Meet Peter Cirillo, Managing Director of Segen Consulting
From a very young age, Peter Cirillo has been building things from scratch. At the age of 10, he built his first BMX bike. When he was 18 years old, he restored his first car – a sentimental beauty that he still owns today. He has a passion for the way things work and for helping develop people, products and teams.
Peter’s the managing director of Segen Consulting – a role in the recruitment field that’s been more than 15 years in the making. He is also a food lover, a new father, and a fervent leader, with a passion for his everyday work.
Peter founded Segen with a vision to make it a recruitment consultancy with a difference. He wanted his company to become more than just a recruitment agency which sends across CVs and scans a database. Instead, Segen was intended to be an extension of a company’s organisation or HR department. To do this, he believes you need loyalty, clarity, trust and respect – some of the character values on which his business his built on.
According to Peter, finding the right employee these days is more challenging than before. Clients are being much more specific about whom they’re trying to hire – they know what they want and they will wait for the perfect person to walk through the door. To find that ideal candidate, he says it’s all about aligning his clients with employees who not only have the right skills and experience, but also the right cultural and character fit.
“For me, it’s all about discussing those issues that a client is going through in regards to talent, whether that’s hiring or restructuring, by providing a more consultative approach, rather than just digging through a database,” says Peter. “People want to hire an 11/10.
Normally, employers would hire someone who has just some of the skills and personality traits they’re looking for in the position, and aim to improve those they don’t. However, this isn’t economically viable. In six months’ time, this can lead to those candidates looking elsewhere for new opportunities. It’s far more valuable for the business to dedicate time and money towards someone who will be the right cultural and character fit.”
To do this, Segen uses a thorough process called “charametrics”. This involves an assessment of one’s character that goes above and beyond the competency assessment or psychometrics assessment most agencies use. By identifying character strengths and purpose alignment, charametrics helps Segen’s clients find the perfect person for the role.
For Peter, he believes cultural alignment is important for both his clients and candidates, and his awareness of its significance stems from his love for meeting people and bringing them together.
“I thoroughly enjoy meeting people. Before Segen was born, I spent 18 months away from the recruitment industry. I was involved in heading up a national operation and I really missed that people element, talking to people daily about their careers, going out and seeing clients and talking about all things talent related. That’s what I really love,” Peter says.
And while Segen, its staff, clients and candidates are a huge priority in his life, Peter believes that above all, family comes first. It was just six weeks ago he became a father to his beautiful daughter named Alessandra.
While we all know having a work-life balance can be a challenging, Peter finds ways to do all the things he loves in a day by combining them. People that know him well know he is an avid exerciser. So, each morning, Peter takes Alessandra for a walk in the pram for an hour around the Yarra.
“I get to spend time with her, I get to exercise, and it helps me to feel refreshed going into work and have a great day,” he says. Peter says that his biggest piece of advice for business-minded people who are looking for ways to incorporate a better balance between home-life and work is to always make your family your priority, and everything will fall into place after that.
2020 is also a very exciting time for Peter. Segen will be launching Street Wise – an initiative where Segen clients have a chance to access virtual assistance staff that is efficient and affordable. Trained and qualified staff will be able to assist Segen clients with , admin support, data entry, executive assistance, sales support, social media and marketing management. The end goal for Segen is to help every client minimise meaningless, repetitive jobs to focus on core business strategies so they can flourish.
“A lot of my team is virtual now and they provide assistance across all of those areas for me, so I thought, why not offer that same assistance to my clients – it helps them to take their business further by getting more help at a fraction of the cost. It comes down to helping our clients thrive,” he says.
It’s this mindset of offering a well-rounded, personable and complete support package that goes over and above just recruitment, which has allowed Peter to create beneficial and long-lasting relationships with each of his clients.
If you think this approach could be beneficial to your organisation within the manufacturing, supply chain, procurement and technology sector, or wish to find out more about Street Wise at Segen, then feel free to get in touch with us today!