Meet 2021’s Australian Outstanding Medium Agency Award Winners – SMAART Recruitment

SMAART Recruitment were this year’s winners of RCSA’s Australian Outstanding Medium Agency Award. Managing Director, Maarten Roosenburg, reveals valuable insights for recruitment professionals on how to stand out within the recruitment and staffing industry.

We are both thrilled and honoured to have won this year’s Australian Outstanding Medium Agency Award.

SMAART has been operating since 2005 and, from our inception, we have followed our own path. At times this has been different to many others and occasionally contrary to industry orthodoxy.

We believe our values of fun, autonomy, recognition, and growth have provided us with a fundamental framework that has delivered a positive experience for our consultants, candidates, and clients over the years.

There has only ever been one KPI at SMAART. We try to empower our staff and give them the confidence to run their desks in their own way, with the active support of the whole company. We believe our commercial advantage and value proposition derive from our ability to work closely together. We discuss and share candidates and roles, valuing that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

We have been pioneers in our specialist sector, publishing the annual Contact Centre Best Practice Report, now in its third edition. This report provides the most comprehensive insights available into the operations of Australian Contact Centres and provides valuable industry data and information for contact centre decision-makers.

Giving back to our industry is important to us. We run a free mentoring program to develop the next generation of Contact Centre leaders. This year’s program has been very successful with 60 mentoring pairs in six states.

We are also the co-founders of ‘Meet A Recruiter’, an initiative that provides an opportunity for candidates to meet with a recruiter who can advise and give feedback on the job-hunting process. As restrictions ease, we are looking forward to running these sessions again in person soon.

Our commitment to the candidate experience runs deep. This year saw the launch of the SMAART Candidate Coach (smaartcandidate.coach), a website containing free, comprehensive resources to help candidates find work. The site includes videos from industry experts, practice interview questions for a variety of different sectors and useful tips on how to manage nerves in an interview. With resume and cover letter templates also available, this is a valuable resource for all our candidates.

There is no denying it has been a tough and uncertain time for us all over the last 18 months. Despite this, our focus on having fun and enjoying each other’s company has remained. The richness of these relationships matter to us, and we extend this focus to our clients and candidates. We take our business seriously but have a healthy perspective and encourage our staff to not buy into the inevitable highs and lows of our industry.

The pandemic has had many silver linings, it has accidentally accelerated the trust and empathy we have with each other and provided new insights into how we can deliver a better work experience. We have a culture where we can present different points of view and challenge our thinking, and this helps us adapt to fast-changing market conditions.

We are very excited about our re-emergence from the restrictions and cannot wait to fully engage in person with our industry and community again. We thank the RCSA for this prestigious award and we will endeavour to be worthy recipients.