Every June I think: “Recruitment Hive can’t afford to donate to charity this year.” It is easy to convince myself that Recruitment Hive’s profit should be re-invested back into the business, given as bonuses to our deserving team or buy that Porsche I’ve always wanted. Sadly, way too easy.

Then I start to think, quite selfishly, “The Universe won’t reward Recruitment Hive with the fruits of good Karma if we don’t donate. Far from rewarding us, the universe may even punish us if we don’t share our success around”.

You see, the thought processes concerning Recruitment Hive’s corporate philanthropy are all quite selfish. In the end, Recruitment Hive always donates some of our profit to charities. We have become too fearful not to. And the Universe keeps rewarding Recruitment Hive which only serves to further increase our fear of not donating again in the future.

It is the fear of what the Universe just might to do our business that keeps Recruitment Hive donating ever increasing amounts of our profit year on year end. It’s an inescapable and vicious cycle of self-interest!

To ensure the Universe delivers good Ju Ju upon us, Recruitment Hive sacrifices a significant portion of our profit each year on the altar of the Recruitment Gods (If the internet says they’re real then they must be: click here for a full list). Descended from both Greek and Roman Gods, the Recruitment Gods are many and include:

Apollo, The God of well managed recruitment processes (and early Monday morning meetings);

Dionysus, The God of badly managed recruitment processes (and Friday night drinks);

Hades, The God of Human Resources (to be appeased at any cost), &

Poseidon, The God of breaking long business droughts.

Quite often our donation sacrifice is larger than 5% as we have to determine it in June, before the end of the financial year. This is a long time before Recruitment Hive’s Chartered Accountant dances around his cauldron as it bubbles upon an open fire within a dark wooded glade, dropping the legs of frogs, weedy herbs and recent ICT graduates into a steaming potion. It is only after months of such mysterious accounting activity, usually sometime around September each year, that Recruitment Hive’s final profit for the previous financial year emerges from the spluttering, steaming bubbles in the cauldron. It is always less than I had predicted in June (such is the black magic of accountancy) and thus our donations end up being larger than intended.

Last year, our team chose to donate to:

Home@Queanbeyean – that provides long-term supported accommodation for twenty men and women with enduring mental illness.

Barayamal – a start-up accelerator program for Indigenous entrepreneurs

Canberra Rape Crisis Centre – an organisation with a reputation for significantly assisting many Canberrans.

The Podmore Trust at Canberra Grammar school – that provides over twenty scholarships to Indigenous kids, many from the South Coast region

This year, in May 2020, our eighth year in business, Recruitment Hive will donate again bringing our cumulative total to well over $100 000.

I’m not just telling you this dear reader! No, I’m broadcasting it to the Universe so as, very selfishly, it will appease the Gods of Recruitment and entice them to bless Recruitment Hive with good Karma, to replenish our Ju Ju, for another year!

It’s all in self-interest you see.

The only donations I make without self-interest are to the people on the street. The people that others don’t see. I see them and smile and that makes them smile, just to be seen and have some contact with another human being as they sit invisible to the masses. They are the ones that get my true, unselfish charity.