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Malaysia's recruitment agency of the year is...

The coveted gold for the Recruitment Agency of the Year went to Robert Walters, while Capita Staffing & Search took home the silver, and ManpowerGroup Malaysia the bronze in the inaugural edition of the Asia Recruitment Awards in Malaysia.

Sally Raj, managing director of Robert Walters Malaysia, commented on the big win, "This is a great honour for Robert Walters Malaysia. We attribute this success to our thorough understanding and appreciation of our clients’ business needs."

The company defines its tenet as: "We don’t want to be the largest professional recruitment business. We want to be the best," which shone through in its submission to the jury, which comprised practicing HR professionals from across the region.

A unique aspect is the company's non-commission business model, with a view to offer clients a consultancy-based service instead of sales-based recruitment.

Unlike many other recruitment firms, Robert Walters’ consultants and managers are salaried professionals, handed out team bonuses, instead of being paid based on commission.

This enables consultants to focus on achieving the best fit for candidates as well as clients.

As a result of tracking new and existing clients every month, the company has a full overview of its accounts, and has seen financial growth consistently increase every year since 2010.

ALSO READ: The 3 best career websites in Malaysia

Silver winner Capita Global looks within to focus on hiring people with the right personality and their ability to blend with the existing people and company culture.

Despite acknowledging the challenges in hiring for personality, such as its impact on speed of the process, the company states the advantages of this system far outweigh the disadvantages.

Affirmed the company's director, Victor Cheah, "A company is nothing without the right people. When it comes to hiring the right people, skills and experience is secondary to personality."

Hiring starts from within, with recommendations coming in from existing staff, in a belief that "birds of a feather flock together," through a cash-based referral programme.

In addition, the company spends a great deal of time and money in helping staff build and strengthen relationships with each other, through a monthly company outing, among others.

ALSO READ: Malaysia's best recruitment consultants of the year

ManpowerGroup, the bronze winner, recently moved away from a branch network business model, to one spearheaded by sales instead, with each branch supported by an array of shared services in research, recruitment and HR.

The new structure, still in the process of being implemented, has already increased productivity of the top-half of the staffing team by 7.5%.

"Innovation is one of our core values, we live it every day and challenge ourselves never to accept status quo. We are far from perfect but it drives us to persistently find new and better ways of doing things," said Michelle Teoh, the company's strategic account manager, on the achievement.

ALSO READ: How 3 firms in Malaysia made recruitment more innovative

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For the full set of winners and photos, click here

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