Posts by admin
Launching apps
Key Skills are launching 2 new apps, 1 for employers and 1 for our workforce, details below Employer hub One simple place to manage your workforce with us. The Key Skills Employer Hub is your direct line to everything you need — whether it’s booking staff, reporting an incident, organising a site visit or ordering PPE. Scan. Sign up. Add to home screen. Done. What you can do inside • Submit a temp job order in seconds • Request permanent recruitment support • Report an accident or incident immediately • Access induction information • Book ConstructSafe assessments • Request PPE [...]
Meet Norm Tufue
Norm Tufue’s career is a story of steady progression, commitment, and learning on the job. Starting work straight out of school, Norm built his experience on the job, moved to New Zealand to start a family, and worked his way into leadership through showing up, learning, and taking responsibility when opportunities arose. How did you get to where you are today? What’s your story? I left school and got a job as a storeman in a supermarket. I couldn’t afford to go to university, so I told my parents I’d get a job instead. After a while, I decided I [...]
AI might speed things up but it won’t shake hands
2025 has been the year of smarter, faster, everything. AI tools, automation, dashboards - you name it, every industry is chasing efficiency, and recruitment’s no different. I’ve read the same articles everyone else has. Big global firms are using AI to write job ads in a few minutes, analyse hiring trends, and process thousands of CVs at a time. Their line is that AI isn’t here to replace humans, just to “make humans better at being human.” I get the appeal. Done well, AI can absolutely tidy up parts of the job process that take time. The admin, the drafts, [...]
Te Wai Takamori o Te Awa Kairangi: What’s being built and why it matters
Te Awa Kairangi / Hutt River runs through the middle of the valley and the lives of the people who call this place home. It shapes the land, provides water, and gives the community a space to walk, cycle, fish and unwind. But it also has a long history of flooding and as storms and extreme weather become more common, the risks to homes, businesses and infrastructure have been increasing. Te Wai Takamori o Te Awa Kairangi is a major, multi-year programme designed to change that. It brings together mana whenua, regional and local government, and national transport agencies to [...]
Fixing recruitment’s reputation starts with us.
“Let’s call it what it is,” says Ailsa Atkins, co-owner of Key Skills Recruitment. “The recruitment industry’s reputation is in rough shape.” She says too many job seekers still feel ghosted, unheard, or treated like numbers and that’s on the industry. “If we want people to trust us, we have to earn it,” she says. “Not by saying the right things, but by doing them, consistently and visibly.” Ailsa says recruitment has lost sight of its most important part - people. “We’ve all seen it,” she says. “The missed calls, the shortcuts, the people left hanging. That’s what’s damaged our [...]
Construction’s next chapter is looking up.
At first glance, New Zealand’s latest Building Construction Report looks a bit grim. Revenue across the sector dropped 5% year-on-year (from $99 billion to $94 billion), and around 70% of that went straight to suppliers. Margins remain tight, and if you strip out price rises and population growth, the volume of building work is sitting at its lowest level since 2019. But those are last year’s numbers, not a forecast and there are already signs that the slowdown is starting to bottom out. Green lights are flickering on. Stats NZ recorded a 5.3% rise in new dwellings consented in July [...]
