When family-run health and wellness business Zea needed new staff to support their rapid growth, they turned to Simplified Recruitment. The result was a stress-free process and a great new team member adding value to their business.
Zea offers all-natural health and wellness products based on the properties of the Australian native Kunzea Ambigua. The range, created with Kunzea grown on the pristine Flinders Island, includes Zea Relief personal care; Zea Essentials aromatherapy products; Zea Gourmet bush foods and the newly launched Zea Active for muscle recovery.
A flourishing business demands more staff
Zea is growing fast as interest in natural products increases and word about the amazing properties of Kunzea spreads. The family business has expanded and taken on more staff as sales have taken off. “We do pretty much everything in house”, says General Manager Jade McKenzie, “from formulation, to marketing, sales, operations, finance and administration, so as sales grow, we have more work to do and the team needs to expand.”
Zea were looking to ramp up their customer operations – things were working well, but they knew it could be even better. They identified a role for a customer operations manager – someone who could take hold of the reins and get the department into shape. Previously, Zea had promoted from within, but the rapid expansion meant they needed to go outside the regular pool and look at external hires.
“We have very high standards of product quality, ethics and customer service”, explains Jade. “So it’s essential to have the right people in the team. As a family business, we need to find people with good skills, but just as importantly, a commitment to our vision and the right fit to join our business ‘family’”.
Taking the hassle out of recruitment
With no HR department in house, Jade knew they would need professional recruitment help, but found that the ‘usual suspects’ of agencies and recruitment firms, tended to cater for corporates and larger firms, rather than a growing family business. She met Bobby Semple of Simplified Recruitment through a business owners’ social media forum and very quickly realised that this was the recruitment support she’d been looking for.
“Bobby took on all the heavy lifting”, says Jade. “Simplified Recruitment managed all the parts of the process that we don’t have the skills or time to do ourselves. The advertising, sorting through resumés, first interviews, reference checking and shortlisting. We simply interviewed the people who they felt we should seriously consider.”
The perfect fit
Zea was really impressed with the calibre of the candidates that Simplified Recruitment shortlisted. “Simplified Recruitment’s experience and skills brought us such strong candidates, we really enjoyed the interview process, and were able to appoint someone we felt was a perfect fit”, says Jade.
“Working with Simplified Recruitment has been great,” she continues. “We’ve got an amazing new team member who is now an integrated part of the ‘extended family’ in the business. We just told Simplified Recruitment our needs and they helped us to get there. They did the things that would have been hard for us, but were easy for them.”
“We will definitely use Simplified Recruitment again. We’ve built a great relationship with Bobby and with Tara – they both went above and beyond in the way that they helped us.”
“Recruiting puts such a strain on our time and resources, but with the help of Bobby and his team, we have saved time and found exactly the right new person for our growing team. We’re really confident in the decision we’ve made and know that our newest team member will support our business growth.”