Brigitta Warren

I came into recruitment from science, and it is still the part that matters most day to day. It is what lets me sit down with an engineer, a technical specialist or an operations leader and talk about the work itself, not just recruiter speak. That credibility is the difference between passing on a vacancy and genuinely representing a role, to the person weighing it up and to the business trying to fill it.

I recruit across operations, manufacturing, engineering, supply chain, finance and technical and quality roles, mostly for businesses in Hamilton, the wider Waikato and the regions around them. These are hands-on roles in businesses that make things and move things, and they turn on technical fit more than on a polished CV.

Before a search starts I do the groundwork: salary benchmarking, role calibration, workforce planning. It is how I make sure a hire is one the business can build on, rather than one it has to make again in a year. What I care about is not whether the seat gets filled. It is whether the person is still there, and still adding, well after they start.

I’ve been recruiting since 2004, and since founding RecruitNet in Hamilton in December 2020 I have placed more than a thousand people. Most of my work now comes from businesses I have hired for before and the people they send my way, which is the part I am proudest of. Getting a hire right once is a placement. Being the person a business calls back for the next one, and the one after, is the whole job.

I write here about hiring in the Waikato and across technical New Zealand. Where the demand is, which roles are getting harder to fill, and what I am seeing in the market that has not reached the job ads yet. If you are a candidate, the same thing helps you. Knowing who is hiring and why tends to be worth more than a list of live roles.