Prominent and well-respected industry icon Sandra Chiles is celebrating a massive 37 years of working in travel recruitment.
Sandra was the brains behind the very first travel industry specialist recruitment agency, Travel People which started back in 1981.
Since then, Sandra reckons she’s interviewed approximately 50,000 PEOPLE in roles throughout the travel Industry in the last 37 years.
Now that is REMARKABLE.
Can you imagine how many names are in Sandra’s Little Black Book? We’ll call it a bible rather than a little book.
Travel People is now known as inPlace Recruitment and has expanded over the years to incorporate not only Travel & Tourism but Events & Hospitality recruitment as well.
Sandra Chiles.
Having assisted countless job seekers and employers with their careers and businesses over the years, Sandra and her specialist team of recruiters still remain true to her original philosophy – People, Integrity, Energy.
“To this day, assisting in building the careers of thousands of people across the travel & Tourism industry (& more recently Events & Hospitality) has been my passion,” Sandra told KARRYON.
Sandra at Taronga Zoo.
She said she has been lucky to work with loyal and dedicated individuals over the years who have shared her dream.
“Helping employers and candidates find that perfect match is what makes going to work each day a pleasure. I feel grateful to have had the opportunity to work in such an exciting & diverse industry with so many talented & inspiring people for over 37 years.”
Sandra Chiles.
Recruitment was a different game when Sandra first began, with the entire process significantly slower.
Until the late 1990s, the only advertising media was the classified section of the Saturday Sydney Morning Herald.
Applications would then arrive via the post; back then the postman delivered overnight with TWO deliveries per day!
With little access to computers the majority of resumes were handwritten (and often difficult to read) occasionally they were typed on a typewriter.
As the years passed, technology evolved and the structure and pace of the workplace changed and applying for jobs became significantly easier with the arrival of the digital age.
Interestingly, the volume of unqualified applications tripled with the ease of applying for jobs online – no longer did candidates actually have to take the time to write up their resume and cover letter and post it off to their ideal position.
This means building rapport with the client has been paramount to the success of inPlace Recruitment.
What has remained the same is that recruitment is about people and no sophisticated software can assess a person’s personality, attitude and team fit as accurately as an experienced recruiter.
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READ: What life was like for a recruiter in 1981