With Sean Walters undergoing shoulder surgery yesterday, he is unable to chisel upon the Whiteboard slate his usual recruitment commandments, and so it’s an opportunity for me to pop back into the blogosphere this week.
He will doubtless blame his ailments on having to “carry the recruitment industry on his shoulders” or some such, but be under no illusions, it is actually a result of his LARP-ing as Steven Seagal in the mean Aikido dojos of West Auckland.
So, what has happened in Rice & Co’s corner of the recruitment world this week?
Actually, something pretty cool happened…
Every month the rice.co.nz website updates the total number of Agency Recruitment, Internal Recruitment, and HR positions that we have filled since we launched at the start of 2010 and last month, we hit the milestone of 500 Agency Roles Filled.
Rec-to-Rec, recruiting recruiters for recruitment agencies, is where we began as a business. We have since branched out into internal recruiters, HR professionals, contractor recruiters and building out a freelance recruiter community through JOYN. We even develop recruitment technology products too.
But placing agency recruiters remains the deep-rooted soul of our business, so this is a milestone that brings me a great deal of personal satisfaction, and gratitude to all of those involved over the years.
Rice Consulting in 2010
Making placement number one, Todd McCallum, with SKILLED Group in 2010. Working from home, when Rice Consulting was starting up, with some assistance from my son who is now a 6’4” 17-year-old.
Rice & Co in 2026
Claudia making placement number 500 last month, a candidate who came into recruitment via our new-to-industry speed interview event ACCESS. She had her own little assistant for the day too 🐶
Placing agency recruiters isn’t easy. It’s like herding cats. Cats on ice, dunked in Vaseline. Recruiters are charming, engaging, positive people. They are also ego-driven, capricious and easily distracted. Just like us, in fact!
So, whilst it is a modest total over 16 years, for such a peculiar niche in our small NZ market, it feels like a significant number.
Hats off (commiserations?) to all of the Consultants who have worked with Sean and I over the years and who placed agency recruiters through the Rice business.
Thank you to Estelle, Scott, and Claudia who have all run the desk as dedicated agency rec-to-rec consultants over the years. Also, thanks to Sarah, Claire, Wendy, and Amaria who ran other desks but combined this with agency placements too.
And, of course, thanks must go to Anastasia, who has been resourcing recruiters and supporting these Consultants for over a decade now.
Here’s to the next 500.
As our old tagline goes – We Love Recruiters 🫶
^JR
