The vantage point
When an industry restructures, the men leaving it call the headhunter.
James Roberts spent nearly twenty years headhunting inside airline, aviation, travel, events, cruise, corporate travel, space travel and hospitality. He became an entrepreneur in 2005 and lives in the Canary Islands.
An unusual sample
Those industries were taken apart and rebuilt repeatedly — wars, recessions, a financial crisis, low-cost carriers, online booking, consolidation, a pandemic. Every round produced men whose roles had just gone, and a large number of them picked up the phone to a headhunter within weeks.
So the conversations were early, long, private and off the record, at the point where nothing had been decided and there was nothing to be gained by putting on a face. That is where the observations on this site came from. They were not gathered deliberately.
Who you are talking to
I have been in a lot of rooms.
Most of them with other men. Some of them very ordinary, a few of them not ordinary at all. Every one of them taught me how to listen.
- 01
Thousands of men
Nearly twenty years of recruiting, all over the world. Men at the top of their game, men on the way out, and every one in between.
- 02
Unusual housemates
I have shared a home with a man who had done time, and with a journalist who wrote for the Daily Sport and the News of the World. Neither was dull.
- 03
Famous company
I have spent time with a Premier League footballer and a pop star. Same questions, same worries, better shoes.
- 04
Half the planet
I have navigated half the world and never once been punched. Polite and cheeky, in that order.
- 05
Any room, same man
As happy in a trailer as on a stag do. I have seen in the New Year with a prince, and another with a sheikh.
- 06
Other men’s stories
I take inspiration from other people and live a little through them, in a happy and healthy way. Then I make my own judgement.
I can sit with any man, in any room, and be myself. That is what I bring to the conversation.
James Roberts, Tenerife
What he is not
Not an employment lawyer, not a financial adviser, not a doctor, not a therapist, not a careers coach, and holds no qualification in any of them. He cannot tell you what you are entitled to and would not offer an opinion on your settlement.
What he has is pattern recognition about how men behave in the months after a role goes. One industry, one working lifetime, no claim beyond that.
The thing that surprised him
Across continents, cultures and salary bands, the men he spoke to at this moment wanted broadly the same things and feared broadly the same things. He expected the differences to be cultural. Overwhelmingly the main difference was language.
It is why this guide is written from travel rather than for travel. Very little of it is industry-specific.
Why write it down now
Because the reason for the phone call has changed. It used to be a merger, a market, a bad season. Increasingly it is that the work itself is being done differently, and nobody honestly knows where that settles.
What can be offered is what the previous rounds looked like from the inside, and what reliably went wrong in the third month. That is on one page, and the SI (super intelligence) guide will talk it through.
No client, employer or candidate is ever named on this site, and the guide will not confirm whether James has worked with any company or person.