Eight Recruitment

Founded by Director Nadene Barretto in 2011, Eight Recruitment is a Newcastle based company specialising in the strategic placement of professional staff across the mining, engineering, construction, health and finance sectors.

The business was named Eight Recruitment for its guaranteed rate of 8%, which is not a discount rate, but the fee at which the company's model enables it to deliver strategic recruitment solutions. The industry rate is around 16-25%.

The company's philosophy turns the industry standard on its head by putting candidates and clients at the centre of the business. Eight Recruitment takes the opposite approach to mainstream recruitment firms by prioritising candidates to ensure each placement shares the values, meets the qualification criteria and is the right fit for the culture of the client company. They see themselves as “career cupids”, matching people to their perfect roles.

Nadene is a fun, charismatic individual with 15 years' experience in recruitment and runs the company with her husband, Director and well-known rugby union player, Steve Barretto. The company was run by Nadene for the last 5 years, but in the last 12 months has grown significantly.

Nadene engaged Headjam to help give her business a facelift and a fresh new marketing campaign, in order to recruit new candidates for their growing list of clients. They also wanted to refresh their brand and website, capturing the essence of their business and unique selling point through photography/videography to help showcase their business to potential clients.

To attract qualified and eager candidates to Eight Recruitment to service the employment needs of their growing client base in the mining, engineering, construction, health and finance sectors in Newcastle and Sydney.

Attracting quality candidates would attract quality clients, attracting driven consultants who would then attract quality candidates. A great cycle.

Clients are executives 35-55 years old, in senior management roles or small to medium business owners in mining, engineering and construction industries, with disposable income from $100k to $360k, based in Newcastle and Sydney. Most clients are involved in communities and sports clubs, and are socially active.

Transparent recruiting based on turning business relationships into career opportunities. Career Cupids.

"I trust that Eight Recruitment understand my business needs and can find the best employee for our organisation"

"Eight Recruitment are the leader in recruitment and have great candidates for our industry"

"I feel confident that Eight Recruitment have connections with the employers I want to make my next career move with"

Eight are a bold, honest, and personal agency, who stand out from the crowd with their 8% offering rate. We wanted this to reflect in the brand. The logo was developed to feature a figure 8 with a hand-drawn, employment section annotation feel, making it dynamic and engaging. It’s also a consistent and clear link to the 8% rate. It was surrounded with a confident, straightforward font, representing the personal nature of the brand supported by bold and honest values.

The colouration of the brand was also made to be loud and proud. A quirky 80’s mood was created through retro-chic bright and bold greens, blues, reds, and yellows. This was applied to all aspects of the brand, for consistency.

The quirkiness continued in the use of photography. Puns and jokes were combined with visual gags to create a playful and personal atmosphere around the feeling of a new job or the specific industry of the job. This was done in tandem with a variety of colourful and lively photo-shoots, with group shots, inspired by funny family photos, and individual shots, inspired by bright fashion photography. Photography was used with video to reintroduce the Eight brand and show off their personality, allowing us to run a robust brand launch and social campaign.

Stationery was overhauled to include the bright colour scheme and to be all about the people – quite literally. The individual photographs were used to make the stationery personalised, and to have the people at front of mind.

All of the techniques came together for the website; bright colours, photography and cheeky humour were all utilised, along with a video, to create a focussed and informative space that looks good, while maintaining a consistent brand identity.

The continued success of Eight Recruitment is a testament to the dedication of the owners, Nadene and Steve, who have tenaciously worked hard to build one of the best recruitment agencies in NSW, that challenges the norms of the industry and provides a fair and upfront fee structure for exclusive contracts.

Disrupting such a historic industry with such a legacy of how things ‘should’ be done, has only been possible through the growing team’s commitment to serving their clients in the best way possible. Headjam have been incredibly proud to be a part of the journey with the organisation and look forward to many more years of collaborating to come.