We are stoked to be one of the finalists for the Small ‘Recruitment Agency’ of the Year 2018. We are reflecting on this as a team and wanted to share some thoughts about what this means for us.
Is Sprout a ‘recruitment agency’?
We actually avoid using ‘recruitment agency’ wherever possible. We don’t have any issue with the phrase, but we’ve worked hard to offer more than a ‘traditional’ agency might.
For example, when you’re looking to make a new hire, we’ll first take a look at your existing staff and challenge you on whether that new role is really needed. More broadly than recruitment, we also help organisations at a strategic level through things like our Clarity Workshop or our ‘Sprout Conversations’.
It’s really gratifying that organisations like Seek and the broader industry are seeing the benefit and value in this type of offering too.
So what is Sprout?!
We all know being different is difficult and it’s no exception when creating a new business model. Once you’ve cracked that, the hardest part is often the articulation of what you offer.
At Sprout we keep that simple. We offer recruitment and human resources consulting, performance coaching and business management advice. However, we don’t try to neatly fit in any of those boxes in particular!
Hard work, but rewarding
Once the businesses we work with, start working with us, they get it. We also put a cap on the number of businesses each of the team look after. This ensures we can really add value not just with hiring, engagement and retention, but also with proactive strategic planning.
What does this recognition mean for us?
Being a finalist means a huge amount. The recruitment industry is often given a bad name, but there are a number of awesome boutique agencies across New Zealand that do a great job in what they do every day.
As such, making the final three for us in the small agency section in only our first year is special. Like our fellow finalists, Greenlight Recruitment & McLaren Associates (good luck!!!), we are home-grown businesses in a highly competitive market. It is indeed a risk launching a new business in such a market but having a crack and being recognised for it has made it all worthwhile!
He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.
Lastly and most importantly, is the people.
We passionately believe this and want to shout out a massive thank you to our supporters, businesses we work with, people that we have helped, strategic partners and of course our team for making this first year a great success.
Regardless of the result on November 22 we are really proud to have made it this far. Thank you also to Seek for the recognition and see you at the finals!
