Software company's gigantic recruiting challenge

Christchurch-based Jade Software is in major recruitment mode – seeking 28 new team members to come on board immediately to help the company meet strong business growth. 

And that’s just the beginning.  Jade is targeting ambitious growth over the next 10 years – which will lead to even more job opportunities.

The company recorded revenue of $30.8 million for the year ending 31 December 2020 and is confident of growing that to $80 million within a decade.

Twenty five of its 28 current vacancies are for roles based in New Zealand, two in Australia and one at its York base in the United Kingdom.  They include quality assurance engineers, software engineers, a client manager, a business analyst and a marketing co-ordinator.

“Not unusual roles for us, but it’s definitely exceptional to be recruiting this many people at once, considering we currently have only around 220 staff,“ says John Ascroft, Jade’s Chief Innovation Officer. “That’s a lot of new people to recruit and introduce to the company in one go.

“We’ve brought in lots of new contracts in the last month or two – most of them modernisation projects for large Australasian companies wanting to make their software easier to use and able to work across different systems.  We are also seeing very encouraging growth in our international markets,” John says.

‘We’re fortunate that the Jade culture is very appealing and is definitely a recruitment tool for us.  People are drawn to our culture and to the care we show our people,” John says. 

Jade introduced innovative new ways of working in response to Covid-19, along with activities and a support programme to keep its staff connected and engaged.  This led to Jade winning the HR Innovation category at the recent Human Resources New Zealand annual awards.

John is upbeat about New Zealand training for the tech sector.

“In the past it would have been fair to say that New Zealand tertiary institutions weren’t training enough people to meet industry needs, but that’s no longer the case.  Local tertiary providers do a good job of training graduate engineers, which is important given the difficulties hiring people from overseas at present. 

“With the immigration tap currently turned off it’s more difficult to hire experienced people, but the flip side of that is that New Zealand companies often take on staff, train them for a few years and then lose them to overseas roles – which isn’t such an issue at the moment.  So we’ve got more of an equilibrium – which we hope will work in our favour.

“We are offering people the full package – lifestyle, flexible working and an environment where they will get to work on some great projects and learn a lot,” John says.

“New Zealand tech companies are all competing for a fixed pool of trained people right now but we’re confident the Jade culture will give us an edge and we’ll find the people we need to be part of the next stage of Jade’s journey,” John says.  “The feedback so far is very positive.  People want to be part of an exciting, successful company where they can develop their own skills.”

About Jade Software

• Christchurch-based Jade Software is one of New Zealand’s least known export success stories - an overseas owned, New Zealand based company employing many of our best IT brains to develop innovative solutions globally and export its leading edge products to building societies, finance companies and casinos all around the world.

• Jade’s ambition is that within 10 years it will have four products running annual revenues of $20 million each.  JADE platform (an end to end technology platform that allows developers to build applications so that businesses can seamlessly connect with their customers) already earns $20 million annually and the company has plans to grow its anti money laundering Jade ThirdEye product to $20 million. It’s also planning two new products, likely be in used in regulated environments.

• Jade is owned by United Kingdom based Skipton Building Society, which started as a Jade customer, invested in the company, increased its stake and later took the opportunity to buy out all remaining shareholders – including Jade founder Sir Gil Simpson. 

Through its Skipton links, Jade has expanded its Jade ThirdEye reach to UK building societies such as the Newcastle Building Society and Monmouthshire Building Society.  It is now expanding to target sectors that are characterised by regular, large financial transactions – including, remitters, casinos and the gambling and racing industries.

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