Posts by Ross Clennett

The start of the new calendar year has the recruitment industry engaging in its annual guessing game of what the year ahead might bring. The last two years produced bumper results for most of the industry as vacancies soared and many employers, including governments, struggled to effectively respond to the significant shift in the balance…

The most significant, and welcome, aspect of 2022 has been the near-50-year low in the unemployment rate. This is not just for obvious reasons: fewer people out of work, more people earning a living wage, and more business for recruitment agencies. The best thing to come from the low availability of active workforce participants is…

As a music fan, I love going down the proverbial rabbit hole with Rick Beato’s YouTube channel. Beato is a musician, songwriter, and producer whose 3.27 million subscribers sign up to hear him opine on all things music. He has produced over 100 episodes of What Makes This Song Great, most of which generate over…

After 33 years observing, reading, and writing about workplaces, I am rarely surprised by the many self-defeating things executives, leaders and hiring managers do to fundamentally undermine the retention of valuable employees. The eye-popping cost of one company’s staggering turnover problem was laid bare less than two months ago when the contents of an internal…

Last week’s Ignite AGM went down a well-worn path with a third failed attempt by activist shareholder Octavium Capital Investment (OCI) to have their nominated directors (Daniel Altiok-Brown and Trevor Robertson) voted onto the board. OCI remains unconvinced that Ignite CEO, Tim Moran can, 18 months into his 3-year strategic plan, deliver net profits in…

Long-time readers may recall the very prominent case of resume fraud from 2014 that featured retailer Myer firing a just-hired senior executive Andrew Flanagan (pictured, right) after he was exposed as lying about his previous employment to both the recruitment agency that represented him, and to Myer. It’s not that hard to believe that a…

Barry Iddles (second left), owner of Queenscliff restaurant 360Q, with staff members Susie Burston, Ken Ferrier (front) and Kenton Savage. CREDIT: The Age   The Australian labour market does not suffer from a shortage of workers; far from it. Australia’s labour force participation rate is 66.6%, compared to our Kiwi cousin’s 71.7%. The vast difference…

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter was followed by his first email to employees banning remote work unless they have a specific exception (managers will send the exception lists to Musk for his personal review and approval) and setting out the expectation that staff will be in the office for at least 40 hours per week.…

Innovation is important. Innovation is necessary. Without innovation, a company is almost certainly doomed to compete primarily on price. However, innovation is also overrated. Innovation is overrated because many companies, in my experience, aren’t even getting the basics right. Qantas is a classic case in point. Yesterday, the announcement of the annual Choice Shonky Awards…

Yesterday Andrew Banks gave me an insight about interviewing that had never occurred to me, yet it was obviously correct the moment he uttered it. In the Confessions of a Recruiter podcast, co-hosted by recruitment agency owners Blake Thompson, and Declan Kluver, Banks shared; “The best thing ever out of an interview is that you…