Confessions of a Recruiter
The show is hosted by Blake Thompson and Declan Kluver who respectively own Vendito Consulting and Blended Employment. Both have been in Sales & Marketing Recruitment for over 5 years. The podcast is about opening the door to the recruitment world and creating a community of recruiters who can share funny stories, educate and have honest conversations about the industry and their experience. All episodes are powered by xrecruiter.
Confessions of a Recruiter
Natasha Olsson-Seeto (Ontalent) Confessions of a Recruiter #56
Welcome to an incredible conversation with Tash from On Talent! She's made her mark in the recruitment world, co-founding On Talent, and has a wealth of wisdom to share. We kick off discussing the game-changing role of an Executive Assistant in maximizing productivity, and how to truly tap into this resource. Tash also shares her insights on the impact of large agencies on recruitment careers, recounting her valuable experiences and mentorship at PwC, Coopers & Lybrand and Manpower group.
Ever wondered about the nitty-gritty of starting your own company? Tash opens up about the journey and sacrifices behind OnTalent's founding. You'll get a real sense of the challenges faced, from crafting a shareholding agreement to the personal compromises necessary to get a venture off the ground. Also, we explore a misunderstood profession - recruitment. Tash delves into the realities, the value recruiters bring, and how setting standards can uplift the industry.
As we steer the conversation to executive recruitment, Tash shares her tips for hiring a CEO for a board, underlining the importance of interviewing the board's director reports and adopting a curious mindset. She also shines a light on her role as a secret squirrel/judge in the Restaurant and Hotel industry and the commendable work some of the individual businesses do in working with chefs with current or prior substance/mental health/general health problems. Wrapping up, Tash and I discuss our business futures, revealing our personal goals and emphasizing the worth of an external coach or mentor. Tune in for a deep-dive into the recruitment world and how to leverage its resources.
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Welcome back to Confessions of a Recruiter with Blake and Declan. We are on a global mission to build the world's largest community of recruiters so we can all connect and succeed together.
Speaker 2:That's right. If you wanna check out more of Confessions of a Recruiter, jump on to confessionstv, subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, access merch and if you wanna chat to us directly, join our Discord at XR House with the links below. Now, we hope you enjoy this episode. ["confessions of a Recruiter"]. Welcome back to Confessions of a Recruiter. We are here, joined by Tash from On Talent. How are you, Tash?
Speaker 3:Very well, thank you.
Speaker 2:That's good. Thank you for coming on in short notice, because it's not very often a senior level executive in recruitment has the ability to shift things around like you do. So you must be a woman of many talents to start.
Speaker 3:Well, I try. I've got a very good EA who tells me where to go, when to be there.
Speaker 2:You know what we spoke to her this afternoon. She's awesome.
Speaker 3:She's really good. Yep, Mel is awesome.
Speaker 2:And so I'm gonna let's just start there, because. So you've got an EA. How long has she worked for you for?
Speaker 3:Yep. So Mel's worked with us for nearly five years I think that's it Nearly five years but she hasn't always been an EA. That's new. So she was a finance officer part-time and she came to me about three months ago when I had a vacancy and said you know what? I wanna go full-time, my kids are ready to not need me as much and I wanna do something different. And would you give me a go as your EA? Can I control your world? And I said, let's have a trial, let's give it a crack. So she has been extraordinary and I think we talk about giving people a go and helping them do things that they didn't think was possible. And she has blossomed out of her shell and is doing such a good job for someone who's just never done this sort of work before.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting because I never understood the value or the working relationship between someone that's quite high up and an EA and I probably don't like when I first started in recruitment. Well, I first started my recruitment agency, you know I was super busy and my parents like, oh, you need to get yourself a PA or an EA to make your life easier. And being at the time a very small-minded, small business mindset, I'm like that's sunk costs. If I'm paying someone 70 grand a year, that's not revenue generating. I'm not gonna part ways with that. Money Can't justify it.
