Our recruitment process is focused on finding the best talent for your organisation

RecruitNZ provides an end-to-end recruitment service for your permanent roles, including both local recruitment within New Zealand, as well as overseas recruitment of skilled migrants.

Our recruitment process stands out from the rest because we prioritise understanding your business, team, organisational culture, leadership style, and business objectives. The rigorous recruitment process enables us to identify the right candidate who will thrive in your company.

Moreover, we meticulously screen and eliminate the least suitable candidates at every stage of the recruitment process to ensure quality time is spent on only the best talent available.

What are the stages in the recruitment process?

Here’s an overview of the various hiring stages – each step is covered in more detail, below.

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The process for overseas recruitment has additional steps.

1. Team and skills gap analysis

The first step in our recruitment process is to consult with you on your needs, and understand that in the context of your overall business structure.

Specifically, we’d work with you to ascertain:

  • Skills you already have in your team.
  • Skills you feel are currently lacking.
  • Core functions of the role you’re recruiting for.
  • Future direction of the role and the potential for future growth for any advanced candidates stepping into the role.
  • Identifying other roles that interact with this one.

2. Understanding the role and Position Description development

An important part of understanding the role is being clear on its relative level of seniority. For example, do you want the employee to work independently and make decisions? Or will they need to revert back to you or a line manager for input? Defining this makes it clear to all parties where this role sits in the organisational structure.

Understanding the role also involves examining the key tasks required, and categorising the tasks. For example, the category of finance management may require tasks such as managing accounts payable, managing accounts receivable, GST preparation and filing, and so on.

This information then feeds into the development of the Position Description.

3. Person Specification

The Person Specification lists the type of person who is most likely to be successful in this role. Their skills and experience are crucial, but it should also include the personality traits that fit with the role.

The Person Specification covers:

  • Skills required, including any particular computer packages.
  • Experience, and the minimum number of years of experience you need.
  • Qualifications required.
  • Personality type needed to fit into the team, organisation, and its culture. Hiring people with the right attitude is an absolute must.

Read more about the Person Specification.

4. Recruitment advertising

The copy used in recruitment advertisements is crucial in today’s job market where quality candidates are highly sought after. Therefore the advertisement should be motivating in order to attract the best candidates. This is also an opportunity to filter out sub-par candidates, thus less time is spent reviewing applications, thereby making it easier to decide whom to interview.

The back-end systems of Seek and TradeMe provide important additional tools for recruitment consultants that business owners do not have access to. These features enable more accurate targeting of advertisements, as well as the ability to run proactive searches of job seekers.

We also use our recruitment software at the recruitment advertising stage, to cross reference our own database for suitable candidates who are already registered with us.

5. Filtering candidates

Our recruitment process is geared towards screening candidates at every possible stage, so we’re left with the best of the best.

CV screening: Our recruitment software helps identify the strongest candidates.

Telephone screening: We’ll call an applicant during office hours, with the aim of surprising them. This allows us to assess how professional they are, and to receive unrehearsed replies to our questions.

Application form: Candidates who reach this stage in the hiring process are asked to complete and return an application form prior to interview. This sometimes reveals important discrepancies.

6. Interview process

This part of the hiring process is where the experience and input of a recruitment agency is of the greatest practical value.

If you have followed a robust screening process in selecting your face-to-face interviewees, you will only have a handful of interviewees – and it’s likely that any of them could perform well. However, it’s important you select the one candidate who’s right for your business, and who has a good cultural fit.

Read more on how to conduct a structured interview.

7. Psychometric assessments

We often use Extended DISC® behavioural assessments to identify how candidates are likely to relate to specific tasks. The psychometric assessment generally takes place after the employer has interviewed the candidate.

DISC stands for the four different personality types: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness.

Our recruitment consultants are very skilled at using Extended DISC assessments to appraise candidates for specific roles and will almost always use this kind of evaluation – including DISC profiling you.

Extended DISC enables us to achieve continually positive recruitment outcomes for clients, as it helps ensure a good fit with your team and wider organisation.

