At the beginning of 2019, I decided to do something I had always wanted to do, but had been a bit fearful. It was a skydive, my first. It was terrifying, but exhilarating and fortunately I landed safely! It’s now something that I would recommend to everyone if they get the opportunity.
This year, I’m going down a similar track in taking some risk, leaving the comfort of a salaried role and launching GRIT. I am hoping for a similar outcome to the skydive, and I am passionate, excited and obviously feeling a little trepidation that I’m sure all startup founders can relate to.
I’ve been fortunate in my recruitment career to work for two very good companies surrounded by some great people that were hard working, values driven for the most part and who really want to make an impact. I feel it’s now time to take the best of what I’ve learnt over the years starting with GRIT.
So, why the name GRIT? It actually came to me after I read Angela Duckworth’s book where she outlines from her research that success comes from passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. I feel this is apt from a career standpoint as talent will get you so far, but hard work, resilience and the ability to consistently overcome obstacles can lead to true success. Hence, welcome to GRIT Search.
At GRIT Search we specialise in Digital, Technology and Transformation and have several fundamentals that the business will revolve around. We want to make a difference through high quality service, specialisation, giving back to the community, consultation and utilising technology to improve our offerings to both our candidate and client community.
TALENT FIRST
At GRIT we operate a talent first model. This means what it says. The talent we represent comes first. Unfortunately we won’t have the capacity to work with every person looking for a role in the market, but we aim to work with the best talent in our core areas, because we fundamentally believe that by putting them into roles with high quality companies will enable these businesses to grow faster and create greater opportunities for wider pools of talent down the line.
RELATIONSHIPS
One thing I’ve learnt is that pure transactional models in recruitment are short lived. They commoditise talent, they don’t give the best service levels to clients and they fundamentally can fall short of the Values a company can claim to represent. GRIT is a relationship-focused business. We want to build quality consultative relationships with the talent we represent and the organisations we work with. This means we will not always say what you want to hear, but we will consult and challenge to get to the best possible outcome for the talent and the organisation. We are looking to the long term and recognise for long term success for all parties, relationships need to be nurtured and ultimately founded on trust.
DUTY OF CARE
GRIT has a duty of care to the talent we represent. This doesn’t simply extend to our service levels, but also extends to the clients we work with. We will do our best to ensure that we place talent into organisations that are genuinely Values driven and that have a culture where they invest in and value their employees. At GRIT we only want to work with these types of organisations, as our service doesn’t simply extend to placing someone into a job, it’s to help someone build a career.
TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION
GRIT is in the business of finding career opportunities for talent in this area. We live and breathe in this space to ensure we can offer the best advice to help both talent and organisations achieve the outcomes they are looking for. As a business ourselves, we are obsessed with looking at how we can utilise technology to improve our product and solution offerings for the talent and organisations that we work with. We want to continually innovate to find ways to advance the industry as we know it.
VALUES & CSR
Values sit at the heart of GRIT, as does our objective to truly support CSR programmes and support communities that need it. With this in mind GRIT has committed a proportion of all revenue generated to go into a fund that will support these initiatives on an active and ongoing basis. We want to be an employer of choice offering the best culture, development and exciting careers for talent that want to work in this field as we look to be the market leader in Singapore and then across the region.
GRIT is very fortunate to have a number of industry leaders who are extremely supportive of what we are aiming to achieve, have invested in GRIT and who will advise on an ongoing basis. It’s now time to put this plan into action and work towards the Vision. If you are interested in being part of this journey please do reach out for a confidential discussion.
If you are a talent operating in this area and feel we may be in a position to help you please get in touch. Similarly, if you are an organisation looking to hire in this area we would love to speak with you.
Finally, whilst talent alone can open amazing opportunities, I’ll leave you with Angela Duckworth’s words:
“In the long run…grit may matter more than talent”.