Speaker 2:And then I ended up kind of biting the bullet, so to speak, and hiring a PA. Her name was Lexi. She's now a consultant for me but the amount, the volume of stuff you can actually get done, it was probably the best investment I think I've ever made and it completely changed my mind from I'm only gonna hire revenue generating people in my small recruitment agency to then also, hey, actually you know what, you can actually get a whole lot of value out of a support person and it brings everyone results up 100%. So have you always had an EA? Did someone leave and then you kind of just tried to manage yourself or yeah, I've had EA's over a long period.
Speaker 3:So I've been in the industry nearly 28 years, so a long time. I know you can't believe it because I'm just so young, but I had an EA pretty early on in my career when I was a director in a big four environment, so I learned the value of what they could do and then when I started on talent, I didn't have one for a really long time.
Speaker 2:Why.
Speaker 3:We were too small.
Speaker 2:Revenue generating.
Speaker 3:Well, it wasn't that. I just couldn't really justify someone just to look after me, and so I had resources and support people and I'm pretty self-sufficient and I'm really organized. So I get value out of an EA because I'm not just getting them to clean up my messes, they're actually adding value to my world and my life. So I in COVID I didn't have an EA. That was a role that I did away with, because what diary was I really managing? But let me give you a little tip about EA's. There's a difference between a PA and an EA. You manage a PA and EA manages you.
Speaker 2:Interesting okay.
Speaker 3:EA should understand your priorities, what's important to you, how you would structure your day, given the choice, how your energy works. So I talk about energy management, not time management. There's things I do in a day better at different times Writing in the morning, I can smash something out in 20 minutes. You ask me to write it for a clock. I'm there all night because my brain just doesn't work right. So if you get that relationship right, my personal stuff I have lunch with my dad once a month, so I've got to book a restaurant and I've got to make sure my dad's coming. She makes sure that that is absolute sacrosanct. I never miss lunch with my dad once a month, so she makes sure that those priorities are kept for me and that I've got time to get two things from things think about things, spend time. That's important.
Speaker 2:How do you build that relationship? Because I'm trying to think of how I can download my brain into someone and then, essentially, someone run me and I feel like that will take a long time.
Speaker 3:It does take a while. So you actually like anything, any relationship. You get out what you put in and you invest. So I see people delegating stuff, but they very rarely say why it's important and explain it. So we've all had in the recruitment, we all have resources right, so we all have people who help us source candidates for jobs and you get oh, they're not getting me the people they want. Well, tell me about how you brief them. Like, are you actually? I say to my resources, if you're a consultant or your client partner, as we call, it isn't investing the time to brief, you don't do the job, so you cannot work. The same as if a client said to me sorry, I don't have time to brief you. Well, how am I gonna get you the right CEO or give you the right advice if you're not gonna invest in the time to help me understand? So same with the same with the NEA You've got to You've got to go to internally.
Speaker 3:You've got to spend the time, absolutely spend the time, and you've got to be open up your world, you know, and allow them it's hard to let go. Allow them to manage you. And I'll say to her tell me on a Monday, tell me about my week.
Speaker 2:So if you're a recruiter just starting your own agency, would you recommend a PA or an EA, or when do you think the right time is for a recruiter to hire that support person?
Speaker 3:Well, I think most people who are starting their own firm are probably on the tools, like I was and I still am very much on the tools. So it's when there's, it's a good investment in someone else managing a time and I do know a number of people in the industry who have great luck with virtual assistants so it's not so much about when you need that person, it's what you can take off your plate. That means your plate is filled with the things that you add the most value to. So it's understanding that that swap over. So I didn't have one for a long time because and I probably should have had one sooner but with a number of board roles, plus running the business, plus wanting to be there for my people, plus delivering to clients, I knew that I just needed somebody to and and. But I went to my own management team and said are you supportive of me having somebody just for myself rather than just being selfish? And we shared to start with didn't really work.
Speaker 3:So, I went well. I think it's. That's an administrator, not not a true EA relationship, and I know that I can produce fast amounts of work if I'm focused on the right things. So I have an EA and an associate who just support my work, but my consultants all have associates and one associate might have two or three people. But my consultants also deliver, on average, much higher levels of fees than you would expect in a standard you know recruitment environments. So we actually get the value out of it.
