About Us

Our story

Our search and recruitment company is dedicated to our philosophy of find, keep and grow. And it is firmly rooted in a desire to see provincial NZ flourish.

Our relationships, networks and experience stem back nearly 20 years recruiting for Hawkes Bay and well beyond.  Populous People was founded by Rachel Cornwall in 2020. Rachel is well known for her recruitment industry experience, in her previous life with Red Consulting Group, Hawkes Bay. Rachel has a genuine curiosity about what makes people tick – and that permeates right across the team who all have a drive and commitment to seeing people, organisations, economies and communities adapt and grow.

We provide services across all levels of business.

Our executive search and appointment experience ranges from sourcing directors in publicly listed companies to executives, leaders and support teams in engineering, plant, operations and finance, sales and marketing. Our clients range across some of New Zealand’s most understated but successful primary sector, and technology, and engineering based businesses, right through to local government, utilities, social services and aged care.

Whether it’s the hard-to-find people, in engineering, infrastructure and local government, or supply short accountants, finance managers and ever elusive top quality admin support people that we cannot live without – finding them, and ensuring you have exactly the right people for your business performance and growth is what motivates us every day.

Finding people, keeping people and seeing people, organisations, communities and our economy grow – that’s what gets the Populous People team out of bed each day.