Headhunters target Christchurch

Press, 19 April 1989, Page 5

Headhunters target Christchurch

By

CULLEN SMITH

Christchurch has been targeted as a world recruitment centre for telecommunications engineers, but Telecom South believes it can retain skilled technicians.

A British-based corporate headhunter is due in Christchurch early in May on his second New Zealand foray since last November. Mr Brian Corr, a senior recruitment consultant for the Butler Service Group, is offering salary packages of up to $120,000 to attract suitably qualified staff. Mr Corr hired 14 experts on his last tour for work contracts in Britain and Europe of between one and five years. Interest. from New Zealanders keen to work overseas and the quality of candidate here justified a return trip, he said. “The expertise of the New Zealand Telecom engineers we have brought to the United Kingdom to date has been so high that our programmes have really benefited,” Mr Corr said. Christchurch was selected as a major recruitment centre because of its highly skilled Telecom staff who should be responsive to the contracts on offer, he said. The Butler Group was paying between $lOO,OOO and $120,000 a year, including allowances, together with a travel package for families wishing

to accompany successful applicants. But the Telecom South managing director, Mr Lance McKechie, doubts many of his top people will take the bait. The pay deals, which looked attractive when sterling was converted to New Zealand dollars, did not compare very favourably with rates for Telecom engineers and technicians, he said. “Most people recognise that you spend U.K. pounds the same way you spend New Zealand dollars,” Mr McKechnie said. He knew of no particular technician or engineer

who had taken a job with the Butler Group on Mr Corr’s last visit. Mr McKechie said Telecom did not feel threatened by the recruitment drive. “If I lost heaps of people, yes, I would have a problem. But I don’t expect to lose many people on what they are offering here.” Headhunting, Mr McKechie said, was a commercial reality in today’s business environment. “It’s a fact of life. If you want to find particular people, this is the way you go about it,” he said. Telecom had used headhunters itself in the past, Mr McKechie said. The Christchurch section chairman of the Post Office Union, Mr Phil Yarrall, said if the Butler Group was specifically looking for highly trained technical staff, Telecom should be worried. Mr Yarrall said in the Telecom restructuring some new technology instructors had been lost. Telecom appeared to be slowing its introduction of high-tech equipment. “Telecom would be in some difficulty if they headhunted all our techni-. cal brains,” he said.