Closing the skills gap and helping to address the unemployment crisis in the country are a few of the aspects that drove Jacintha Naidoo to start her business.

Naidoo is the CEO and founder of Nanyata, a proudly South African, decade-old, black female-owned talent solutions provider.

After working for decades in the public sector, Naidoo told Business Report that her company created an empowering environment where top contract professionals, permanent job seekers and blue-chip companies unite to achieve extraordinary success.

Naidoo told Business Report that she ventured into the world of entrepreneurship because she yearned for flexibility at first.

“The initial reason was like most mothers, I yearned for flexibility, and this was not possible in my senior role at a government agency which included a fair amount of travel in SADC and internationally. So, the desire for flexibility and independence created that initial impetus.

“We also identified a gap that could set us apart from other service providers. We created our own model that we could implement due to us keeping our overheads low and being open and transparent with both our clients and consultants, where we focused on our philosophies of purpose over profit and networks over hierarchies. Once the business was started and fully operational, I realised that after working for over two decades, that I found my purpose and that is to be part of creating sustainable employment in South Africa,” Naidoo said.

She further said that hearing the voice of an unemployed job seeker being given the news of getting a job is something she holds very dear to herself.

Naidoo said, “Very few things measure up to calling up someone who has been unemployed to give them the news of them landing a job. It’s giving them and their families a new lease and so much hope. I also discovered that I have a passion for networking and therefore connecting people which includes finding the person with the correct skillset to suit the clients needs. Furthermore, due to my extensive network I partner with other recruiters which means that we could assist people to find work who I could not normally assist.”

The 55-year-old said that having and maintaining good relationships in the industry was one of the reasons for her company’s success.

“It was important to have a value proposition to appeal to both the clients and our consultants as many companies do what we do, and we wanted to stand out, and our guiding philosophy mentioned earlier is what made the difference to our stakeholders,” Naidoo said.

“It has to be a client-centric approach and with our project-based resource augmentation services we are normally addressing a specific need with clients and offering an exciting piece of work to the consultants, be it for six months or two years. Collectively in our EXCO team we have a very diverse range of industry experience, however, the financial services industry is our niche, and we strive to be the expert talent-sourcing company so that our clients would see us as the go-to company when seeking highly skilled professionals in financial services.

“Relationship management is also key in our business, and we try and always maintain a personal touch whether dealing with our clients or consultants,” Naidoo added.

She told Business Report that it is sometimes difficult to fill skills required by some companies.

“A challenge that is still quite real is getting onto supplier lists for other financial institutions and we are hoping that our track record stands us in good stead, especially that we are celebrating 10 years of operation this October. Finding skilled resources, especially critical skills, is proving to be a challenge. Here relationship management with our current and past placements is valuable as a large number of them refer us to their colleagues, so apart from the traditional recruitment processes we really try and leverage off our network.”

Having serviced companies in South Africa such as Tiger Brands, Absa, Nedbank, and Bidvest to name a few, Nanyata sees itself as a catalyst for change in the country.

Naidoo added, “We are in early consultation with an IT training company to try and address skills training in the country, however in most such issues it requires national interventions. What we are hoping to achieve is creating a pipeline to address our client needs.”

BUSINESS REPORT