How JobCrystal Came into Being

Like most brilliant ideas, JobCrystal was born out of a deep frustration at the status quo.

At the time, Kevin and Karl, our directors, were both working in positions where they were responsible for hiring key staff. One evening they found themselves lamenting, for the umpteenth time, how hard it was to find quality candidates to fill the vacant positions at their respective companies. The traditional recruitment process was taking a huge amount of time out of their diaries and wasn't producing very good results. (Sounds familiar, doesn't it?)

They began to wonder whether they could use their own experiences of hiring high-performance teams to create a better solution to the recruitment problem. A few glasses of wine later, and a plan had been hatched.

The JobCrystal Vision

Our vision is quite simple, really: we plan to revolutionise the recruitment industry. We want to give recruiters a simple way to find the best person for each job, whilst giving job-seekers the resources, tools and systems to map out their own career path. And let's face it, current recruitment methods aren't doing either of these things very well.

In short, JobCrystal is all about helping great managers find great teams, and getting great people great jobs.

The JobCrystal Directors

Karl Westvig is Head of Business Development and Finance. A large part of his job involves scouting out good restaurants and finding excellent bottles of wine. But he's more than just a wine connoisseur and gourmet, as it turns out.

After graduating from UCT in 1992 with an Honours degree in Business Science, Karl went on to work at various jobs in the market research, retail and consumer finance industries (not all at once, of course). Notable titles that have graced his office door have included Strategy Manager (at Foschini Group Credit Services) and General Manager - Customer and Risk (at Direct Axis).

In 1999, Karl decided that he needed more of challenge, however; so he stepped out and co-founded the well-known consumer finance business RCS Group. He served as CEO until December 2008, and under his guidance, the RCS Group grew to 800 staff and 600 000 customers, with a comprehensive offering of consumer finance products.

Karl started three businesses before he turned 30, and retired at the age of 37. For fun and relaxation he runs half-marathons... in approximately 72 minutes. Seriously though, what else would you expect from a former head-boy and A-student?

Kevin Laithwaite is our Managing Director and Head of Strategic Business Intelligence and Technology. This means that, in addition to his normal workload, he also has to spend quite a bit of time working on his Wii Tennis skills and his blog. Given this, it should come as no surprise that Kevin's career history involves rather a lot of very clever-sounding computer stuff.

Kevin has a degree in Social Science, for which he majored in Economics, Industrial Sociology and English. He left South Africa in 1997, and spent 5 years working as a Business Information Systems Manager at Bristol-Myers Squibb.

In 2003, his longing for sunshine, biltong and braaivleis finally got the better of him, and he returned to South Africa. Once back on home soil, he founded his first online venture, Fountology, which serviced the business intelligence needs of small and medium-sized companies.

Kevin joined CareerJunction in 2005, where he took over responsibility for Applications Development. He spent 3 years at the company, learning plenty about life, the universe and web applications, before leaving to pursue the JobCrystal vision in 2009.

The JobCrystal Team

Lilly is our Chief Operating Officer. She manages the day to day operations of the business, including managing the Sales and Marketing team, Corporate Accounts, HR and weekly language tuition in either Portuguese, Spanish, French or Italian to all the members of the team.

Rich and Graeme are the smart guys responsible for the website. As long as Rich has enough coffee and Graeme has enough bacon (breakfast is a special occasion every Thursday morning), it's all good.

Lara is a Senior Consultant who looks after our Corporate Accounts, and we have it on good authority that people call JobCrystal just to listen to her voice.

Candace is the funkiest member of our Sales Team. A positive energy person with a wicked sense of humour that keeps our smart chaps on their toes!

Robyn is our Customer Services Consultant. She attends to queries at lightning speed. In fact, don't be surprised if she's helped you before you've even realised you have a problem.

Kevin and Karl handle everything else (including leading the team's championship league in Wii tennis, playing Golf, learning foreign languages and making sure there's enough coffee and bacon.

Where the Magic Happens

The JobCrystal offices are located in Cape Town, South Africa. It's rumoured (mostly by inhabitants of Johannesburg) that the residents of Cape Town don't do very much work at all, and spend most of their days lazing about on the beach.

Of course that's simply not true. We do plenty of hard work here at JobCrystal. For instance, weekly Wii tennis sessions are mandatory, and we've even got a company gym to help everybody stay Wii-fit. (And if we DO decide to spend the day at the beach, we take our laptops with us, obviously.)

To help keep the balance and make sure that no-one burns out, our offices in Westlake have a close-up view of the mountains, and lots of windows so that we can all stop every once in a while and breathe in the sea air drifting in from Muizenberg or Noordhoek.

We're firm believers in balance, so to offset the coffee and muffins that are in plentiful supply around the office, we also insist on weekly company Wii Tennis sessions. We find that it helps to keep our typing hands strong, and our brains limber.