Posts by Ross Clennett

The ABS will release the August labour market data at 11.30 a.m. today, and it’s a set of numbers that will be received with greater interest than usual. July’s seasonally adjusted job growth of 58,000 was substantially higher than expected and 53% higher than the 38,000 monthly average across the previous twelve months of 38,000.…

Last month, Hays plc released a full-year update for its 2024 financial year (1 July 2023 – 30 June 2024), and it wasn’t pretty reading. Group net fees were down 12% to £1,113.6 million; group operating profit was down 46% to £105.1 million, and global consultant headcount was down 18% year-on-year. Of the company’s four…

Generative AI (GenAI) is rapidly changing many aspects of recruitment in ways that would have been hard to envisage at the beginning of the decade. At RCSA’s SHAPE 2024, held in Noosa last month, SEEK’s group executive of artificial intelligence Grant Wright (photo#, right) said that SEEK’s technology was currently detecting the use of AI…

One of the recent RCSA SHAPE Conference sessions featured four recruitment agency CEOs on a panel discussing the topic Culture Crunch: How culture within our firms is being challenged…and how we can effectively respond. ManpowerGroup Australia managing director Penny O’Reilly scored my award for ‘most honest moment of SHAPE’ when she lamented Manpower’s recent internal…

Photo credit: Adele Last Children’s animated series, Bluey, has won over fans and critics globally, with a swag of awards to its credit. Bluey’s creator, Joe Brumm, was the final presenter at SHAPE 2024 yesterday afternoon (pictured above). He had the audience’s full attention as he shared how the germination of an idea for Bluey…

There was a sense of anticipation at the announcement of the total amount donated by the Mother’s Day Classic when the board, staff and volunteers gathered at The Langham in Melbourne on Tuesday night. It was a night of congratulations and celebration as the $3.3 million 2024 donation to fund life-saving breast and ovarian cancer…

When I returned from London at the end of 1990, the unemployment rate in Australia was 9.8%, and few suitable jobs were available for a below-average 24-year-old recruitment consultant. In one of the luckiest breaks of my life there was a job available at Temporary Solutions in Sydney. I started my new job in the…

The U.S. Federal Reserve started 2023 on a pessimistic note, saying a recession was “plausible,” and in the months ahead, headline writers were quick to trumpet a looming recession. But a recession never arrived and, increasingly, it looks like the United States is out of the woods and about to enter another significant growth phase. The US…

Serial self-promotor Luke Hemmings, owner of a failed recruitment business in Canberra, was charged earlier this week with three fraud offences relating to dishonestly inducing delivery of property worth around $100,000 on the Gold Coast. Hemmings operated Canberra-based Coceptive Recruitment, which entered liquidation in 2021, owing creditors $760,000, according to the Daily Mail. Hemmings left…

People2people majority owner and board chair Mark Smith this week announced he has relocated to Wellington and is now taking up a new role at people2people subsidiary Frog Recruitment as a principal consultant – yes, Mark is back recruiting. This news is notable not just because it is highly unusual for a majority owner to…