Talent Propeller – Reinventing recruitment across Australasia

Posted by: Sharon Ballantyne 

I’m all for growing businesses which are based around creating a service that was relevant and affordable to all business sizes – not just corporates with big budgets.  I also believe in choice. Choice of who you work with, choice about how you do things. 

When I started my career I was working as a Recruitment Consultant in a traditional agency. I very quickly became disillusioned with the “bs" that recruitment agents spin. Find me one company that genuinely enjoys working with a recruitment agency – I am yet to find one. Or deliver me a candidate that has a good thing to say about applying for a job via an agency. 

My longest standing memory of working as a recruitment consultant in an agency was my boss standing over me telling me to ‘talk that candidate into taking that job, then band aid it until the guarantee period has expired’.  Sadly, I don’t think this is abnormal.  In my dealings with recruitment agencies as a business owner I find they take the shortest road for the largest fee. 

So in early 2008 I took a critical look at the market and saw that at that time, there were really only 3 options for organisations wanting to recruit;

1. DIY and be inundated with hundreds of unsuitable applications from media, especially online job boards more interested in showing great ‘application’ stats than delivering quality.  Then try to manage those applications via your inbox folders or excel spread sheets…
2. Go to recruitment agency and pay an exorbitant fee
3. Spend big bucks (at that time) to pay for an e-recruitment tool with all the bells and whistles.

Because of the limited choice for many businesses that sit outside the category of a ‘corporate with an endless budget’, we set about developing the Talent Propeller tools.  We designed our software based on our experiences in the recruitment industry and the feedback from hundreds of clients we were already working with within our advertising agency business (Big Splash).  We focused on creating something that was easy to implement, affordable, and most importantly, easy to use – even for someone who was not IT savvy.  We developed something that genuinely makes life easier for those that use it.  Our products now span careers websites, candidate management tools, skills testing, video and phone interviews, reference checking and job verification.

The goal for Talent Propeller is to constantly think five years ahead.  “What will recruitment look like when the 13 year olds of today, who have grown up on Facebook, become the HR Managers of tomorrow?”. I believe job boards will have a similar decline in popularity as newspapers have experienced in the past three years. Because of this, Talent Propeller will continue developing affordable technology to support NZ and Australian businesses to effectively manage their recruitment.

I’m always happy to discuss ideas so feel free to add a comment or email me on Sharon@talentpropeller.com