Addstaff is still owned and run by the duo who started it in 1999, Jane Bamford and Kim Hamilton.
They’d only got to know each other that year, working for guest services at Coronet Peak and The Remarks skifields.
When they found they shared backgrounds in recruitment and HR, “we literally sat on the bus together and said, ‘we should do this’, and we did,” Bamford recalls.
“We were young, we had lots of energy, I guess we never felt like we had anything to lose.”
For their first 23 years or so they had an office in The Mall, which helped when placing backpackers in temp positions.
Last year, however, they got out of temp hospitality — “it’s a really high turnover business, you’re dealing with a lot of people who are here really short-term and it’s not maybe their dream job, and there’s the hassles of visas and all those things, too”.
Now they primarily recruit office administrators, accounts staff and front-line customer roles.
Bamford says what’s nice is providing good outcomes for those seeking jobs and those offering them.
“Another thing, because we deal with so many locals, a lot of the staff we have got jobs for turn around and they end up being our [employer] clients.”
