An individual approach, regular contact and industry experience are key principles to the framework of mining recruitment company Mining People International. Recruiting exclusively for the resources industry the company prides itself on its emphasis on the personal touch and the industry background of its team of consultants.
Mining People International business services manager Sue Heather told Australia’s Mining Monthly the high value the business placed on industry experience gave it the edge over other recruiters.
“That’s really our point of difference,” said Heather. “The people that we have employed here are from [a resources] background … and they understand it to a greater depth, not just at a surface level. Can you imagine not knowing what a mining engineer does and then being a recruiter looking for a mining engineer?”
Established in Perth in 1995 by four business partners, including Heather and her husband Steve, MPI expanded to open its second office in Kalgoorlie in 2000. The Brisbane office opened in 2006 allowing the company to better meet demand from east coast operations.
Heather said the business now employed more than 30 full-time staff and had about 36,000 registered candidates on its books. MPI recruits nationally for both permanent and contract roles, with positions spanning all disciplines of the resources sector, from dump truck operators and geologists to structural engineers and administrative roles.
Despite the volume of people involved, Heather said maintaining contact with both mining clients and candidates was a prime concern for MPI. Rather than just treating candidates and clients as numbers, she said the company built its business practice around personal contact and being upfront about recruitment processes.
Heather said MPI regularly sends its consultants out to visit client minesites in order to maintain close industry connections and enable recruitment staff to better understand the realities of the current working environment. Moves such as these, as well as the significant cost involved in mass mail-outs (around 18,000 newsletters go out every six weeks), are worthy investments for the business, she said.
“At times you have to look at it and go, gee whiz to do that it’s going to cost us ‘x’,” said Heather. “But we still hold true to certain values of how we wanted to build and operate the business.”
Heather said the company believed that by not cutting corners in other areas it demonstrated to clients and candidates that the company would not cut corners in the recruitment process and helped to build trust.
And while the internet revolution has meant a greater emphasis on websites and emails for the company, Heather said small things such as rejecting trends towards automated phone systems represented the importance of personal contact to the business.
Throughout the company’s 10-year-plus history, Heather said there had been little change in MPI’s business practice, a fact Heather felt reflected the firm’s original “good quality database system”. However, she noted that with the current skills shortage and mining boom, the company now had a greater focus on candidates. This shift has seen MPI hire a full-time staff member specialising in maintaining communication lines with candidates.
Expressing a can-do attitude to challenges that arise, Heather said the recruitment company has successfully ridden the cyclical wave of the resources industry over the years.
“For a period of time it was difficult to find clients and jobs so you really had to work hard at marketing there, and now it’s difficult finding candidates.”
Sourcing candidates is not the only area MPI focuses its attention on.
With the current industry and job market having a direct effect on those in the recruitment business, MPI is ideally placed for further business expansion. However, while growth was always welcome Heather said when it came to hiring internal recruitment and management staff, the business placed high emphasis on finding the right people who shared the company’s values.
To demonstrate, Heather said MPI spent around 12 months locating the right team for its Queensland office.
Such attitudes, which extend to the company’s approach to placing mining industry candidates, are greatly assisted by the close association the company’s consultants have with industry. Heather said industry experienced consultants brought a deeper understanding to the recruitment process that went beyond resume perusal and checking off safety tickets.
“The fact that we have industry experienced people [means that] they know the sites, they know where people are going … they know exactly what the person is going to be expected to do.”
Feedback from both clients and candidates has been very positive, something Heather believes is a result of MPI’s industry knowledge and commitment to keeping in touch.
“There’s not a week that goes by that one of the consultants hasn’t been given a bottle of wine or box of chocolates to thank them for finding them a role because of the fact that they’re dealing with someone that knows what they’re actually after.”
