Catching Up With Kurt – Tinaka Taito

Kurt: G’day everyone, welcome to Catching Up With Kurt. I’m Kurt Gidley and today we’re joined by Recruitment Team Leader, T. Welcome along!

Tinaka: Thank you, good to be here.

Kurt: Now I thought we’d talk a little bit about your career and how you came to work at Protech.

Tinaka: Sure. So I started in the recruitment industry in about 2005 as an On-site Account Manager; so I’ve been doing recruitment for a while. And then about 9 months ago I saw an ad up, applied, and I got a response within two minutes from someone on the HR team, which was really quick because I knew someone in the team as well.

Kurt: Ah, I was going to say because you’re so experienced on your resume! 

Tinaka: And that too! Yes, we had worked together at a different agency.

Kurt: You’ve been in the industry a while then. What do you love about your position here at Protech and what do you love about recruitment?

Tinaka: The goal was always to help people: help people get work. When you come from a town where there’s not much work available and you see how much families struggle, that was my number one personal goal. The reason why I love it is I love the fast pace, the competition, helping clients and filling roles.

Kurt: Must be a pretty fulfilling feeling to get someone into a job and have an influence on their lifestyle.

Tinaka: It really is, it’s a fist-pump feeling.

Kurt: Alright, T. As our best recruiter at Protech tell us about the Protech Certified process.

Tinaka: Sure, so there are ten steps to the process. They start with the Physical Agility Test, which is coupled with a medical questionnaire and declaration. There is a work rights verification as well, so they need to prove their right to work in the country. We also do drug and alcohol testing. We check licenses and tickets – that they’re current. We also do two reference checks for every candidate. We do a criminal background declaration as well. And we do an online safety and employment induction. We also check that PPE is available and, if not, we provide it to them. We also verify skills and experience, and lucky last is the interview part of the process. So we just do behavioural type questions, verify employment and everything as well to make sure they’re the right fit.

Kurt: Well done remembering all those! Now you mentioned the Physical Agility Test. What’s the benefit of that for our company, our candidate and our clients?

Tinaka: Sure. I think with the whole part of the process as well, we make sure we send our candidates home safe to their families.

Kurt: T, you’ve been in the industry a long time, are those ten steps the norm? Is the PAT test the norm for our competitors? Or the drug and alcohol? Is that a normal process?

Tinaka: I’ve worked for a handful of different labour hire companies and I’d say it isn’t the norm. This is the first company that I’ve worked for that do Physical Agility Testing and also drug and alcohol testing. So with that I can only imagine how many lives we potentially save because we haven’t sent someone out that has the potential to produce a non-negative result on a drug and alcohol test.

Kurt: It’s a really positive thing we’re doing for our clients and candidates.

Tinaka: Correct. And again sending them home is really important.

Kurt: What about final question: what’s the best bit of advice you could give a candidate who walks through the door today?

Tinaka: Thinking about that I think it’s very similar to watching a trailer on a movie. They need to make sure we are aware of everything they’ve done – so a very thorough resume is important. A lot of the time we see resumes that don’t have a lot of information, so it’s really difficult to work out whether they’re suitable for a position that we have. Another tip or piece of advice would be: be open and honest. Let us know what you’re looking for. We’ll tell you if you either have the experience, or there’s something else that you might need to do.

Kurt: Well thanks very much, T. Thanks for Catching Up With Kurt. We’ll see you next time.