Posts by Ross Clennett

Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) has just released their ranking of the top 30 staffing firms in Australia, by revenue, including year-on-year growth, noting “….that specialisation is the differentiator. No general staffing firms were amongst the fastest growing firms, but rather those focused on sectors such as healthcare, construction, and engineering. Mining and renewable energy are…

The career rebirth of Ephram Stephenson continues unabated. The subscribers to The Ephram Stephenson podcast, “..the unfiltered podcast diving into the raw realities of business growth across industries – from explosive success to brutal pitfalls,” are still waiting for episode 2, exactly three months after the debut episode dropped (average 1.9 star rating out of…

Australia’s largest privately-owned recruitment and staffing business, WorkPac, has been purchased by ASX-listed Tasmea Limited. The purchase price of up to $60.7 million, which comprises upfront cash and Tasmea shares, plus potential earn-out payments, is targeted for settlement around December 1, 2025. The earnouts comprise two cash payments of $5.25 million each, for the twelve-month…

Over three decades ago, when I was in my fifth year as a recruiter, a conversation with my mother took an unexpected turn – into unfamiliar territory, specifically, my pay. The ensuing discussion revealed that I was out-earning my father, a career public servant, nearing retirement. I remember being struck with a sense of unease…

Photo credit: Stockcake You may have noticed the News Corporation newspapers (and their corresponding online versions) are all excited about the launch of their national advertorial campaign, “Back Australia: It’s Good For All Of Us”, featuring some of Australia’s largest companies as cheerleaders, namely Bunnings, BHP, Cadbury, Coles, Harvey Norman, Qantas, REA Group, R.M. Williams,…

As I outlined in last week’s blog, the evidence for job seekers preferring a human recruiter over an AI alternative is embarrassingly thin on the ground right now. Considering the three-year anniversary of ChatGPT’s release is still five weeks away, it’s fair to assume this advantage will only widen as the LLM models used by…

In September 2024, I wrote about one of the newest and most successful startups in the recruitment ecosystem, Mercor. Co-founders Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha (pictured, right), were all 21-year-old college dropouts at the time, and had just secured venture capital investment that valued their SaaS product that uses artificial intelligence to vet…

The last day of next month will mark the third anniversary of OpenAI launching ChatGPT. OpenAI described their new product at the time, thus. We’ve trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises,…

On 1 September 2023 Dirk Hahn ascended to the global CEO role at Hays, having joined the company in the late 1990s. The 2025 Hays Annual Report, released earlier this week, is a stark reminder of the challenges Hahn faces as he attempts to turn around the world’s sixth largest staffing business. The company’s share…

There is no stopping the Australian recruitment industry’s most optimistic business owner, Ephram Stephenson. It appears he’s the face behind the just-launched executive recruitment business, Leo Jackson: Executive Search, HR & Human Capital. The leojackson.com.au domain name was registered at the beginning of this week. Clicking on “Contact Our Team” brought up the prepopulated email…