Recruitment

On the last day of June 2001 I left a company that had consumed my professional life. After over a decade of hard work, success and fun, it was all over. Events at the company had taken an unexpected turn in the previous twelve months and the bright future I envisaged was no more. Although…

On Tuesday morning industry news service Shortlist published a short article informing subscribers of its own demise. I was surprised, not shocked but incredibly disappointed. As long-term readers would know, many of my forensic pieces referenced information first published by Shortlist. The most highly-viewed of those blogs are: Big bang start-ups: The rise and fall…

My youngest child, James (pictured right, at his year 11 formal, July 2024), started his final year of secondary school last week. The school requested the year 12 parents write a letter of encouragement to their child; a letter to be read by the student during year 12 camp, which was held earlier this week.…

My 18 year-old nephew, Ned, arrived in Sydney last week. Fresh from a stereotypical English land-owning rural life divided between boarding school and his father’s farm, he’s here for the upcoming Sydney club rugby season, hoping to gain some valuable experience after the last six years spent playing schoolboy rugby. Three rugby-playing schoolmates have joined…

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 was released two weeks ago and it’s already captured plenty of headlines The report surveyed more than 1,000 companies worldwide—representing 22 industry clusters and more than 14 million workers—to assess the job market and uncover how organisations expect it to evolve between now and 2030. A…

On 23 November 2023 Deloitte Access Economics’ (DAE) weekly email was devoted to forecasting the labour market in 2024, including the following. Deloitte Access Economics expects tougher economic conditions to weigh down on firm hiring decisions. We are forecasting national employment growth of just 0.5% (75,000 workers) in calendar year 2024, before gradually increasing to…

It’s a slow news week this week. It must be very slow to feature a ‘viral video’ that, in reality, shows nothing more than a business owner clarifying expectations and making recommendations about Christmas party behaviour. In case you missed it, there were numerous articles in the mainstream media about a video circulated by a…

When I was a budding young cricketer in 1980s Hobart (see photo, right, about to go out to bat), I was told I had ‘potential,’ but although I did score three centuries in various grades at my club, I wasn’t consistent and played less than a dozen games at a first-grade level where my top…

The unemployment rate is the most quoted figure in any report on the Australian labour market. If it’s going up, that’s reported as bad news (for workers and governments), and when it’s going down, it’s good news (more people employed means more taxes paid and more consumer demand). However, the unemployment rate is an incomplete…

Most employers’ efforts to build a successful organisation stumble at the first hurdle – their recruitment process sucks is inadequate. Recruitment agencies are Exhibit A for the prosecution. Having worked with hundreds of recruitment agency owners and leaders throughout my 21 years in coaching and training, I’ve observed only a small minority that have established…