Speaking recently to Recruiter, Searle said that Adecco had previously “done a little bit of that but we’re doing more now. We have more brands”. As a result, the company with its multiple brands is “almost unbeatable”, he added.

After a three-year absence from the world’s largest staffing company, which he left to became CEO of Spring, Searle is back in Adecco’s top chair for UK &; Ireland where he presides over what was arguably the most significant of merger-acquisitions in 2009: first, Adecco acquired Spring, then subsequently bought the MPS Group, with its subsidiary recruitment firms Badenoch & Clark, Modis International and Judd Farris. “Never a takeover - a merger,” Searle emphasised. “Every company has gold dust… everyone has brought something to the game.”

The most recent move has been the consolidation of engineering recruitment under managing director Jim Albert. Albert will continue to oversee IT and engineering recruitment firm Modis International, but adds Roevin and Spring Engineering, previously overseen by Nick Detmar, to his portfolio (see box for more on Albert).
Searle said that integration of the multiple companies was “way ahead”, with completion of the back office operation’s integration anticipated toward the end of the year. “I’m very happy to be back,” Searle told Recruiter. He added: “It feels like a different company.”

Not only has the UK organisation undergone a massive shake-up since its acquisition of Spring was announced, but the global organisation has been undergoing a redirection of its own under the leadership of new global CEO Patrick De Maeseneire, who took on his own role just last June.

Today Searle is complimentary about how De Maeseneire is reconfiguring Adecco as “an aligned company, a company that’s happy in its own skin and identity… Adecco is a holding company with a multi-brand approach”. Under De Maeseneire, he said, Adecco also has “a much more enlightened view of investing in careers with a focus on people and people development”.

The future of the company he has returned to is one being built through “internal promotions” of existing staff, he continued, with a clear but unspoken reference to De Maeseneire’s predecessor, Dieter Scheiff. Scheiff recruited outsider Rene Schuster to succeed Searle when Searle left. in 2006. “The whole programme of leadership development is absolutely paramount on an international level.”

In fact, many of his own “very strong” UK & Ireland managing directors’ team will likely be awarded their own countries to run for Adecco in “two or three years”, Searle predicted.

He acknowledged that he too has grown through his time at Spring where he enjoyed some of the activities associated with running a private limited company.

“You learn lots of things in a big company, but then you miss running some of the plc stuff. Running a plc for three years, doing a turnaround” gave him insight he would not have gained had he not left Adecco in 2006, he said: “I’ve evolved myself.”