One of Australia's fastest growing recruitment start-ups shuns job boards, doesn't charge traditional fees, and provides a service that sits somewhere between management consulting and recruiting.

TrueNorth Advantage recently ranked on BRW's Fast Starters list for the second year running with revenue growth of 65% to $3.8 million – something which general manager Peter Jackowski attributes to its management consulting approach to recruitment.

"We do what I would term, 'contract-only recruitment'. We don't charge clients recruitment fees per se; we're more akin to a consulting model, where we do the sourcing and the recruitment, then we charge that individual out on a daily rate or time period usually," he said.

"So rather than charging the client a fee, such as a percentage of that person's salary, we take that person onto our payroll and then engage with the client and manage that accordingly."

Rather than using the traditional agency database model to recruit, which Jackowski said is archaic and uncreative, the most effective way to source candidates is to cultivate a closed network, he told Shortlist.

"One of the principles of the business is that generally speaking, we do not advertise roles publicly – very different to all the other agencies. We don't place adverts, it's a waste of time in our book. It's a fishing trawler approach if you ask me. We're much more targeted than that," he said.

"We source through a variety of means but one thing that has been quite powerful is accessing our internal collective professional network."

The professional services staffing firm taps into online social spaces to generate word of mouth referrals through the professional networks of individuals, as a form of "crowdsourcing".

"We seldom engage with people that are outside of our network. We validate people through our network, we source people through our network," Jackowski said.

"We don't just look at CVs or skills in a database. We talk to other people who have worked with these people. That seems to be a more robust way of ensuring that these people meet our high standards before they go out on projects."

Finding an opportunity in clients' "consulting fatigue"

Jackowski said he attributes the company's growth to its consultative way of working with clients.

"There is a lot of demand from clients that have what I would term 'consulting fatigue', so they don't want to buy into the management consulting value proposition; they're not interested in IP, methodology, outcomes-based engagements – they purely want the people," he said.

"We saw an opportunity in the market to provide management consulting, project-services-type resources, in the contract capacity."

The company's fees, however, are lower than management consulting fees, which makes its service more competitive, Jackowski said.

"So effectively we're providing them with the same resources and people, but without all the bells and whistles – a stripped-down approach," he said.

The business staffs the"arms and legs" of projects all the way up to leadership roles in project services areas such as organisational change and business analysis, said Jackowski.

"We don't tend to put anyone on a client's project unless they've got a minimum of 10 years' experience as a starting point," he said.

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