Our Story. The History of Harvest.

Celebrating 13 years in the Talent Recruitment & HR game, we share a bit about the history of Harvest.

Harvest was conceived when Director, Maree Herath, returned to Geelong. Her parents were ageing, and her father had fallen ill. Maree returned to her hometown with a young family of her own (her youngest only 4 months old) yet she was ready to take on a new challenge.

After working with some of Australia’s largest and most prestigious recruitment and HR firms — Morgan and Banks (now Hudson) and Talent 2 best practice recruitment and executive search methodology was intuitive for Maree and, while she was at home with her daughter and three year old son, Maree coined Harvest’s business plan.

She saw a company that would be a key regional player in recruitment and HR services. The company would be more than just herself, it was a company that would have a team. The company would start with recruitment however it would provide greater offerings spanning HR Consulting, Careers and Outplacement services. Importantly the company would showcase best quality and service offerings.

Maree hadn’t worked professionally in Geelong. She left the region at 18 years of age to pursue tertiary studies and her career, which took Maree to Melbourne, Perth and Hong Kong. Her “homecoming” was less homecoming than being a stranger in her hometown.

It was from the workshop in her home garage that Maree launched her business in September 2009.

Maree was, and still is today, relentless in pursuing relationships and networks to gain traction. She was thankful to her Perth clients who really launched and provided a healthy return for Harvest in its first year.

The company provided permanent recruitment services to construction, property and manufacturing sectors and in the 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 years the bulk of Harvest’s revenue came from Perth.

In 2011 the company added a Perth consultant to the team to allow continued service of the Perth market freeing up Maree to grow the business in Victoria.

Later in 2011 Maree brought on her first Geelong consultant and with her administrative support team, moved into a boutique office space in Shannon Avenue and the recruitment business grew in Geelong and Perth.

In 2012 the careers business was launched for individual job-seekers and this was leveraged to a corporate outplacement service in 2013 when Alcoa was closing its Point Henry Site. Harvest nominated and was finalist in The Geelong Business Excellence Awards.

In 2013 Harvest had its “purple patch” year. With a turnkey client in Geelong launching a new factory, Harvest undertook end to end recruitment services taking the company from 4 to 34 to meet a July launch date. Meanwhile Perth’s construction and property market was strong on the back of the prolonged resources boom. The company maintained its Geelong office and invested in new offices in Perth moving in with a consulting and administrative support team in late 2013.

In 2013, Maree authored her recruitment handbook “Bodysnatchers — Unlocking the Secrets of the Recruitment Industry”. Her book was aimed at small to medium business owners (of which Geelong has record numbers) to help them gain the tools and framework to successfully grow their business while providing in-house teams lessons from the recruitment industry to help fast track their learning in recruitment. The book was launched in 2014 and continues to be well received by companies who participate in the Geelong Small Business Festival, many small business owners and those individuals who have moved into in-house recruitment or talent acquisition teams.

The book was launched in 2014, 2014 also saw Harvest nominate and be finalist again in The Geelong Business Excellence Awards. It was 2014 that Perth, the part of the business Maree had only recently invested so heavily in, went from Boom to Bust.

2014 was a dire year for Harvest, the losses were difficult to sustain and the business needed to consolidate.

2015 saw the closure of Maree’s beloved Perth branch and her faithful Perth consultant leave for a more stable in-house role.

In Geelong, while the business was moving forward it wasn’t enough to pay back the previous year’s losses.

However, the company grew and continued to gain traction with recruitment, contracting, careers and outplacement being offered across a host of industries from manufacturing, education, health, agribusiness, construction as well as professional and scientific services.

In 2016, Harvest was back to a clean slate financially and the business was tracking well with established, repeat clients that continued to support the company. The company, while still  in its consolidated  state grew thanks to a talented, supportive and committed small team.

In 2017 Harvest had officially rebounded. The company was profitable, the office moved into its Moorabool Street HQ its big clients continued to demand significant pieces of service from the company and Harvest was listed on the executive recruitment panel with WorkSafe.

The 2017 year saw Harvest become a significant player in the Geelong landscape placing 64 roles across public sector, manufacturing, petrochemical, retail/wholesale and agribusiness. The contracting desk went from $40,000 gross revenue per month and approximately 4-5 contractors to $150,000 gross revenue and over 20 contractors; the majority white collar professional or administrative staff with a handful of blue collar.

Harvest had to grow its team to support this growth and from September 2017 key staff were placed.

In 2018 the the company grew to eight staff with service streams across Recruitment (permanent, contracting and blue collar), HR On-demand and HR consulting, Careers and Outplacement. Clients currently include engineering, manufacturing, agribusiness, petrochemical, public sector, defence, accounting and legal sectors.

In 2019 Harvest launched the HR Index — a survey or employment and HR trends and sentiment and released these findings twice (at it HR Breakfast) and at a Localised meet-up when Harvest was a Localised Partner.

2019 also saw the rebrand of Harvest and key divisions of Talent Recruitment (white collar), Industrial (for specialists in industrial related sectors), HR & People Solutions (for HR events and bespoke consultancy) and Careers.

By late 2019 a review of services saw Harvest withdraw its Blue Collar offering in 2019 electing to remain in our proven capability of white collar specialties and executive recruitment.

In 2020, Harvest launched it HR & People Solutions prospectus — outlining its HR services and events and created an HR ecosystem, the HR nexus with membership to organisations and service delivery by HR Nexus Partners.

While the pandemic of COVID-19 saw the recruitment business impacted this allowed for further HR offerings and webinars to add value to clients and the region. By the September 2020 quarter, Harvest’s recruitment division had recovered and a number of remote roles were placed (including Harvest consultants) when restrictions prevented office-based work.

Our second HR Index “Emerging from COVID” was released in November 2020 and it’s launch took place via video and uploaded on Harvest’s Youtube channel.

In 2021 we gained a Business Trainee who helped us streamline and improve our systems.

Of note we gained our first funded project from the Regional Digital Fund to determine the digital deficits and the competencies required of digital specialists and corporate generalists. This came through the findings of our HR Index survey that sighted the need for “digital” in employment trend data.

The latter part of 2021 and 2022 Harvest experienced first-hand the impacts of talent shortages. With competitive factors Harvest’s small team departed for other locations or in-house roles. The team rebuilt  with 7 staff — 4.5 in recruitment and 2.5 in corporate services (including our marketing consultant). Our HR & People Solutions division is staffed with specialist contractors according to the clients’ needs as is our careers division.