Expertise and experience the hallmarks of Calstone Search Group.

• Position: CORPORATE PROFILE

After a combined 12 years in the recruitment industry, isabelle Senecal and Wayne Johnstone recognized a gap in recruitment services in the North. Their company, Calstone Search Group is filling a niche, dedicating its resources to sourcing and filling senior positions in mining.

"Our competitors mainly treat executive recruitment as an afterthought, or an added service," says Johnstone. "We are the only firm in Sudbury focusing solely on contingency-based permanent recruitment for mining and mining support companies."

"There was a need for a firm such as ours based in Northern Ontario, considering that (according to the Canadian Institute of Mining) 60 per cent of underground hard rock mining in Canada happens within 300 miles of Sudbury," Senecal says. "So a local firm focused on attracting top talent to the mining and mining support industry was essential in our area."

Calstone Search Group assists its clients in securing high-quality candidates for specialized, skills-based roles; engineers, geologists, project managers, metallurgists and controllers are amongst the positions they fill. Their multinational clients range from mining firms to consulting companies to equipment manufacturers, and they've placed candidates in locations across North America.

As international recruitment consultants, they focus on the specialized searches a firm's human resources department doesn't have the time or expertise to do.

"We are like any other consultant--we are the experts in our field," Johnstone says. When done right, Johnstone believes job-specific recruitment can work in tandem with a firm's human resources department to fill a company's ranks with the best people.

"When an HR department publicly posts a position, the audience is often those who are unemployed or candidates who might be looking to make a career move for the wrong reason, perhaps because they're displeased with their current situation," Johnstone says.

"At Calstone, we rarely post on job boards, relying on our ability to network to find candidates who aren't actively looking for their next career. When an employee's worth to a company can be hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions, using a contingency-based search firm means they'll have the opportunity to interview candidates who are motivated to make the move for the right reasons."

Calstone advises the company from the moment the search begins--sourcing candidates, coordinating interviews, making travel...