Spotlight on Matthew Gardner, Director

1. Tell us about your career journey from Associate Consultant to Director

My Ambition journey started back in 2009 when I joined the company as a trainee recruitment consultant or Associate Consultant.

I chose Ambition because I was really impressed with the professionalism of the people, the fact that they were market experts, and I could see the possibility of developing a true career. I worked on various desks, initially focusing on finance and accounting recruitment.

After 3 years in London, I then got the opportunity to move to our Singapore office, I moved there as a Senior Consultant, moved quite quickly into management and eventually headed up the recruitment teams across sales and marketing.

I had an amazing experience in Singapore, learnt a lot about running teams within different cultures and also learnt a lot about myself, both professionally and personally.

I moved back to London, roughly 3 years ago, to take up an Associate Director role, leading our BD, Marketing & Communications business and, at the beginning of2018, I was promoted to Director.

So, I’ve had a long journey here at Ambition, I’ve learnt a lot, I’ve progressed a lot within a relatively short time frame and I think there are still many more things to learn, but I feel very motivated and positive about what the future holds, both for Ambition and for my own career.

2. What has changed since you joined Ambition? 

The key difference that I noticed over the years is that we’ve become more specialist.

We’re now very niche in terms of what we do, focusing purely on professional services and because of that, we can give more specialist advice to our clients and candidates.

3. What valuable lessons have you learnt during your recruitment career?

There are so many lessons you learn in recruitment and I think you have to be open to the fact that you will never know everything.  One of the great things about working at Ambition is that we’re genuinely open to new ideas,

4. What is the best piece of leadership advice you have received throughout your career?

Set your stall out. Really think about what you want to be known for, what your values are and then really commit to those and see them through. 

You will never do everything perfectly; you probably will make mistakes along the way but if you have that real goal in mind just go out there and get it.

5. What are your predictions for the future of Ambition?

The market is constantly changing so we will keep evolving and developing our service offerings in order to continue building better futures become the leading Professional Services recruitment consultancy.

If you are interested in developing your recruitment career with Ambition, visit our work for us page to find out more >