At its core, the purpose of recruitment is to match the very best people in the market with companies who will value their skills and experience, meeting both of their needs and allowing them to achieve their goals. So how does an industry that provides such a valuable service end up getting such a bad rap?

I remember a point in my career, shortly before starting Talenza, when I was ready to walk away. I disliked the reputation of my profession, and I didn’t feel we were providing true value or offering anything different.

But then I realised, this was an opportunity. Why not create a business where we flipped recruitment on its head and helped to change the perception of the industry for good?

‘Recruitment Done Differently’

We realised early on into the Talenza story that we didn’t need to work with every client in the market. What we needed to find were like-minded clients who understood our approach and wanted to go on our journey with us.

I’ve never been scared to knock down doors and I knew we had a special proposition to share with both clients and candidates. The thing is, how do you stand out from so many other businesses who also claim they deliver things differently? When you aren’t selling a physical product, all you have is who you are. It’s you and your values that people are buying into – and our commitment to truly living out our values is what makes us unique in the market.

One of the most basic examples of this is the way our logo tells the Talenza story. The splash, with its three converging points and fourth point detached from the others, represents connectivity and our commitment exploring the unknown – something which we prioritise when hiring for our team.

By the same token, we are focused on bringing people into our business that believe in our values as strongly as we do as Directors. Of course, we’ve had situations internally where we’ve hired people who turned out to not have fully bought into those values, and that’s meant we’ve unfortunately had to let some people go, even in situations where they are performing really well in terms of revenue generation. Our commitment to ‘doing things differently’ has to be as prevalent internally as it is externally.

Another example of doing things differently is our approach to fees. Henry talked about this in detail in his recent blog, but essentially, everything we do is completely transparent, with no hidden margins, and rates that are consistent for all our clients.

Whilst we know this policy is unique, we don’t want it to stay that way. We are doing this in the hopes that others will follow suit and start transforming perceptions of recruitment as a whole.

An Opportunity for Real Change

We now have two offices in Australia and are planning to set up a third in Melbourne in 2021. As Directors, we pride ourselves on keeping our ethos alive throughout the business – leading from the front and never asking our people to do something we wouldn’t do ourselves. For example, I spend every second week visiting our Brisbane office because we want it to have the same internal culture that we’ve achieved in Sydney, and we’re committed to providing the same excellent level of service across the board, no matter the size of the client or who they’re working with.

This is something I’m eager to see continue in Melbourne, and I’ll be travelling there even more as we move towards opening a local presence there in the coming months (so watch this space for future opportunities).

I really can’t wait to see what the future holds – not just for the business, but for the recruitment industry overall. We’ve noticed that things are changing, and our approach is catching on. And that’s the ultimate goal – for other recruiters to realise that this trust and transparency approach gets real results. Collectively, we’ll be able to create an environment that’s not only better for recruiters but provides clients with the partnership-led service they deserve.

If you’re interested in working with a recruitment agency that’s truly breaking the stereotype, we’d love to talk.