Posts by Ross Clennett

It’s been just over four weeks since the Rubicor Group went into voluntary administration. In my blog of that week I outlined the specific culpability of the Rubicor directors; Angus Mason, Sharad Loomba and David Hutchison. The Rubior administrators, Joanne Dunn and John Park of FTI Consulting, have just released their Report to Creditors (Report).…

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are one of the most misunderstood concepts in the recruitment sector. To clarify what KPIs are: KPIs are the most important activities and results that underpin the level of performance required for the successful fulfilment of a person’s role. The effective use of KPIs leverages an employee’s time, leading to higher…

The Australian recruitment industry lost one of its very best when Victor John Plummer, FRCSA (Life), passed away last Wednesday, one week past his 91st birthday. Mr Plummer was best known as the owner and Managing Director of Centacom Staffing; a leading Australian recruitment agency for temporary office placements for thirty years, until it was…

Two weeks’ ago, the RCSA announced the winners of the New Zealand industry awards. The winner of the Recruitment Leader of the Year was Consult’s Angela Cameron.  After completing her undergraduate degree at Victoria University in Wellington in the late 1990s, Angela commenced her professional career as an auditor at Big 4 professional services firm;…

One of the most unsurprising events of 2019 occurred on Monday: Rubicor’s directors finally called in administrators (FTI Consulting) to take charge of the company they had gradually destroyed over the past four years. Yes, in layman’s terms Rubicor finally ran out of money and has gone broke. Rubicor’s auditors, Pitcher Partners, unambiguously flagged the…

I read between fifty and a hundred articles each week, every week of the year. I am a voracious consumer of content on recruitment, employment, productivity, high performance and leadership. It takes a something pretty special to impact me significantly. A year ago, this week, I read such an article. It struck me right between…

One of the most competitive gongs in the local recruitment industry is the coveted RCSA Recruitment Professional of the Year. This year the winner was Seamus Scanlon from Davidson. Three years ago Seamus joined Davidson after spending the previous five years recruiting construction project managers in two different agencies. Within two years he was recruiting…

The 2019 Australasian Talent Conference was another excellent mix of speakers, vendors and networking. Xref CEO and Co-founder, Lee-Martin Seymour’s session on the second day; The Art of Asking Great Questions provided an example of what all excellent conference presentations contain: brevity, humour, credibility, stories, value and a memorable model, acronym or concept. Xref’s ten…

Underwood Executive (L to R):  Vanessa Jones, Nikki Hentschke, Nicole Underwood, Eloise Nicholson.   HR Director magazine has announced its winners of their 2019 Australian Recruiter of the Year awards. The winners are decided by respondents (internal recruiters and relevant HR professionals) nominating the best recruitment agency, from their dealings with external recruiters over the…

As hard as it is to believe, things have deteriorated further at Rubicor since I last commented on their performance in late February. On 1 March Rubicor were one of only eleven public companies (out of approximately 2200 listed on the ASX) to have trading in their shares suspended by the ASX for failing to…