New path to find top jobs

By TOM CLARKE

A new system of human resources research, developed by former patent attorney turned HR consultant Don Jaine, may become the latest locally developed IT product to be exported.

Mr Jaine and another former lawyer, Stephen Mockett, have formed a new executive and director search practice, Azura Consultants, which works with salaried positions of at least $120,000.

Mr Jaine says the system that the firm uses has a different philosophical foundation to existing processes.

Most marketing data bases, he says, have lots of information about a company and a little information about people. "Most HR data bases have lots of information about people, but not much about companies.

"What we've developed is one integrated data base based on proactive management of information rather than reactive, that puts all this information together."

Mr Jaine says this involves identifying every sizeable organisation in New Zealand, the work they undertake and the people they employ, and then actively managing that information.

Azura, he says, has a comprehensive resource to search and a much better likelihood of finding people to fill available vacancies.

Its data base contains more than 6000 organisations likely to employ the people Azura recruits, and senior and capable people are progressively being added to the system as well.

Mr Jaine says the system is infinitely searchable.

"Most of the search engines used by the industry search on the basis of people's attitudes or skills, so most are based on the fact that a person can programme in C++ or that they can type 80 words a minute." he says. "In effect, they give you a needle out of a haystack, but you don't know what the haystack looks like.

"What we do is build the haystack first, then sift through it, shifting all the good people to the top. It involves a huge amount of research to build the haystack, but it gives a much more thorough result."

Mr Jaine believes the software has vast potential and says there has already been expressions of interest in it from overseas.

Mr Jaine worked for 10 years as a registered patent attorney and a partner in Baldwins, and later as a commercial lawyer and partner in law firm Simpson Grierson.

He made the move into management consulting in search of something that offered a new challenge. He wanted to use his background in technology, establishing an executive search firm for Morgan and Banks in 1995.

Mr Mockett is a law and commerce graduate who worked with Bell Gully as a commercial litigation lawyer, before joining Morgan and Banks where he led the finance and professional services practice. He later joined Watson Wyatt in a management consulting role.