About Anchor Executive & Pat Stewart

Pat Stewart has over 30 years of experience in Recruitment, Talent Search, Career Coaching, HR Management and Consulting.

Since being founded in 1982, Anchor Executive Recruitment has provided a focused range of business management services in the fields of recruitment, search and selection, career development and management consulting.

Pat Stewart joined this partnership of consultants in 1993 and has since then gained a reputation in the Western Cape and further afield for her client-centric approach to recruitment, particularly in the NGO sector.As an experienced management consultant, she works closely with client organisations and decision makers to meet their company’s strategic needs. Her process ensures she strengthens and builds the company team, paying attention to the culture fit of the organisation, and helping to achieve the client’s objectives.

Our Commitment to Organisations

  • Build long-term partnerships, based on mutual trust and ethical practices that are efficient and cost-effective.
  • Face-to-face meetings to ensure a thorough understanding of the business culture, management objectives, as well as to understand, the specific requirements of each assignment.
  • Meet all commitments made, in accordance with legal requirements and agreed strategy, consistently maintaining high service standards in terms of professional quality of selection and placement.
  • Strictly protect the confidentiality of all client information.
  • Maintain regular, open communication during every assignment and the following guarantee period to contribute to the success of the placement.
  • Provide comprehensive candidate reports: including CV, thorough reference checks, behavioural profile, qualification, credit and criminal checks.
  • Professional support after placement where needed throughout probation and beyond if necessary.
  • Guarantee period to allow for candidates to adjust to their new position. 6 months for senior positions and 3 months for more general staff.

Our Commitment to Candidates

  • Strictly protect the confidentiality of personal information at all times.
  • Assess suitability objectively, in terms of relevant competencies.
  • Present relevant information to clients, in a professional, objective format.
  • Assist in making well-informed, sound career decisions, by ensuring that the candidate has sufficient information around the new position and company.
  • Maintain regular, open communication during an assignment and after placement, to contribute to personal and career growth.

More About Pat Stewart

Pat Stewart, BA. IMM. built her extensive business career predominantly around Sales, Marketing, Finance and Administration. Having started in Office and HR Administration in a large IT Multinational, she started and ran a Computer Supplies and Business stationery company for eight years in Johannesburg. On relocation to Cape Town with her family, Pat worked for Old Mutual, from which she gained an insight into the investment field. However, she felt it was not a good long-term career fit for her, and she returned to the field of computer supplies as Sales Manager for five years in a smaller Owner-run business, until being retrenched when this company was taken over. While applying for a sales position being offered by Anchor Executive, she was instead offered a position within the company in recruitment, and thus began her 30-year career of recruitment service.  Pat's focused on small and medium companies as well as corporate business, within a broad range of sectors – investment/finance, manufacturing, wine, fabrication, property, accounting, retail, trading and freight, amongst other more specialised business units.

As part of her process, Pat spends time with each client to understand their business and the fundamental culture of the unit, and through this, is able to quickly recruit highly relevant staff for their needs. She supplements her experience and targeted selection skills with the use of a BEHAVIOURAL ASSESSMENT tool. This is conducted on each candidate and enables a more in-depth understanding of “how” the candidate works, not just “where” he has been, and “what” he has done. Over and above this interview and assessment process, thorough reference checking is conducted to ensure that the facts are correct and that the candidate is a close measure to what is outlined. Criminal, credit and qualification checks are also conducted to back up the facts presented.

In all sectors, there are times, when straightforward recruitment through advertising is not relevant or successful, and therefore other methods of SEARCH AND SELECTION or "headhunting" need to be applied. Pat's secret to this is to know where to look to source relevant and potential candidates, as well as to attract them to new companies – often at a time when they were not actually looking for a new position.

For many years, Pat has had a passion for servicing the NON-PROFIT sector in the Western Cape and has built a sound reputation for assisting these organisations with their recruitment and staffing needs. This environment is understandably quite different from the corporate, commercial and industrial sector, because of vastly different funding sources and focus on service and not profit. The challenges are extensive in terms of finding expert management and personal skills and experience, in order to achieve goals and objectives of the organisation, at often much lower salary ranges due to funding restrictions.

Pat has been a Director of Anchor Executive Recruitment for more than twenty-six years and continues to provide the same excellent service to clients she works with today.