Testimonials

Nancy and her team have been phenomenal at their job. I would have never figured out who I really needed to hire for the position, if not for them. We went through many kinds of questionnaires, to make sure we attract only the right kind of candidates and when that was done, they did even a more detailed job of interviewing them and leaving us with a few exceptional candidates to choose from. I'm very excited to get started with my new employee and all this thanks to their team!

We were stuck. We needed a new employee and were having great problems finding the right person. Nancy made some suggestions, some of which were a little radical for us, but we went with them anyway. Result: we have an excellent new employee. If you're having problems recruiting the right people, I'd recommend talking to Vinehouse.

I worked with Nancy Slessenger and Dave Nicol of Recruit Right for Vets to assist in hiring for my veterinary practice. Nancy was incredibly knowledgeable and has a tremendous insight into what kind of person is ideal for a position. She is able, in a short conversation, discern whether a potential hire would be a good fit in the position thus saving the potential employer tremendous time in the hiring process! Rather than interview numerous people, she narrowed the options down and I did 1 interview and hired the person. The process was very smooth and I was able to continue working and producing income and not waste lots of time doing pointless interviews. She also gave me counselling on how best to interact with this new employee and hopefully keep the person in the role for as long as possible. It doesn't take long to recognize that she is truly an expert in her field and a tremendous asset to draw upon. I will be working with her again when I need to hire again and I recommend her to my colleagues!

I wanted to send you an email letting you know how much I've appreciated working with Nancy Slessenger to bring on board my new Director of Client Services. In the past, I've overseen and ran the process of hiring my staff, with limited success. By contracting with Vinehouse, the hiring process was a great deal simplified, and bottom line, I was able to hire a new Director of Client Services who had both the technical skills, and a personality that also meshed with our office culture. It's been a month since she started, and I couldn't be happier with the results. Another part of the process that I really appreciated is the ongoing consulting that Vinehouse provides to make sure that over the first year the relationship continues to improve by making sure that I'm giving the correct feedback to help my new hire grow in effectiveness as time goes on. Bottom line, I’ll never hire someone on my own, I'll be using and recommending Vinehouse in the future. All my best, Dale.

Also, I have to mention how wonderful the team at Vinehouse is. I have a unique perspective as I was recently on the other side of this interview process and I just want to say that you're all lovely. You are very, very warm and it makes all the difference when you're fielding a dozen questions. You’re very good at what you do. You all sound like someone I want to grab a drink with. 🙂

Recruitment has been a daunting process for our small business. To find someone with the right skills but also to "fit" with our current team is the challenge. Engaging Nancy's services to shape the interview process, her speaking directly with our top applicants and providing us with the right questions and tasks has proved invaluable. I have learnt new skills along the way and the structured process should be adaptable for future recruitments. Thank you Nancy for your assistance.

Normally, when we needed to hire, I would say to everyone: "Does anybody know someone who is interested?" and I would chat to them for 5 minutes. It wasn't very successful. We'd come to the end of where we could get people through our systems. We had got to the stage where we didn't want to advertise and didn't want to bring in anyone. The Job Centre has made it so difficult to put an ad on their site – we got 20 CVs and nobody turned up for an interview. We didn't want to put an ad in the paper – it cost £250. I thought we might as well employ Vinehouse instead and I'm glad we did. The system worked really well. The advert they put in attracted the right sort of people we were looking for. The screening process got rid of people who weren't really interested. The application form and telephone interview told us a lot about the person before we got to the final interview. We were only looking for 1 person; we interviewed three and took two of them on.

Before I met Nancy, I used to hire like everyone else. I'd write a boring advert and try to attract as many people as possible. And when I think back to my interview technique I cringe. The result of this guesswork was shown up in both my PL account and stress level. What Nancy did was to help us implement a streamlined and scientific process that saved time by putting off the bad candidates long before I could interview them. She also taught me how to conduct effective interviews, so I became very good at spotting who was right for my business. The results were explosive growth in both revenue and profit and transformation of team culture. I cannot recommend highly enough and will be forever grateful to Nancy and her team.

