Granting individual recognition is an essential component of our high-performance culture at IT/IQ. Born from the desire to recognize our team’s hard work and successes, our annual awards ceremony serves to formally recognize IT/IQ’s most impactful and high performing people from the preceding year.
Taking place in Q1 across our three Canadian offices, 10 awards are up for grabs each year. These awards span several categories (company-wide, regional, and department specific) to ensure no office or department is left behind. One thing is true across all categories; it’s not easy to stand out among our competitive team.
So, what does it take to rise to the top? Fortunately, our award winners aren’t gatekeeping their tips for success. We interviewed our top recruiter of 2022, James Maeght, to gain insight and share the methods behind his best year yet.
Before we get there, we’d like to extend our sincerest congratulations to each of our well-deserving 2022 award winners:
REGIONAL AWARDS
Carmen Giorgini, Calgary Impact Award
Lisa Hill, Toronto Impact Award
DEPARTMENT SPECIFIC AWARDS
Madison Trenaman, Back Office Impact Award
Charnice Mupinda, Best Team Player Award
COMPANY-WIDE AWARDS
James Maeght, Top Recruiter
Chad Johnson, Top Salesperson
Michelle Buckley, Recruitment Rookie of the Year
Callum Roberts, Sales Rookie of the Year
Markus Jensen, Customer Service Award
ALI ELKHALIL AWARD
The Ali Elkhalil Award of Excellence–named after our president’s father–was established to honour Ali’s unwavering support and encouragement for IT/IQ since our inception in 2002.
This award is granted to an outstanding team member who emulates Ali’s selfless attitude and positive nature, demonstrating hard work and unselfish dedication to IT/IQ beyond their work.
This year, we have the pleasure of recognizing James Maeght, PMO Recruitment Team Lead with this peer-voted accolade.
Meet the Recruiter
James Maeght, 2022 Top Recruiter and Ali Elkhalil Award winner, joined our team as a BCIT student intern from the Marketing Management Professional Sales program back in 2019. Since then, he has experienced significant career progression with IT/IQ. After earning four promotions in under three years, James has entered a leadership role in which he has taken on responsibility for assisting our PMO recruiters along their own career progression paths.
We sat down with James to learn more about the driving factors behind his award-winning year as a recruitment team lead, and this is what he had to say:
What do you think helped you achieve this award?
“The biggest thing is just showing up every day, getting to it, and being consistent.” James admits that his daily routine and methods aren’t necessarily going to work for everyone. Rather, what’s important is finding “an efficient way of doing things that works for you, sticking to it, and then adapting as things change.”
Being organized, structuring a productive daily routine, and sticking to the program is easier said than done. If habit formation was easy, there wouldn’t be a name assigned to the ‘new year, new me crowd’ who swarm the gyms every January, only to drop off before daylight savings time hits. If habit formation was easy, the award-winning author and speaker James Clear (another decorated James) wouldn’t have sold 10 million copies of Atomic Habits–a guide so popular it requires no introduction.
Because habits are so difficult to maintain, consistency is scarce, which makes it a major differentiator. That’s where James Maeght shines.
When asked about maintaining a consistent routine, James explains that setting quarterly and annual goals is a big source of motivation: “You have to have a goal or something you want to do in your life or in the work environment. Showing up every day and being consistent is a lot easier when you have something to strive for.”
“The biggest thing is just showing up every day, getting to it, and being consistent.”
What challenges did you face in 2022?
While James didn’t mention any challenges unique to his year in recruitment, he made note of the difficult market conditions which likely challenged all recruiters in 2022.
“For the industry, I think something that affected everybody was the hotness of the market between Q1 and Q3. [When the market’s hot] it’s a lot more competitive internally because candidates have a lot more choice, which is obviously good for them, but can make things harder on the recruiters.”
To navigate a candidate’s market, recruiters need to be extremely sharp. “You have to understand the pros and cons of the role versus other roles in the market, and make sure the motivators are there for the candidates,” James shares from his experience.
Great recruiters are customer obsessed. They consistently begin the recruitment process with their target audience’s pains and motivators in mind.
What advice would you give to other recruiters and team leads who are looking to excel in their roles?
James’ advice for recruiters looking to reach new heights is to focus on collaboration. When it comes to team leads, his advice is to be present. He emphasizes the importance of taking part in the company culture and showing up at the office. This advice doesn’t come as a surprise from someone who leads by example and shows up at the office five days a week.
He rationalizes this advice, suggesting “there’s a direct correlation between the amount of time people spend in office and how successful they are. There are outliers, I’m sure, and that doesn’t mean you have to come into the office, but I’m pretty sure there’s a correlation.”
James circles back to the importance of being present as a team lead, whether that’s in the office or virtually, encouraging all leads to “be there to field any questions or issues that come up for their team and just be there to support them.”
The final piece of advice James offers to recruiters is to “build good relationships with the people you work with – your team, the account managers, and candidates. If you can do that, you should have some success.”
As we continue to push through the first quarter of 2023, there’s plenty of time to reset, adjust goals, and reach new heights using James’ advice to inspire new routines and habits.
To stay up to date with our team and learn more about what’s happening at the office, follow along on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.
