Ambitious and driven

Mark Fisher was kicked out of school when he was 16. For the bored teenager, it proved to be the best thing that could have happened. Fifteen years later the high-school dropout’s world is his oyster.

Being kicked out of school, just as he turned 16, with a ‘suggestion’ he take the only job listed on Rangitoto High School’s careers board, wasn’t quite the auspicious start a distracted young man had imagined would propel him into the great wide world.

In his own assessment, Mark Fisher was “bored and not interested in the academic side of school” and consequently had “become a general nuisance”.

But he was fortunate too; Glenfield’s Henleys Propellers & Marine was to provide him with a business crash-course, more useful than most business courses at university.
The initial role was purchasing officer, although in no time at all Mark was on the road polishing his exceptional sales skills (both parents had been in the sales sector) and learning how to manage a diverse team, across the gender and age brackets. His MD, Mark Power, was to go from no-nonsense boss to mentor and friend.

Boredom was never an issue – ‘driven and ambitious’ was how young Mark was being described. He worked his way through all aspects of the business, ending up as sales manager with responsibility for the manufacturing arm too, during nearly six years at ‘basic camp’.

At that point he and two mates set off on their OE; within six weeks their money had run out.

Mark took on a role in recruitment, with no idea that the stop-gap job would later shape his future back in New Zealand.

Today Mark Fisher is the founder, owner and headhunter-supreme at Eighty4 Recruitment, a global engineering and construction recruitment specialist.

“Basically, we headhunt skilled professionals for companies in New Zealand, but that has extended to Australia, the Middle East, the UK and Europe,” explains Mark.

“Nine in ten of our placements are candidates we have got to know, personally, having met with them face-to-face and checked out their backgrounds thoroughly. Or via our trusted and extensive global networks.

“We are far more than a web-based matching service, where recruit and recruiter take a chance, on faith, and not much else. Our approach has been endorsed by being the only Diamond Recruitment Partner to the NZIS (New Zealand Institute of Surveyors),” he says.

Skilled professionals returning to New Zealand are high on the list of their candidates. Remarkably, Eighty4 Recruitment (the name is Mark’s birth year and was selected to ensure a dotcom listing) has only been in business for two years and nine months but it already has five staff, a list of market-leading clients and smart offices in the Smales Farm precinct, on Auckland’s North Shore. Last year they were finalists for Best Emerging Business in the Westpac North Business Awards.

Paying his dues
If this all sounds so easy, it wasn’t. Mark had to pay his dues in the tough recruitment market overseas, and he was just in time for the GFC. Tough times.

Now, just over 10 years later, he recalls his experience in recruitment at The Oyster Partnership in London.

“They were an award-winning, privately-owned business specialising in both private and public-sector, in property and surveying. I was soon managing the day-to-day running of the business and, importantly, the value of building long-term successful client relationships.

“I’m proud of having driven year-on-year growth throughout the GFC by becoming the best at what we did via our specialist divisions. It was a big lesson learned.”

Previously Mark had learned at Henleys the importance of high value products/services and niche businesses. Recruitment was no different. SMEs, unlike corporates, don’t have to be all things to everyone. In fact, specialising in a niche makes you special; different to the herd. You develop a good name and you can charge more.”

When a founding partner was asked to leave Oyster, 18 months after Mark had joined, he was offered a senior role. He decided to ‘back himself’, passing up the opportunity to take equity in the firm and instead opting for a profit-share. That proved to provide a substantial boost to his wealth and gave him the ability later, when he’d grown the company to 27 employees, to opt out and return to New Zealand.

He’d noticed New Zealand was heading into an infrastructure boom, with Auckland’s Waterview tunnel, roads of national significance and all that went with those projects. “The biggest investment in large construction in 40 years.”

Mark secured a tunnelling engineer through his personal associations with UK professionals and Eighty4 Recruitment was underway.

One of the key strategies he has employed is building associations with the industries he works in, a boon for finding out about developments, projects and industry issues. He makes a point of attending industry get-togethers, mixing regularly with clients and candidates, and sponsoring events to show his commitment to the industry. It’s paid dividends.

“Consequently, we get direct access to hiring managers from the best New Zealand companies. That translates into our being the first to know about the best positions which need filling,” says Mark. “Over 90 percent of the roles we fill aren’t advertised.”

Local adjustments
While the UK lessons were valuable, Mark had to adjust to the fact that in the New Zealand market there might only be two positions going, rather than thousands at a time. So he made Eighty4 Recruitment’s focus candidate-led.

“That means doing a whole lot more than taking a brief from a client and putting it on Seek. The client could do that themselves. We needed to have a value proposition – something the client would be prepared to pay us for delivering.”

So he created a role of ‘resourcers’, whose job is “to find and nurture the best talent, rather than waiting for them to apply for a role”.

Mark has also added a contracting side to his business, facilitating short-term placements. Eighty4 also offers HR services, for those needing occasional guidance without the permanent overhead.

While he is supremely customer-focused, the high school-dropout is as committed to empowering his own employees. Mark has measures in place to allow them to develop themselves and to take initiative in the company.

“We don’t waste time with bureaucratic processes. The team enjoy that freedom to make their own decisions about what they think is best, which our clients and candidates appreciate. We’ve created an environment where honesty, integrity and innovation can thrive. But we’re also having fun here,” he adds. “We’re all ambitious and driven but if we’re not having fun, it’s not happening.”