Welcome to a very special episode of “Recruitment Journeys”. Today, we’re talking about something that’s been ever present in the recruitment industry since the beginning of time, and certainly since the beginning of my recruitment career. It’s as much a part of the fixtures and fittings of our industry as coffee and compendiums… And that’s booze. Seemingly, our industry can’t seem to function without it? Or can it? Well, today, seven Recruiters come together who have a very different...

Collectively, Verge Das Neves and Shawn Twomey have around 30 years recruitment industry experience. When we launched the Recruiter’s Mentor Project a month ago, it came as little surprise that these industry long-termers put their hands up to be Mentors. Why wouldn’t they want to share their experiences and learnings with others coming through, right? However, I must admit I was a little bit taken aback when they both said they also wanted to be Mentees. I was surprised, but curious,...

Between the two of them, Matt Cossens and Rob Millington have over 40 years recruitment experience. They’ve also racked up quite a few extreme challenges between them... Things like ultra-marathons and MMA cage fights! At some point in time, both Matt and Rob realised that their passion for setting extreme goals and challenges outside of work, could benefit them inside work. In this chat, we talk to Rob and Matt about why they do what they do, and how their extreme pursuits help shape...

Both Anika Stokes and Sinead Connolly have, in their careers, been brought to their knees by burnout. They both managed it badly for years, refusing to acknowledge it, or accept it. But eventually, both were left with no choice but to tackle it. In this episode of “Recruitment Journeys”, Anika and Sinead chat openly, bravely, honestly and with great candour, around their battle with burnout, and how they keep it in its box nowadays. This is vital listening for anybody out there who...

Grant Movzowitz from T+O+M Executive and Jason Roulston from Blackroc each head up businesses that are in full growth mode. And as we experience the official Covid “bounce back” period that we all prayed to the Recruitment Gods for for so long, which is creating almost unprecedented demand for Recruiters, it was great to sit down with these two notoriously upbeat and positive characters, and ask them the question that is currently on every recruitment leaders mind…. “How do you effectively...

Between the two of them, Paul Hallam and Steve Carter, have almost 50 years recruitment experience. Most of that 50 years has been spent in recruitment leadership roles, with almost 30 of those years running two of Australia’s most respected recruitment brands, Six Degrees and Sharp & Carter. So it was great to get these two long term acquaintances in the same chat to find out more about them behind the scenes, to hear a couple of funny stories from yesteryear, and to ask them the...

Stella Petrou Concha and Andy McGregor are both young(ish), progressive thinking, innovative, “move with the times” recruitment leaders. They’re exactly the types of leaders that would have looked closely at what Covid did our industry, learn from it, and adapted. They are exactly the right kind of people to ask the question, “How has the role of a Recruiter changed in this post-Covid world?”

Simon Hair from Precision and James Hone from Bluefin get together to chat about all manner of things like meditation, football fights, fishing, recruitment reality TV shows, and even the recruitment industry. The Yorkshireman and the Geordie... Sorry... Mackem discuss everything they learnt about their people, business and themselves during Covid19.

Burnout is something that we Recruiters have fallen victim to many, many times over the years. And it was no different for Helena Nield-Dumper, who as billing Team Leader at Randstad, felt burnout creeping up on her too. But she survived, and moved on with her career. Only down the track, when she was in a different role, and a very different headspace, was she able to acknowledge what she’d been through burnout. Instead of shrugging her shoulders and just putting it down to life...

James Jennings and his business partner, Chris Almond are a classic start-up story. Fuelled by total self-belief, financed with money from friends and family, and pushed on by not only a desire to not let those people down, but also because they absolutely believe there is a need for their business and their product in the Recruitment marketplace. In this chat, James is super honest about how they got Sourcr off the ground, what it meant to them and the sacrifices they had to make in their...

James Osborne went from scuba diving instructor on the Whitsundays, to launching and leading The Recruitment Network, an organisation that supports over 4000 Recruiters to help them get through tough times like Covid, but also flourish in the good times. But why did he choose to take this path, and not the path trodden by most senior Recruiters (which is starting his own recruitment business)? Well, in this chat, James tells us that it was a combination of what he saw happening in the...

Most Recruiters don’t ever even start their own recruitment firm. And those that do, don’t usually create two. Well, Scott Horton has been instrumental in launching not one, but two successful recruitment businesses. And for reasons that he’ll delve into in this conversation, Scott tells us what drove the decisions, both business and personal, to start from scratch twice, culminating in the creation of Troocoo. This is a fascinating insight into what made Scott Horton do the start-up thing...

Stella Concha is an inspiration. She started REO Group back in 2009, with her husband Marcelo, when she only had two years recruitment experience. She forced herself to be successful through sheer will, determination, and self-belief that came as a result of being so well trained by Robert Half. What followed was a decade of learning on the job, getting it wrong, getting it right, getting it wrong again and getting it right again, but making sure she embraced every failure, and learned...

