A Leap of Faith

How an international move led to the creation of a business partnership that changed the face of recruitment in Canberra.

January 2010: After living in the UK for almost 11 years, David Harrington and his young family had made the decision to return home to Australia.  Having helped a small recruitment firm in London grow from just five staff in one office to 60 staff across four offices, David was keen to find a similar challenge back home.

Down Under:  HorizonOne’s founder Simon Cox was hunting for an ally, someone who would work side by side with him to grow the business, and with strong alignment to his vision and values.

From their very first Skype interview in 2009, David and Simon suspected they had found what they were both looking for. So 8 years after joining HorizonOne, I sat down with David to find out what makes their partnership is stronger than ever.

Q. So David, how does it feel to be celebrating HorizonOne’s 10 year anniversary? Did you ever anticipate having this conversation when you came on board in 2010?

Absolutely! From my first conversations with Simon, I could tell that HorizonOne was built on strong values. Simon had a real commitment to improving the way recruitment was delivered, and the business was not all about the money. It was a rare find in the recruitment industry, but I’d seen similar ideals in small recruitment companies in the UK – and they were ultimately very successful because of their unique approach and thinking.

10 years in business is a testament to how hard we work, and how strongly we believe in what we’re striving for.

Q. And why was it a leap of faith? What do you mean by that?

Well, at the time, my wife and I had made a conscious decision to move back to Australia because we wanted to be closer to family. That meant we were originally looking to move to Queensland and re-establish ourselves there. But when I came across Simon’s call out for a General Manager at a small recruitment firm in Canberra, I was instantly attracted to it. It meant moving somewhere that we had not originally considered, and still a long way from family, but it felt right.

At the time, we were also coming off the recession of 2008, and so the recruitment market was struggling. I’d seen companies with a vision like Simon’s do incredibly well, and while it was an uncertain future, I was excited to be part of it. I also wanted to leverage my experience growing a small recruitment firm in the UK to a dominant industry player, by helping another company with similar values achieve it in Australia.

Moving family, career and country all at the same time in an uncertain market was not without risk, but I had to back myself.

Q. Did you do much more reconnaissance before you leapt, or did you just go for it?

From the first time I chatted with Simon on Skype from the UK, we knew we had a lot in common. We thought the same about business and recruitment, and we shared a love for fishing and the outdoors.

At the time, HorizonOne had only just begun. They had made some progress, but had been hindered by the GFC and other internal issues. Simon was looking to move on from there and needed someone who could add value to the recruitment side, but who also understood the business side.

Q. And how did you feel once you made it to the other side?

My wife and I packed up our life (and our daughter) and got here in very early January 2010. Not knowing the market yet, I was slightly daunted by how quiet it was – you could see tumbleweeds rolling down the street because most of the public service were on holidays in January!

But over time I began working with Government and came to understand how the local market operates.

There were also a few hurdles to jump in terms of sorting out the HorizonOne structure, which I was able to help navigate because I’d come in with fresh eyes. The business needed leadership that was hands-on and could contribute to the recruiting side: bringing on clients, forging relationships with candidates and adding to a healthy cash flow. There was only a couple of staff back then, so it was really important that we all got involved in growing the business.

On the personal side, my family settled in quickly, and we found that Canberra was a great place to raise family.

Q. What challenges have you faced?

Canberra can be a difficult market when you’re trying to introduce a new way of doing things. Government has very established processes, and because of the size of the ship, they’re slow adopters. Often we’re chomping at the bit to help them do things better, but convincing them can be hard.

We’re always learning as we go – we’re our own harshest critics, and the recruitment role in itself has changed a lot over the years. Recruitment used to be a much simpler role. Now, in addition to being experts at their craft, recruiters have to be marketing experts, because the best talent simply don’t sit on job boards waiting to find the perfect role.

We’ve been able to create some pretty unique ways to counter this, which we offer as marketing packages to our clients. And it’s also helped us attract exceptional recruiters to work at HorizonOne. In Sydney and Melbourne, you’ll find many of the recruitment firms are full of British expats who are attracted to those cities for the beach lifestyle. We can’t offer that here in Canberra, so we need a different approach to attract new people.

Q. What’s made your partnership with Simon so successful?

I joined as a General Manager in 2010, and became a partner in 2011.

Both Simon and I have worked a lot on the tools over the past 10 years, and the business has grown to 15 staff. Now our focus is shifting to spend more time on strategic direction, innovation, and creating tools that will help us serve clients into the future.

A key strength is that we’re not always thinking the same way, but we’re always going in the same direction. We have complementary skills, and while we don’t always agree at first, we always get there in the end.

Essentially, we both have the same view on the quality of service we provide, and the ethics we live and die by. We want to set the standard in the market, and be good corporate citizens through the donations we make and involvement in the community.

We’re also both incredibly achievement-focussed – so there’s never a question about who is working harder than the other. We both put in 110%. If things happen outside of work, we’ve got each other’s backs at work.

We also have a good friendship. It has been very important that we get on personally as well as professionally. We share a number of similar interests which means that we are able to spend time out of the office to relax and build a friendship that ultimately helps us be a better team at work. We have been away on a number of fishing adventures, most notably to Anaa Atoll last year. We agree on a lot of things but just don’t ask who the better fisherman is; you may just start a war!

Q. What’s your next leap of faith?

We’re always striving to find ways to do things bigger and better, which requires a leap of faith in its own right.

The next 10 years is all about relationship recruitment. Despite new technology and job-candidate “matching” apps, finding unique and highly skilled candidates requires long-term relationship building and savvy marketing.

We’re 100% dedicated to finding candidates our clients can’t find for themselves. So our leaps of faith are focussed on that as we step into the next 10 years.