Those who made it to our 20^th birthday celebration a couple of weeks ago, know that we did not make a formal presentation on the night.

We had in fact planned to, however the night was flowing so well with many people coming and going throughout the evening that we didn’t want to stop that.

Prior to the night though we had though taken quite some time to put together the words we wanted to say and so here they are below. They underpin how we feel about the people we have met along our journey.

It was an extraordinarily wonderful night and whether you were able to make it or not, you played a part in helping us acknowledge MPi's 20th year. 

Firstly allow me a 30 second history lesson. 

Way back, before starting MPi one of our founders (my wife) Sue owned a small generalist recruitment business and when we kicked MPi off in Jan 1994, we also continued to build the generalist business.

Both were going well, when a few years later we needed to make a decision to focus our efforts, so we decided to sell the generalist business. Chandler and Macleod, a large Australian recruitment business that some of you would know, bought that business from us and for the past 15 years we have been solely focused on and dependent upon, the far more cyclical mining market. 

And what cycles there have been..

 

Being a Mining Engineer by trade, we sometimes make funny (and usually unfair) jokes about Geologists, but I now openly wonder whether we are the ones with rocks in our heads.   

So what makes it all worthwhile?

Well, when we started a key element of our mission was the simple aim to make a positive difference to all the people we touched, be they a client, candidate, supplier, staff member, family member or a supporter of any form.

The huge amount of feedback we receive, suggests that on mass we have done this.

And we will strive to KEEP doing it.

So that’s the compressed history lesson. Onto the core message.

Rather than spelling out a long corporate history, I have chosen a few short words to say about seven quite distinct groups who have contributed to our journey.

Firstly our founders.

Our suppliers/business partners. These people do great stuff for us.

They are the extension to our internal team. Long before ‘outsourcing’ became fashionable we recognised the key role they played.

Along the way often the requests we make of our suppliers are completely unreasonable!

We therefore have always felt it is critically important (and we’ve tried our best) to reciprocate these unreasonable requests, with loyalty and treating them as if they were this extension to our internal team.

I’m NOT saying we have always got this right, but we place high value on long term relationships and we prioritise them. This is evidenced by the fact that some of our awesome suppliers have been with us since day one and many for more than ten years.

Thank you to all of you.

Our clients.

The companies that pay us and the people in those companies.

We did though figure out a long time ago, that the modern corporate entity was not a permanently reliable source of business as such, but that it was the individual people in those companies that resonated with us, respected what we did and with whom we did business at a fair price over a long period of time, often moving from one business to another over the years.

The other great thing about this longevity is that us and them are able to share amazing war stories and exchange memories of all the dragons slayed together. This builds a strong bond that can endure, even when the latest HIGH DRAMA is being faced or when occasionally one of us (sometimes us, sometimes dare I say the client) messes up.

Many modern marketers are now declaring that in some sectors ‘business to business’ and even ‘business to consumer’ marketing is finished and that it’s now all ‘people to people’.

I think in a small way we figured this out at the start and embedded it into our foundations.

So whether you’re one of our wonderful long term clients, or a newer one, we hope you WILL be with us for a long period and we’ll certainly play hard to keep you... But we also ask, that you keep letting us know when we mess up so that we get a chance to fix it.    

So we thank the companies that have stuck with us for the long haul and we also offer an extra special thank you, to the individual people who are our long term clients. 

Our candidates.

These include the people who;

Of course many candidates eventually become clients and in turn become candidates again.

Our role is to not only find them a new job, but to assist them work through what is often a fairly stressful transition time in their life.

They continuously trust us to do the right thing.

Importantly, we also want to acknowledge the people who ask us to find them work, but whom we don’t manage to do that for.

Consider this…

Each month, we connect with thousands of individual candidates but place between 50 and 100 into jobs that month.

As you can probably imagine the potential for disappointment here is large.

An interesting story in this regard…

When we started MPi we surveyed a large candidate group and found out the things that upset them the most. It was shockingly simple. They told us, 'No one ever gets back to me after I apply for a job'

That was it. So we just said, 'Ok we’ll get back to everyone, every time, whether we can help them or not.'

That was pretty much our #1 candidate USP 20 years ago!

So roll forward 20 years… Every person who applies for a job, but who does NOT get that job, is sent a survey and asked a simple question. 'Were you 100% happy with the service you received'

The one thing that comes up more often than any other thing, over and over again is, 'even though I didn’t get the job, at least you TOLD me, I DIDN’T get the job… Many other places never tell you'

The moral of this story is that whilst a lot has changed in 20 years, some things haven’t changed at all.

So I want to thank every one of you that at some stage has trusted us to represent you - and not just the 50-100 a month we place, but also the thousands we don’t.     
 
The second last group…

The friends and family of our team
 

 

Recruiting generally, can be a tough gig.

Now couple that with recruiting in the mining industry exclusively, add in the technological changes that have occurred in recent times and you can imagine why it can be so tough.

When I referred to HIGH DRAMA above and slaying dragons – let me tell you I have built several mining operations and while I know my memory might be fading, I think  recruiting is seriously tougher!

Being able to share our daily issues with trusted people at home is crucial.

Without naming names, here are some brief stories to demonstrate the unique effort and wisdom that the friends and family of various MPI-er’s have contributed over the years:

Through that time, I recall my mother saying to me; 'oh well it will all work out love, wont it!' And of course it always does. Thanks Mum.
 
Relationships and family ties run deep even in business - in fact especially in business.

This is a tiny fraction of the often hidden ‘back stories’ that are rarely heard but that are just as big a part of the final picture. The truth though is that just about every long term MPi person has a story like this and I tell you just these few, to acknowledge all of them.  

So on behalf of all us here, thank you all, to the friends of family of all MPi-ers.

Lastly but as they say not least,

The MPi Team

I acknowledge two groups here, the current MPi-er’s and past MPi-er’s.

And by the way credit goes to Gary Kearns for the term “MPi-er”, which happened before Google coined the term “Googler”, just for the record…

When it all goes pear shaped (and it WILL) it is OUR team that are there:

So to all current and past MPi-er’s thank you for the part you have played and continue to play in our journey.

To finish:

When you do something for 20 years.

I have this vision of a dump truck on a ROM pad (sorry for the mining lingo) backing up to a crusher and tipping not gold ore but money into the crusher and wondering if, when, and in what form, the cash was going to come back out.
 

 

 

Through all this then, it is essential that you have some constants to return to and for us that is making that difference I spoke about earlier. Again, the feedback we get tells us overwhelmingly that we do this.

So to whichever of these seven groups you belong, to us you ARE EQUALLY part of the MPi team and you help us make this difference.

For that we offer you all a massive THANK YOU. 

Kind regards,

Steve Heather on behalf of
Alida Van Der Merwe, Angus Warren, Brad Thorp, Carly Kohler, Gail Rogers, Gary Kearns, Jasmine Hargreaves, Jasmine Cole, Jessica Kerr, Kerrie Adamson, Keeli Robson, Kylie Nunweek, Lindsay Craig, Nicky O'Brien, Nicole Reweti, Mike Hulbert, Phoebe Plesko, Samantha Ware, Sarah Piscioneri, Shane Moore, Stuart Merrick, Suz Thorp,  Samantha McCarthy, Sarah Felmingham, Scott Deakin, Stephanie Logan, Sue Heather and Tony Turton.