Martin O’Donnell and Pete Zonnevylle started Sustainability in 2008, just before the GFC. Five years later, having conceded that things hadn’t quite gone according to plan, they found themselves having a bit of a heart to heart and trying to decide whether to downsize and essentially throw in the towel, or to fix a few things, roll the dice, and go at it again. Fast forward to 2020, and spoiler alert, the Sustainability group is now 50+ people across four different brands. So try and have a...

OK, so this one is a bit weird, because I’m not the Interviewer in this episode, and I’m actually being interviewed about my own “Recruitment Journey”. Over the past year or so, a few people have suggested they’d like to know a little bit more about my own career past. Maybe they were just being polite. Maybe they’ll wish they hadn’t asked. But either way, I asked fellow Recruiter, ex-candidate, and fellow podcaster, Paul Tulip, if he’d be kind enough to step in and help me out with the...

Charles Cameron has been the CEO of the RCSA for almost five years. And in that time, he’s seen the good times, and the not so good times. In this special episode, Charles tells us what the RCSA are doing to support it’s members through Covid, and how he things we’re doing as an industry during these challenging times. Charles also tells us what he believes the future looks like for recruiters in Australian and New Zealand post-Covid, and why he’s so damn proud of the recruitment...

Ben Brown had a very comfortable and successful career with one of the biggest recruitment companies in the world. Life was probably pretty cruisey. But, after the better part of a decade, he decided to walk away from everything that he knew, to enter the risky world of start-up recruitment. In this podcast, Ben tells us why he decided to make what appeared to be a risky move, and what the positives and negatives were of coming from one the of the global big boys, to starting his own...

Greg Savage has been around a few years. Forty, to be exact. So he’s seen a few recessions, and he’s seen a few downturns in his time. And guess, what! He survived them all. So as we hit the 6 month mark, who better than Greg to tell us, the Recruitment Industry, where we are in the Covid recovery cycle, what other bumps in the road we can expect along the way, and what we should be doing to weather the storm. In this special podcast episode, we’ll get some invaluable survival strategies...

Adrian Petrie went from Top Billing Consultant at a global recruitment business, to Best Selling Author, all in one giant leap of faith. He took a brief hiatus from his flying recruitment career to pursue his goal and ambition to write a book on leadership, demonstrating a real dedication to achieving his dream. But Adrian is very candid when he tells us that he almost didn’t make it, and saw his life heading in a very different direction, before he kicked himself up the proverbial...

In 2009, after only seven years trading, Bernie Schiemer sold his recruitment business to Hays in a deal value totalling £75m GBP. Still under 40, and nowhere near ready for retirement on the beach, Bernie kept scratching that entrepreneurial itch until he decided to enter the tech business, launching Vincere, an all-in-one CRM platform for ambitious recruitment firms, in 2012. This one is for all the budding entrepreneurs and risk takers out there, who want to build something special,...

This is probably one of the most open and authentic conversations I’ve yet had on the “Recruitment Journeys” podcast. Adam Kurdas is remarkably honest and lays himself wide open as he talks to us about why he seemingly walked away from an exceptional Recruitment career, the likes of which many of us could only wish for. Adam was 13 years with Six Degrees Executive, and operating at Director level, when he decided to walk away from it all to pursue a whole new direction, and whole new...

Chris O’Connell experienced immense adversity in his childhood, from being abandoned by his mother aged three, being left alone in the caravan in which he was being raised, to spending years in the foster care system, to getting up at 5am every morning to accompany his Dad to work at his job on the railways… From a very early age, Chris learned he had to fend for himself, and that life wasn’t going to dish out any easy passes. But it was that raw survival instinct that made him the top...

Mike Dickson is a very experienced Recruiter. And after a long and successful, stable and secure corporate career, Mike decided to launch his own recruitment firm. So, on the 16th of March 2020, Mike joined AXR as Partner of their brand new Sales & Marketing business. Only 3 days later, due to the Covid crisis, AXR closed their offices. Mike was then forced to not only launch a brand new business in the fierce grip of a global pandemic, but also do it from home. The challenges that...

How do you run a successful recruitment business in partnership with a mate? Should friends even go into partnership together in the first place? Or is it better to go into battle side by side with a complete stranger? And what is the secret to a successful working partnership in recruitment? All of these questions (and more) are answered in this very candid (and funny) conversation with the MDs of Design & Build and Public Sector People, Andrew McGregor and Tom Dumper. The boys...

Kara Atkinson, AKA “The Sales Recruiter”, is a perfect example of a Recruiter not allowing Covid19 to slow her down. She’s doing the opposite of waiting for the storm to pass. If anything, she’s getting busier. Not necessarily driving revenue upwards, but by challenging herself, and using this opportunity to get involved in other areas that she’s passionate about. In this podcast interview, Kara tells us all about her early schoolyard foray into sales, selling her Dad’s socks to her...