Recruitment
A.I. will change agency recruitment but in an unexpected way
The Australasian Talent Conference, held in Sydney last month, was another fascinating and stimulating couple of days. I immersed myself in conversations about talent with a wide range of people across the worlds of agency recruitment, corporate recruitment and recruitment technology vendors. The theme of the conference was Thriving with A.I. and having read a…
Read MoreThe benefits of failure: Easy in theory but hard to admit and talk about
Earlier this month I received a professional request that was a first. The request was from a former recruitment industry MD. His specific request was that I remove two of my blogs that contained extensive commentary about a company that he was the MD of (at the time of writing the blogs in question). I…
Read MoreSame Named People in the Australian Recruitment Industry Awards
After you have been around the recruitment industry as long as I have (29 years and three months thanks for asking) you come across lots of recruiters. And what you probably aren’t surprised to know is that it’s not uncommon for recruiters to share the same name. Although we are coming up to a very…
Read MoreHow do you know when your client is an a**hole?
°Aaron James, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine recently published A**holes: A Theory (Anchor Books, 2014). In the book James defines an a**hole as such; “Allows himself to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people”.…
Read MoreThe two least understood, yet critical, factors in candidate assessment
Across twenty nine years in recruitment I have read plenty of material on interviewing and candidate assessment. After this many years it takes a pretty special piece of writing to have me jump up and take notice. It happens rarely these days. However it did happen four days ago. I read this outstanding piece of…
Read MoreFrontline’s CEO speaks out about his fight with SEEK over candidate data
In July last year I first blogged about how SEEK’s ownership of Onploy was causing waves with some of its recruitment agency clients. Subsequent to that initial blog I wrote a number of follow-up blogs, starting with a look at the behavior of SEEK’s part-owned subsidiary, Sidekicker, SEEK’s PR response to the agency pushback, I…
Read MoreInterview with 2017 SARA (Aus) Recruitment Leader of the Year: Claire Woodhouse of Fircroft
In mid-November last year, SEEK announced the winners of the Australian SARAs for 2017. The winner of the Recruitment Leader of the Year for “demonstrating an excellent ability to foster relationships, solve problems, communicate effectively, and adapt to change” was Fircroft’s, Claire Woodhouse. After completing her undergraduate degree at Lancaster University (UK) in 2002, Claire…
Read MoreRubicor releases laughable FY2018 update
It appears that the Rubicor Board have submitted an early entry for biggest laugh of March; a tall order considering the Melbourne International Comedy Festival kicks off this week. Last week’s blog on Rubicor is now my most-viewed blog this year and I wasn’t planning to write another blog on Rubicor this week, however last…
Read MoreRubicor joins Clarius on the slide to irrelevance
As regular readers know, I take a particular interest in the performance of the publicly listed recruitment agencies. Last week, ASX-listed Rubicor Limited announced their results for the six month period ending 31 December 2017. The results were underwhelming, to say the least. Revenue dropped from $104.9 million (excluding abnormal items) to $93.2 million. Underlying…
Read MoreAvoid hiring turkeys, even if you don’t recruit a single eagle
What do Greg Savage, John Plummer and Geoff Morgan have in common? Not only are they each a member of a very influential group of recruitment industry leaders, they are also introverts. Introverts in recruitment are in the minority. The stereotypical image of an agency recruiter is an agreeable extrovert; showing up in interactions with…
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