About FirstWorks Group

Firstworks Group is a Workforce Solutions firm in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that specialises in matching the best people with the best companies.

We help startups, SMEs & large companies solve their hiring and staffing problems without the hassle and high expenses of traditional agencies.

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Your Malaysian Workforce Solutions Firm That Just Gets You

FirstWorks Group is a young and rapidly growing workforce solutions firm in Malaysia. Our vision is to be the advisor of choice among our clients seeking talents and counsel for all their hiring needs. We also deliver services, insight and advice that enable our clients to win in the changing world of work.

We have wide and in-depth experiences in contingency staffing, payroll services, search and selection. Our team have worked hard over the years to establish trusted relationships with hundreds of employers across numerous practice areas, and have amassed strong candidate databases.

Placing qualified candidates into the right positions with the right companies is the heart of our business. We are diligent when defining the position specification, to ensure we assemble a team of consultants with the subject matter, functional and regional expertise to support the engagement. Our team draws on its high-level professional networks and industry knowledge to give it a broad reach in identifying potential candidates.

Our team has in-depth experiences in serving clients across a range of industries, from multi-national corporations to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurial start-ups. Our customized driven approach ensures focused personalized attention while virtually eliminating excessive off limits restrictions associated with multi-office firms. Backed by over 30 years of experience, our team will simply make it WORK for you.

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The Leadership Team

The FirstWorks Group Workforce Solutions Team

Abdullah

Chairman

Vinesh

Founder

Elizabeth Hee

Associate Director – Business Development

Genista Tan

Senior Consultant –
Banking & Finance

Suva

Senior Recruitment Consultant

Romi Sharma

Associate Director –
IT Solutions

Dato' Dr Siva Ananthan

Group Advisor

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Abdullah

Chairman

Abdullah is currently serving as a Director on the Board of Media Prima Berhad, Kulim (Malaysia) Berhad and Damansara REIT Managers Sdn Bhd (Manager for Al-‘Aqar Healthcare REIT and Al-Salam Real Estate Investment Trust). 

His career began with KPMG Malaysia from 1988 to 2020. In 1993, he was seconded to KPMG London for two years to focus on the financial services sector. 

In his 32 years of service, he has accumulated experience servicing clients from various industries and large multinational companies. This includes companies in oil and gas, banking and finance, construction and property development, hotel and hospitality, palm oil plantation, manufacturing, and trading sectors. 

He also has significant experience in reviews of prospective financial information for purposes of initial public offerings, right issues and bond issues. He has led many audit assignments in financial due diligence reviews on behalf of acquirers. 

 

Abdullah graduated with a Master of Business Administration from the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of the Pacific, California, USA. He is a member of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants and the Malaysian Institute of Certified Public Accountants. 

Vinesh Thanabalasingam

Founder

Vinesh is the Founder for FirstWork Group of Companies, which is in the industry of human capital management, executive search and recruitment within the human resource sphere. He currently serves on the board of several of FirstWorks’ portfolio of companies on the finance wing of FirstWorks and StaffWorks.

Vinesh is the motivator to a very passionate team, driving the dream, overall operations and intent of the company every single day. At the same time, he is collaborating with other partners on new ideas and innovations creating something new for the impending evolution of the organization.

Prior to FirstWorks Group he accumulated over 22 years of experience in management, finance, and operations.

Vinesh started his career in mid-sized audit firm at Moore Stephens International He then went on to be a senior Accountant and Director at one of the top Media Company’s in Malaysia. At group level, he leads the finance team managing a yearly turnover in excess of RM200m across the publishing and broadcasting fields.

Beside work, Vinesh has held various positions leading to the top position of being the President of Rotary Club of Bangsar. Now he serves in the committee at the district level with the world’s number 1 ‘Service Above Self’ organization known Rotary International. During his tenure he has been honoured with many accolades for his contribution towards Rotary.

Elizabeth Hee

Associate Director - Business Development

Elizabeth Hee has more than 24 years in the Logistics industry. As a highly goal-oriented person, Liz has experience in Account Management, to Industry Development for various Business Sector Development roles in Audio Visual Technology (AVT), Electronics, Banking and Finance.

With strong and confident communication skills, Liz has been able to develop businesses, provide solutions and manage customers at all levels to pursue, present, persuade, negotiate, and win new business, and producing a better outcome with customers for her organization. Liz has developed a pool of loyal customers from her excellent rapport with them, and an equally supportive group of colleagues and staff.

Liz has taken a new growth in career – the recruitment industry and have applied the same principles across for the next curve in career and very much keen to help businesses and talents to achieve their goals.  Liz has placed positions for higher management/Director roles, and this has certainly developed her skills of getting the right candidate for the company. In addition, she also heads hunts people where she charts their career for the next role.  Liz applies her skills, networks, passion, tenacity and dedication positively for Sales and Business Development for companies seeking greater growth, in the present and future challenging business environment against tough competition.

Genista Tan

Senior Consultant - Banking & Finance

Genista brings on a solid 27-year of FMCG and Banking working experience! Upon her graduation from University of Malay in 1990, she joined Nestle and spent a good 8-year working up the rung in the Marketing department.