She's really a super hire, 5x more than I was hoping for/expecting. When I need another person – you'll be hearing from me again! Thanks for a great job.

Prior to working with Vinehouse we had done some hiring ourselves and we had stumbled across one person who turned out to be really good. The next time we posted a job it seemed like the number of applications just wasn't coming in and it didn't seem like we were getting the type of applicant and we needed. We ended up going with the best one. That was a total failure. We ended up training someone we never should have trained or hired. At that point we were just scared to stick our neck out to hire because we felt we didn't have the necessary tools to do the hiring properly but we needed a couple of new people on our team to manage the growth we had going. So we worked with Vinehouse. We were really just going after one new employee, but we found two great people who have helped us grow – our growth has been 60% year on year. What it's really done is allowed people in our company to spend time on things they are good at and less time doing stuff they are not good at. So using this hiring process to find the right new employees has helped us in a pretty big way. It's helped take a lot of the evening and weekend stuff off the plates of our main team members and has really created a better environment for everybody. We are just starting on the next vacancy and are using Vinehouse.

I hated recruiting and hiring. Actually, I was scared of it. And that had become an impediment to our growth. The Vinehouse team was key in giving me a different, systematic way to approach developing job descriptions, posting them, screening applicants, and doing the hiring. I'll never wake up every day yearning to recruit, but, this is no longer a persistent stumbling block. We've now got a great team of people and continue to rapidly expand — with multiple years of 50-100% year-over-year employee growth.

The Vinehouse recruiting system has now helped us through two significant hires for our company (and another key one in process now!). In each case the hire has taken our business to a better place. The recruiting method is rigorously 80/20 and has saved us massive amounts of needless work, it has helped us clarify our own needs and our own culture for our benefit and that of our candidates, and it has brought to light the strengths and weaknesses of every applicant we've considered, so that when we make the final decision we know exactly the kind of person we're bringing on board. We're sold on Vinehouse. We would not and will not hire any other way.

I knew very little about how to hire, and have made some pretty expensive mistakes along the way. Nancy had a great ability to focus me on my need. The first thing she did was interview my best worker to find someone who could actually work with me well. We worked on goals, how to search, who to search and what I really wanted them to do. We found a great candidate, and I feel safe in knowing that if he doesn't work out, Nancy will still be there to find a replacement. That feels safe – if you are like me, take my advice and spend the money on Nancy's excellent service. It's an investment in speed, efficiency and ultimately better profit performance. A wrong hire is way more expensive than Nancy!

I consulted with Nancy over 6 months to help me expand my gym business. Up until that point, I was hiring friends and family members but eventually hit a roadblock where I wasn't able to hire qualified employees to deal with the growing demands of the business as we opened up more locations. Nancy helped me define the roles and tasks that each position required and also create a hiring system. She essentially helped us create our very own HR system for a small business. On a personal level, she provided guidance on how to be a manager and deal with different types of employees. Thank you Nancy!

Vinehouse's expertise is attracting and matching candidates' personal characteristics to the needs of a role and culture of team. Vinehouse demystifies the process of skillfully screening candidates. She then presents descriptive detail on the ways a person fits a role or the challenges they may introduce as part of a team. This kind of detail is invaluable if you are committed to hiring quality employees who will help your company excel. Or, if your aim is to enhance the functioning of a team, Vinehouse can expertly assist with the steps needed to increase team health and effectiveness. All of this is grounded within a profound understanding of human personality and behaviour that they have refined through extensive experience putting these ideas in action.

Vinehouse changed the course of my entire business... and helped preserve my sanity. After years of wasting time and energy on hiring bad-fit team members — costing hundreds of thousands of dollars — everything has flipped for the better since hiring Vinehouse. Now, every hire we've made has been exactly what we were expecting. The best part was that they handle all the parts I don't have time for — even the interviews. Vinehouse is and will always be an integral part of our hiring process.