Tree change. What is happening in rural Qld?
The BIG move!
I have recently joined the great team at McDougall HR in Toowoomba. Sandwiched between the Lockyer Valley and the Darling Downs sits on top of an escarpment sits a vibrant town with a lot of growth planned.
I started the day after the Queens birthday long weekend which makes me almost 4 weeks old.
I have relocated from the big city lights of Melbourne so it has been quite a change; which I am thoroughly enjoying! But, I was apprehensive.
Imagine my surprise walking down Ruthven Street and seeing alley ways with Melbourne like graffiti and funky cafes with GREAT coffee.
We lived in an apartment in Melbourne and I couldn't even park my car out the front; different in Toowoomba. We now have the luxury of a house!
My Dad was born and bred in Toowoomba. He’s now retired here and tells me stories of the massive changes throughout the region. He used to hang out on the corner of Ruthven and Margaret streets (what is now Lincraft) as a teenager generally loitering and trying to look cool.
When he fell ill at Christmas of 2013 my wife and I decided to move here to be closer in his twilight years and support my parents in this hard time.
I was apprehensive about the move to a rural location; I was worried about my professional development and career in general. I had enjoyed a fast paced, competitive environment performing recruitment in Melbourne and I wasn't sure if I was going backwards.
Surely the work would be few and far between?
Let me tell you… My worries were unfounded.
Our Founder, Director and hands-on Recruiter Kelli McDougall took me to meet with a prospective new client on my first week: an agricultural business producing poultry products.
Now, I thought I would go out to see a shed of chickens and talk to a bloke in an Akrubra about farm hands. Boy was I wrong.
This massive operation was not only state of the art; they employed, as a larger group, over 2000 employees. They had a shed all right! They had acres of land with 10 massive sheds.
OK, colour me impressed.
Next, Kelli took me down into the Lockyer Valley, a beautiful part of the world known for its produce. Surely this client would be more in line with my expectations? Nope. State of the art facility with some real innovators working to get the freshest of products supplied to the whole country, and beyond.
The more networking and meeting with clients I do the more impressed I am at the scale of operations I discover.
My background in Aviation and Trades recruitment has seen me work with some of the biggest companies in Australia and indeed the world. I love recruitment; no other industry can you have such a big impact on an organisation in one transaction. I thought moving too Toowoomba I would be loosing some of the opportunities to work with companies on that large scale. But I was wrong.
This vibrant and dynamic region has more to offer than some capitals and that is what I will be talking about to candidates in my network. Attracting talent from the major centres is often the difference between making a placement or not. Reaching out to top talent is part of a recruiters brief, but it’s made easy if we have a juicy carrot to dangle.
With Toowoomba, it’s an easy sell!