Quick one from me this week as I’ve got way too much work related stuff going on for such a beautiful sunny Friday.
Last night saw the annual SEEK “SARA” Recruitment Awards here in Auckland which followed on in the “new” format of awarding category winners based upon the decisions of a panel of judges. SEEK did well this year with a decent panel of largely credible recruitment industry professionals, although perhaps a little under-represented on the agency side of recruitment for awards focused on the agency sector (although as we know all too well getting agency recruiters to acknowledge the achievements of others in their sector is an all too rare occurrence!):
This must be the fourth (or fifth?) year SEEK have rolled out their Awards in this format, so there’s probably many in recruitment these days who don’t even remember the way winners used to be decided: A preposterous “popularity vote” of who got the most job seekers to vote for their agency. A nice idea in theory but, in practice, there was no realistic way of ascertaining if votes came from actual job seekers, with some agencies even going so far as to KPI their recruiters with getting as many of their mates to vote for them as possible.
Using a panel of judges isn’t flawless either, of course, with grumblings even coming from the vaunted EY Young Entrepreneur Awards and the Deloitte Fast 50 Awards this year, but SEEK’s format is no doubt an improvement on how they used to be.
Anyway, the winners selected by the judges this year were:
Small agency of the year: Talent Army
Medium agency of the year: Talent International
Large agency of the year: Hays
Most Innovative agency: Korn Ferry Futurestep
Excellence in Candidate Engagement: Agoge
Recruitment leader of the year: Jim Grafas, Agoge
Recruitment consultant of the year: Sophie Te Huia, Fluid
Well done to all of the above. Both Agoge and Talent International are getting used to making winner’s speeches at the SEEK Awards these days, but there’s some new faces too, with Hays taking the next step this year (losing Finalists last year), and our industry’s very own enfant terrible Troy Hammond taking out the prize in his first Awards showing – good on you Troy and, in my opinion, very well deserved.
Korn Ferry Futurestep are an RPO provider, rather than an agency per se, so that might raise some eyebrows too, but good on them anyway.
Now then, I must run, but I’d be keen to hear your thoughts too…
