The opportunity
Nearing the start of my tenure at Wesfarmers, there was a huge demand for talent across a wide variance of experience levels across the group, from junior roles up into the C-suite and senior management. I had come into contact with Latitude IT through the wider recruitment process at Wesfarmers, and they quickly became a huge part of my strategy for filling these roles.
Alison was the most responsive from a candidate perspective in terms of understanding their backgrounds, and providing insight into what was happening in the industry at the time. She was quick to provide advice and help enable even if this wasn’t directly related to placing someone within a role, which really made her a standout at Wesfarmers.
The process
We valued Alison and the Latitude team services from the beginning as they took the time to understand where the business was at, what the challenges were and what the culture looked like before nominating a candidate. There was no tick and flick, which we see from a lot of recruitment agencies.
They were also instrumental in helping me craft position descriptions to ensure we could attract the best talent possible. Often I’d brief Alison over the phone and she’d respond with a fully formed job role that exactly matched my requirements.
In every circumstance that I dealt with Latitude, I found the candidates were always suitable, it was just a choice of which one was most suitable. This was recognised not just by me but others in the business including the Managing Director, which ultimately led to Latitude providing talent acquisition services to other business units, and being elevated into the group-level panel.
People knew based on our experiences, if you needed the best candidate for a technology role, Latitude were the people to go to.
The results
One of Latitude’s unique propositions is that they are close to a network of non-traditional talent. While they do have extensive reach across the corporate landscape, they’re also experts in bringing unique talent across from start ups.
This access to this new talent means we can source innovative thinkers with the right thinking and culture into traditional roles. You end up getting the right blend of energy, attitude, being nimble and agile without being scarred by red tape associated with careers in enterprise organisations.
