The Background
Tourism company Skyline Enterprises has been at the forefront of New Zealand tourism since 1966. Back when the company was established, they built the original Gondola from Queenstown to Bob’s Peak to service a burgeoning restaurant.
From humble beginnings, diversification and expansion has seen Skyline Enterprises now offer an expansive tourism portfolio, both in New Zealand and around the world. With an exciting and diverse array of products, Skyline is proud to offer world-class leisure and entertainment experiences for the domestic and international traveller in both New Zealand and overseas locations.
Wholly owned New Zealand based businesses include: Skyline Queenstown, Skyline Rotorua, Skyline Property, Christchurch Casino, Blue Peaks Lodge & Apartments, Heritage Dunedin Leisure Lodge. Overseas operations include: Skyline Luge Sentosa (Singapore), Skyline Luge Mont Tremblant (Canada), Skyline Luge Calgary (Canada) and Skyline Luge Tongyeong (South Korea).
With an impressive history and a range of new project and developments on the horizon, such as the Franz Josef Glacier Gondola and the $100M redevelopment of the Queenstown operations, Skyline was in need of a group People & Capability Manager.
What We Did to Help
The challenge with this particular position was to find a senior People Leader with a strong organisational and leadership development background. Moreover, the candidate had to not only provide operational HR leadership, they had to build capability across the entire business (comprising of some 1400 staff) and embed an organisational culture focussed on growing talent.
Finding the right person proved to be a challenge. “There were a number of suitable candidates but it was about finding the right fit for both the candidate and the organisation,” said Mike Stenhouse, Director of Sheffield. After an extensive search Brooke Campbell was appointed to the role. “It’s about persistence and looking for the right person”, said Mike. “Not all organisations are the same, so getting the right person and not just settling for anyone is what makes the difference.”
What Happened as a Result
Having been placed in mid-2019, Brooke subsequently went on to use Sheffield for other key appointments in the Skyline team. “Being an HR professional myself, I get to see a variety of processes undertaken by a number of recruitment companies,” said Brooke. “To be honest, if it wasn’t a fantastic process, I wouldn’t have engaged Sheffield. I’ve been through several processes with various firms in my career, and with Sheffield it wasn’t just a paint-by-numbers approach, it was a bespoke exercise. This was important to me because when it came to recruiting James, our GM of International Luge Operations, Sheffield completely tailored the process to our needs.”
Undertaking bespoke processes is something that Sheffield is proud to offer every client. This not only delivers successful results for the client, but for the candidate as well.
“In my experience, many recruitment firms tend to service either the client or the candidate,” said Brooke. “Having sat on both sides of the table with Sheffield, I experienced first-hand how their approach suited both candidate and client.”