That's what mates are for
I recently heard of a business deal where a couple of mates from high school days helped each other out in business. Now that's what mates are for! We should all learn from this one.
Go Kiwi Internet has done quite a bit of business for Rent-a-Dent, the iconic New Zealand rental car company that set the industry aflame 20 odd years ago when it took on the big-boy incumbents at the time. It's a bit of a "dicky" name now but boy it worked well in the early days and now has a pretty loyal following.
I was chatting to their new GM recently and he mentioned that he was using a recruitment company to do some placements for various jobs around the country. Now my own experiences of rectruitment companies has been, how do you put it . . errr . . . less than ideal, so the first thing that crossed my mind was "Why the **** would anyone pay a recruitment company?" especially in a tight job market where there seems to me to be great people lined up and waiting for a good job all around the country.
Enquiring as to the cost, he informed me that it was being done "gratis" (i.e. at no charge). Always a man for a deal, this really got me curious. Why on earth would this crowd do it for nothing? There's got to be a bit of backscratching or a payoff, or backhander, or something in it for them surely? I was curious. Could there be a story here? It wasn't that I thought there was anything shonky going on, it just interested me that a recruitment company would do something for nothing.
Sure enough they did. It turned out the GM and the guy from the recruitment company went to the same high school together - Kelston Boys High, in West Auckland. (Actually that makes three of us because I was there too, although maybe a year or two ahead of these guys).
That guy turned out to be Craig Parsons from CPU Recruitment, and I had a chat with him to work out what made him tick and what he got out of helping the company that his mate worked for. I would have thought that most people would have milked it for all it's worth - you know, something along the lines of "Hey, mate I'm in charge here and I'll give you a scoop" sort of thing. But no, this was genuine mate helping out mate!
Craig's been in the business for years and reckons that his company is pretty on-to-it - good candidates, efficient operation and pretty successful. They have strengths in IT recruitment and more recently in refrigeration/engineering recruitment.
Craig obviously isn't one to take advantage of his mates. He's helping a mate, who is helping his employer, who then gives me a heads up, so that I can chip in what I can do. This story is worthy of a blog post, surely?
But it goes further than that. Whenever I talk to someone I check out their website. First, I'm usually online when I'm on the phone so I can do this easily and secondly as I have taught my staff for ten years - EVERYBODY needs help with their website.
Now Craig's website needs urgent attention - it's invisible to Search Engines (It's an OK design that he likes but its a full Flash website with no HTML, no search phrases in the Title, and no Meta Description - ouch!!). A WDANZ member Designer Websites has just moved in to the same building as him, and I was happy to recommend Emma to him. He'll be sorted now with someone he can trust.
Now that's what mates are for.
How about stopping for a minute to work out which of your mates you can help today . . . ?
Tagwords: recruitment, mates
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