About Us > Our People

Avi Bradman

How did I end up here? (Not that I am complaining)

If I ask my children what they want to do when they are older, I receive an interesting range of answers. My daughter (7 years) has expressed the desire to be a fairy or a princess, most recently she has stated that she wants to be a mum. My son (9 years) used to claim that he wanted to be an architect but now just wants be do anything that makes him famous (Which I believe he associates with wealth – we all know which programs are to blame for this)

I know with a high degree of certainty that throughout my school and university time that I did not expect to find myself running a recruitment business.

So how did it happen?

My time at Leeds and then Cambridge University was spent studying subjects that interested and excited me. While studying them I realised that I was not destined for an academic or research career. While I enjoyed both subjects and performed well at both universities, this was not a career path that would support me financially or provide me with the success that my personality required.

I accepted that I wanted a business career. I wanted to develop the skills to build capital value in a business. I came from a family with a history of qualifying as Chartered Accountants (I won’t embarrass myself by saying how many). I understood that qualifying as an ACA provided a fabulous business education (akin to an MBA). So I began, what I promised would be, my last qualification and set of exams.

I knew that it was beyond unlikely that I would end up running a FTSE business so I selected an accountancy practice, Citroen Wells, which would provide me with excellent exposure to the owner managed and SME community.

Very quickly

• I felt at home in an environment where the vast majority of people were fee earners
• I thoroughly enjoyed the contact with clients
• I confess that I enjoyed the studying
• I quickly established that I would not be pursuing my audit career beyond qualification

I qualified in 1998 and was extremely eager to get into business (without truly knowing what that meant). I had a couple of offers to go and work with clients, but neither of the roles or future career paths truly excited me.

I was offered the chance to become Financial Controller at Goodman Masson. This was a classic owner managed business. It had grown because of owners’ knowledge, energy and passion for their market, but if they were to be successful in growing the business further they needed to build a business underneath them – they needed systems, processes, management and reporting tools and much more.

There was a business to be built here!!

Over the next 10 years I worked with the founders of the business to build Goodman Masson. Many of the people I worked with in the first couple of years are Senior Executives in the business now.

Clearly a huge amount has happened since then – a lot of it you will find detailed in the ‘About Us’ section of this website.

I hope this profile provides a flavor of the combination of forward planning, good fortune and circumstance that has determined what I am doing now.

I feel privileged to work in a company that I love, with people I admire, respect and enjoy spending time with.

We worked determinedly throughout 2009 to ensure that Goodman Masson would be able to succeed ‘not just despite the recession, but because of it.’ We entered 2010 with the strongest collection of people that I have ever worked with and an exceptional hunger and excitement for the future.

The next few years promise to be wonderfully exciting !!