Recruitment

It is difficult to recall what was more terrifying in the 1990s when I lived in Sydney – attempting to drive to an unfamiliar location without my Gregory’s (street atlas) or turning up unprepared to a one-to-one weekly meeting with Greg Savage. Having been a mediocre recruiter and mediocre leader before, eventually becoming better at…

(Top photo, January 1987, Salamanca Place, Hobart, bottom photo, November 2025, Delamere Vineyard, Tasmania)   Simon James Hugill Hirst was an influencer decades before it became an occupation or a label attached to anyone with more than 10,000 followers on Instagram. But Simon didn’t influence for money or status. Simon’s 80 years and 109 days…

There’s a simple reason that business owners who are central to multiple unsuccessful companies continue their pattern – they don’t accept responsibility. As I outlined last year when I dissected Ephram Stephenson’s attempt to explain the collapse of the Collar Group, Stephenson attempted, in a podcast interview, to accept responsibility for Collar’s cashflow crisis and…

When I started my Higher School Certificate (HSC) in Hobart more than four decades ago, my sole goal was attaining the minimum requirement for university entrance. Although I didn’t know what degree I would enrol in or what career that degree might lead to, I knew one thing very clearly – a university degree provided…

Excuse me if you don’t find me sympathetic to employers moaning about ‘talent shortages’. A succession of surveys and research released in the past couple of months paints an alarming and depressing picture of how a not-insignificant minority of Australian employers are the primary cause of their own problems in recruiting and retaining workers. This…

I had to stop and read the sentence again. Then again. “A new Robert Walters report revealed that more than half (57 per cent) of surveyed men don’t believe women are underrepresented in leadership roles, while only 2 per cent of women agree. The survey included over 2,000 ANZ professionals as part of the recruitment agency’s Women in the Workplace report.”…

The world’s sixth-largest staffing company, London-based Hays plc, last Friday announced that Dirk Hahn (pictured, right) had resigned as CEO and as a director, effective immediately, for personal reasons. In a company that, over its near-six-decade history as a pure-play staffing business, had only two previous CEOs, this is a major shock. Hahn, who started…

“My god, Ross, PEOPLE!” “Do you want to come and manage my team, Ross, because I am OVER IT?” “A person (who started in June) quit after I declined their last-minute request for three weeks’ leave in January. WTF!” “How can someone have a degree and still not be able to write a coherent, professional…

Australia’s most shameless recruiter, Luke Hemmings, has avoided trial for at least six months after a mediation agreement was endorsed by a court last month on the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast Bulletin reported last month that Hemmings, 32, was initially scheduled to have a committal hearing at Southport Magistrates Court on 20 January over…

My youngest son has recently secured a new part-time job. After ‘falling off the roster’ at Zambrero late last year (a topic for a post at another time), he applied for a range of roles via SEEK. He received crickets from almost every advertiser. One of his mates thought there might be a job at…