Posts by Ross Clennett

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…

The recent passing of Denis Waxman, the co-founder of the business now known as Hays (then known in the UK as Accountancy Personnel), prompted me to retrieve my journals covering my post-university travels and time living in London. As I detailed in another blog post (from 2019) I started my recruitment career, as a 22-year-old,…

The sixth report to the creditors of Collar Talent Group has revealed the extent of the hopeless financial position the company was in at the time of liquidation and the liquidators’ assessment of the negligence and incompetence of the company’s CEO and sole director, Ephram Stephenson. Collar entered liquidation on 28 February 2025, having traded…

Episode 1 of The Ephram Stephenson podcast dropped last week promising, “In this raw, unfiltered interview, I dive deep into the how, what, and why addressing every tough question raised in media articles, LinkedIn comments, about COLLAR, my previous ventures and criticisms received from competitors. Nothing is off-limits. It’s my way of honoring (sic) your…

Photo credit: Hays plc 2006 Annual Report Denis Waxman, the legendary founder of the business that offered me my first permanent job and ultimately evolved into the sixth-largest staffing company in the world, Hays, passed away on 22 August 2025 at the age of 78, from heart disease. Hays CEO, Dirk Hahn, released a statement…

As it was at SHAPE 2022, with the creator of  You Can’t Ask That, Kirk Docker it was a television professional who took us back to the fundamentals of our job at SHAPE 2025. Closing the program on day one this year was ABC presenter and journalist, Leigh Sales, one of Australia’s most respected media…

Ephram’s back! Yes, the man whose comebacks rival those of John Farnham has returned to public life. Former Collar Group founder and CEO, Ephram Stephenson, announced his comeback via his first LinkedIn post since November 2024, late on Friday afternoon. Stephenson’s updated LinkedIn profile features a now-bearded Stephenson, looking very yacht rock with that detached,…