Focus Recruitment & HR Consulting

The mission? Finding a first-class position in Nova Scotia for a remarkable Iranian engineer with a very particular skill set. Fortunately, Focus Recruitment & HR Consulting was up to the job.

“We convinced East Hants to hire him and then we helped him get certified by the appropriate professional association here,” says Sean McKenna, manager of business development and client relations.

Foreign recruitment is among the Dartmouth-based company’s specialties, honed at the peak of out-migration to the west, when many skilled tradespeople were leaving this region.

At the moment, Focus has placed 12 clients in skilled trades’ jobs such as welding and pipefitting. They hail from India, the Philippines and other exotic locales, and are registered under Nova Scotia’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program.

Not only does Focus find the best candidate for the specific job, it also offers a landing service that helps foreign workers with practical matters like finding a place to live, setting up a bank account, and obtaining health insurance. Most foreign workers – and their new employers – are left to their own devices on that front, says McKenna.

“That’s the outside-of-the-box thinking you have to do,” he says.

Indeed, since evolving from Focus Trades Pro – a contracting company for the offshore industry – Focus Recruitment and HR Consulting has made a name for itself by offering permanent recruitment and selection, contract recruitment, employee-engagement training, leadership training, HR support, and sales training. It specializes in engineering, executive, supply chain, human resources, manufacturing, health care, sales and marketing, skilled trades, accounting, and industrial operations.

And always with a customized approach.

“It’s very individualized, very consultative. The idea is to sit down and say ‘What do you want? What do you need?’ It’s not one-size-fits-all, as it is with many other companies.”

A privately owned Canadian company, Focus boasts clients and candidates regionally, nationally and internationally. Senior human resources consultant Tracey MacCharles is as comfortable at a client’s corporate office as she is finding manpower in Houston or dealing with a client in Dubai.

And Focus has other specialists it turns to on issues such as occupational health and safety, and employee engagement, two of the hottest recruitment tools in human resources today.

“If you look at the workplace, it’s probably the first time in the working world that you’ve got so many generations working together,” says McKenna. “It’s not uncommon to see a Gen-Y supervising a Baby Boomer – and for each generation, what motivates them is different.”

While a certain percentage are still motivated by salary, more potential employees are basing career decisions on things like flexible hours and vacation allotment. Perks like gym memberships or a walking club are an added draw. Focus helps companies put in place programs that will attract, and keep star recruits.
 

“If you want to be an employer of choice, you have to make decisions about what will happen in your workplace that will keep people happy,” says McKenna. “When you think about hiring and training people – who wants to be doing that every three months?”

Focus has worked with an array of local companies, including Irving, Cherubini, Aliant, Eastlink and Secunda Marine, many of them repeat customers.

Steve England of Cherubini Group of Companies, says Focus “values the client relationship and works very hard to ensure they understand our company as well as our needs.

“Their commitment to communication, professionalism and focusing on their clients is very well represented,” says England, Cherubini’s vice-president of operations.

McKenna can relate to many of the company’s candidates, former Maritimers longing to return east. A Dartmouth native, he worked in music and then in sales in Ontario before returning to metro in 2000.

“Quality of life is not really why I came back,” he admits. “I think a lot of the smart young people have identified the fact that, in what is being called one of the worst global recessions of all time, Halifax didn’t do that badly.

“I think it’s the opportunity to be at the forefront of what’s going to go on in 10 years. The people who are here now, sort of cutting their teeth and making connections, are going to be the folks running the show in 10 years.”