out about recruitment, then more specifically IT recruitment. After a lengthy interview process I secured a role at Computer Futures in 1994 working on the infrastructure contract market in London. The cutting edge technology in those days was TCP/IP, Windows NT and Novell.
Fortunately, Computer Futures was a great business with a steep learning curve and provided exceptional career progression. From a headcount of 50 Computer Futures grew aggressively and eventually formed part of the SThree group which successfully floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2005. By the time I left in 2010, the group had more than 20 international offices and over 2,500 employees.
SThree had a very entrepreneurial culture which always gave me the ambition to start my own business. This became a reality in 2014 when George and I started Hamilton Barnes with the vision of being the leading telecommunications recruitment consultancy globally. That dream is drawing closer as we continue to expand but we still have a lot to do to reach our goals. Here’s to the next chapter…