Read more about psychometric assessments

8. Reference and background checks

What makes RecruitNZ unique to other recruitment agencies is that our reference checks are done via the phone, and we insist on talking to the manager of the applicant, or another person who understands the impact the person has had on the company’s bottom line. The reference check conversation typically lasts for over half an hour, and is very comprehensive.

Many other agencies use online forms for reference checks with multiple-choice answers. RecruitNZ will never do this: we believe that nothing can replace a conversation, and it gives us the ability to explore any areas where there are hesitations or potential red flags.

Police checks and other pre-employment checks are also well worthwhile. While this may seem overly cautious, it pays to be so.

9. Employment Agreement and Offer of Employment

Following your final selection, a formal Offer of Employment and Individual Employment Agreement must be sent to the selected candidate.

The creation of the Employment Agreement is the handover from recruitment to HR and is the point where our partner company, ConsultingHQ, can become involved. They provide end-to-end HR services and can ensure your HR processes are up-to-date and compliant with current regulations and requirements. 

Post-employment processes also become very important at this stage – such as employee records; building training and development plans for each employee; KPI measurement and performance reviews; and so on. It can almost be a full-time job for a business owner to keep up with monitoring and managing HR processes, so outsourcing these tasks to an external HR expert makes good sense.

Another good option is to use specialised HR software. ConsultingHQ has developed EMS Hub – a system that lets you automate processes, save time, and stay compliant. Find out more about EMS Hub.

10. Trial and probation period

Recruit NZ considers the recruitment process to be complete at the stage where the employee reaches the end of the 90-day trial period, for a business with fewer than 20 employees (assuming this is included in the Employment Agreement). However, after-sales care is very important to us, so we will follow up regularly with both the employer and new recruit to ensure we have achieved a positive outcome for both parties.

How is the overseas recruitment process different?

The recruitment process for hiring skilled migrant workers includes all of the steps above, but there are also additional tasks involved. RecruitNZ, together with our People Inc partners, VisaAide and ConsultingHQ, provide an end-to-end overseas recruitment service.

Together we can take care of everything from employer accreditation, to recruitment and HR documentation, to visa and immigration services via the Accredited Employer Work Visa. You would have one contact point throughout, to make the overseas recruitment process easy and straightforward for you. 

Here’s what you need to be aware of before engaging an international recruitment agency.

Why you should consider a long-term relationship with your recruitment agency

You can now see the depth and extent of the relationship an employer should have with a recruitment agency. First getting to know you; understanding the culture of your existing team; and being clear on your strategic business goals.

As recruitment professionals, we become part of your team, and part of your management resource. Our understanding of your business challenges is unparalleled, as we interface with a large number of other business owners just like you – and can draw on our global learning to help each employer forward.

While every exchange with you is regarded as confidential, as external experts in our field, we are able to give you an excellent exposure to the employment market in general.

"It is with great pleasure I write this testimonial for Recruit NZ. Over a number of years we had used other HR companies and although the consultants were always pleasant and friendly the vetting process done by them was always lacking as was often their aftercare.

I was recommended Recruit NZ by a supplier of ours and decided to use them when we next needed to recruit a new staff member. I spoke with Recruit NZ and then met with one of their team. I found my recruitment consultant to be so friendly and extremely efficient and the process of reporting back on her preliminary interviews with potential candidates is very helpful. She has notes written from her interviews which is very helpful when we reflect back on the skills and qualities of each candidate after we have interviewed them. The team also enquired about our work culture and find or recommend a candidate who would fit into the team.

Once we interviewed potential candidates, we had a call to discuss our views. The employment contract details are dealt with promptly. Then after we made an appointment there was follow up by phone in the first 6 weeks with us and with the new employee.

I have been impressed with the process and her ability to weed through potential candidates ensuring we are not wasting our time interviewing everybody."


Sarah McMullin Landmark Homes

Do you need help with your recruitment process?

Please contact us for advice and to see how we could help you.

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