Hunter Valley-based Forsythes Recruitment and HR has bought Sydney based recruitment and consulting firm Penrith Personnel. According to Geoff Crews, Forsythes managing director Geoff Crews the move was a natural extension for the company and increased the opportunity to work on some of Australia’s largest infrastructure projects including the Western Sydney Airport.
“The pace of the Hunter and Central Coast right now is outstanding and we need to ensure we’re accessing emerging candidate markets and bolstering HR expertise in growth industries to proactively support local clients,” Crews said. “We aren’t ones to let the grass grow under our feet and our business is poised for further growth over the next three years and beyond.”
Crews said the cultural alignment shared between Penrith Personnel and Forsythes Recruitment & HR, had made the acquisition and transition period much easier.
“Western Sydney people are like Hunter and Central Coast people,” he said. “They want passion, responsiveness, roll-up-the-sleeves service and the sort of pride in your work that comes from within.
“We were nervous that our team-focused culture and financial rewards through group profit share (rather than traditional agency commissions) wouldn’t fly down there. But the retiring Penrith Personnel owners agreed that the approach would work with their staff because it’s in the best interests of clients.”
The expanded firm will now employ 50 specialist recruitment and HR consultants as well as a thousand contractors across a range of employer sites and projects.
Forsythes Recruitment and HR is a locally Hunter owned business that has been operating for more than 30 years. Mr Crews said the firm’s membership of the NPAworldwide cooperative means it can also offer clients the global reach of its multinational competitors.
“Penrith is a transitioning community where industry, urban and rural life is combining to make us one of the most impressive cosmopolitan and progressive regions in our country,” Penrith Personnel general manager, Jan Baremans said. “The merger of our two professionally aligned, independently owned businesses couldn’t have been a better match.”