Subsequently, she was headhunted into Citibank’s marketing department. She left Citibank as Vice President after managing mortgages, investment and insurance, Citibank Online and Credit Cards portfolios throughout her 8-year stint.

Being a passionate marketer, Genista then took the challenge and ventured into telecommunications industry as Head of Customer Relationship Management in Digi at the time when customer activation, rewards and retention, customer analytics and decision management were still at its infancy in telcos.

Genista’s final corporate stint was General Manager of Credit Cards in Hong Leong Bank. She was instrumental in optimising her P&L, growing the topline of loan outstanding, managing the operational expenses, sales and marketing budgets, etc and growing the bottomline in terms of profit.

Throughout her career, Genista has launched numerous products and services, conducted press conferences, involved in the end-to-end of entire Advertising and Promotion ecosystem. She’s indeed a true-blue marketeer and business manager!

It’s Genista’s passion now to unleash the potential of each talent, equip them with the right skillset and mindset, and finally bridge the gap between the talents and the employers and ultimately create a strong talent pool in Malaysia’s corporate landscape.

Suva Balakrishnan

Senior Recruitment Consultant

Suvaneswary has been in the recruitment line over 8 years. Having worked on as both an employer and now with a work force solution agency. Suva has built her reputation recruiting white and blue-collar workforce. She has risen rapidly within the ranks of the company due to her strong passion for recruitment.


Her focus fields include Shared Services, Financial Services, Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing and Logistics & Supply Chain. Currently, Suva is responsible for general recruitment both permanent and temporary staffing.


Suva works closely with clients and candidates to achieve a mutually beneficial employment outcome. She partners candidates and clients using her experience, expertise, and market knowledge. This allows her to achieve the best outcome for both parties, thereby increasing the ROI of the client.


Being part of the FirstWorks Group family, Suva has taken a strong sense of responsibility to develop and support our interns and apprentices on board to further enrich their career.

Romi Sharma

Associate Director - IT Solutions

Romi Sharma has over 20 years of technology consulting and experience in IT recruitment. He has worked with a wide range of industries such as Telecom, Retail, E-Commerce, Fin-Tech, Health Care and Tech Start-ups. Romi was co-founder and General Manager of Maylab IT – a telecom OSS/BSS start-up incorporated in Kuala Lumpur. Romi also occupied a wide range of roles during his prior career such as General Manager, Account manager, Project manager. Romi started his career in technology in the Indian Air Force as a Technical Officer managing a high caliber and specialized group, allowing him to develop his current traits and experience.

Romi is also successfully creating and leading technology businesses with high performance technology team. Having worked on all aspects of the business, he is well recognized for his capability to understand customer needs deeply, a crucial element to design the right and future-ready solutions for customers. Romi is a true believer of the Design Thinking methodology of imagining and designing solutions for customers.

Dato' Dr Siva Ananthan

Group Advisor

Dato’ Dr Siva Ananthan is a renowned corporate strategist and trainer. He graduated in 1985 from the prestigious University of London (United Kingdom) with an LLB Degree with Honours. He also holds a Doctoral degree in Human Behaviour (Leadership) from the La Jolla University (USA).

He is vastly experienced in building up businesses and managing people. He started his career in education and founded and built up one of the world’s most successful private law colleges – Advance Tertiary College (ATC) with branches in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. This gave him a unique opportunity to manage workforces in a cross-cultural context. He also gained a reputation as an outstanding law lecturer, having taught many law subjects at ATC.

He built ATC from scratch and sold it to a public listed company in 1997. Thereafter, he remained active in education in an advisory capacity. He acted as Advisor to the TAFE Colleges, the Nirwana Education Group and Unity College. He also served as an adjunct faculty member of the University of Southern Queensland (Australia), RMIT University (Australia) and Federation University (Australia), teaching a wide variety of management and leadership courses.

He is one of the educationists responsible for laying down the foundation for Malaysia’s highly successful private sector education industry and served as the President of the National Association for Private Education Institutions (NAPEI) during the industry’s infant stages of development. During his tenure as the President, he helped to reshape and redefine the role of private colleges as responsible corporate citizens and was responsible for implementing a voluntary Code of Ethical Advertising and Conduct for private colleges in Malaysia. He also fought vigorously for better human resource practices within the private education sector. At ATC, he introduced minimum wage practices, better working conditions, flexi-hours for working mothers and employee share option schemes. He was way ahead of the curve by implementing these socially responsible measures in the late 1980s. He was also actively involved in the development and implementation of the Higher Education Act of Malaysia 1996.

Dato’ Dr Siva Ananthan a highly accomplished professional with a stellar track record in training and corporate development. Among some of the other positions he has held are:

  • Director of the Pan Pacific Association of Private Education (PAPE)
  • Governing Council Member of the ASEAN Law Association (ALA)
  • Assistant Governor of Rotary International District 3300 (Malaysia)
  • President of the Selangor Judo Association
  • Vice President of the Malaysian Ceylonese Congress
  • Education Advisor to the Malaysian Indian Congress
  • Member of the MATRADE export of education committee