October 27, 2006
WHEN THE SIGN OF THE TIMES SAYS “HELP WANTED”
It’s only fair that a Recruiting firm should win one of the city’s top awards
Edmonton, ABWith Alberta’s incredible skills shortage hitting headlines and airwaves at a national level, it only seems fair that an Edmonton recruiting firm should become an award-winner.
For over 30 years, Edmonton’s Harcourt Recruiting Specialists have been a mainstay of the Alberta business community. They have survived the hardships of the post-NEP era and the boom times before and after. They have won national awards for production and community service.
Today, President Judy Harcourt accepted another accolade as Small Business Owner of the Year from the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce.
While Judy leapt from her seat with excitement, though, her next step was to try and drag her entire staff up to the podium with her.
“While this award is called Small Business Owner,” she proclaimed in accepting the award, “I really consider it the Small Business of the Year Award. This is something that belongs to our team. They are the ones who make us a success.”
Harcourt Recruiting Specialists won in the “10 staff and under category”, the smallest of three categories awarded today. Years ago, husband and wife owners Peter and Judy Harcourt made the conscious decision to focus on a smaller, boutique business where they could really focus on quality service for a select group of clients. At the same time, they sold the temporary staffing side of the company to focus on permanent and executive search. Since then, their growth has been organic – to the point where they now have a small, focused team who are considered some of the best in the business.
The recruiting industry has shifted in the last two years alone – where they were once spending equal time developing new business and finding hard-to-find staff, the balance has shifted heavily toward the candidate side. At the same time, new technologies have emerged in the last 5-10 years that both offer competition and give them access to people who would have been harder to uncover earlier.
Judy feels that it’s not the business side alone, though, that Harcourt is proudest of. It’s the fact that they are an organization that is involved in the community they work in. The office as a whole has volunteered for organizations like the Boys & Girls Club; several of the Harcourt team have been involved at the executive level in organizations like Rotary and amateur sport organizations.
For Judy, this mix is just one of the things that sets a company like theirs apart – but one that makes it not just a family business, but also a family.
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For more information, please contact:
Rick Harcourt
Executive Recruiter
Harcourt Recruiting Specialists
(780) 425-5555
(780) 965-4453 (cell)
rick@harcourt.ca
Kimberley Nishikaze
Manager, Communications
Edmonton Chamber of Commerce
(780) 409-2619
knishikaze@edmontonchamber.com