Speaker 1:And before getting into recruitment agency land, you rose to rose through Deloitte.
Speaker 3:No, that was in recruitment.
Speaker 1:So my career you worked for Deloitte, didn't you?
Speaker 3:I did work for Deloitte in the recruitment practice back in the day when the big four had recruitment divisions Totally.
Speaker 2:So it was a working for Deloitte as an agency recruiter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had. We had a recruitment business as a practice of Deloitte, so pre-Coopers and Librand. That became Price Waterhouse Coopers, which is the first place I was a recruiter. I worked in the telecommunications industry, so I worked for Hutchison Telecoms as a corporate account manager selling. You guys probably won't even know what this is because you're so young, but I used to do paging solutions.
Speaker 2:What's paging solutions? Paging Beepers.
Speaker 1:Beepers that, like they, go on your belt Totally.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. I looked after defense and government and designed ways that you could creatively use pagers for communication.
Speaker 1:How good, that's awesome. Was it always just hardcore sales, like what telecommunications is?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then then mobiles came out that's how old I am and then car kits oh my gosh. And then we went to digital. So it's part of the move from analog to digital and the multiple mobile licenses. So I was part of that journey with Hutchies. And then I moved to Brisbane and a recruiter placed me in a job with another big telco organization and I didn't like it anymore. It got really super technical and I didn't want to play. I realized that I like solving problems for people, not so much the gear. So I went back to the recruiter and said I don't want to do this anymore. What else can I do? What else could I possibly do with my life? And she said I think you'd make an okay recruiter and so, being a good salesperson, I said well, give me a job Close to deal. She said well, that's kind of awkward because I hired you number two. So the person who came second on the job that I got ended up at Deloitte.
Speaker 3:It was actually Deloitte and I'm like, oh, that's disappointing. So I went and met with a whole bunch of recruiters trying to work out who I might like to work for, and then Coopers and Lybrand, which became PWC, advertised this job and I can still see the print job ad Again. This is like a history lesson.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 3:Gosh, old school recruitment. And it said can you sell a service? Was the headline on the ad. So we all need to think about the psychology of advertising Because I mean that was really powerful to me. Yes, I can sell a service. And they had never done contracting. So I went for an interview, did no research, thought they were law firm, all the bad stuff, and I got the job and started the contracting desk for Coopers and Lybrand back in 1996, from memory, and that's how I got in. And then, six years later, pwc was selling their recruitment business and I got a call from Deloitte saying the director role in Brisbane is vacant. We don't think you want to go to the other place where PWC is being sold to. Would you entertain coming to Deloitte? So six years later I took the job of the recruiter who had told me I would be a good recruiter. I was still in touch with her to this day.
Speaker 1:Wow, how surreal.
Speaker 3:And the woman who was number two on that process. She now runs my NFP practice at Ontalant.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. It's wild how everything kind of just eventually comes back around and I think probably on that note, like a lot of our generation or maybe younger, I think there's billions of people out there and you'll never run into the same person ever again. You know who kind of cares, type of stuff, where you know, when you start getting a bit older you realise that the person that you have been an idiot to when you were 18, you'll run into them again at 30 and they'll go no mate, I remember you and cause his problem. So that's really interesting that all of these things kind of turn around. So it must have mean that you kept a really good relationship with all these people.
Speaker 3:Well, it's hard to maintain all of those relationships, I think if you are a decent person. And you know Suzanne who's now my NFP practice leader, suzanne Grant, she's amazing. We had kind of kept in contact but she had started looking at her career options. So she came to see me and I said to her and she had done a PhD and was working in the not-for-profit sector herself and I said, imagine the impact you could have helping me place leaders in not-for-profit organisations. We were already doing really well in that space and because for her it was all about impact, and I said, would you come back? You know, could you come back to the industry? And she did and she's doing extraordinarily well. She's really clever and really well respected and that depth of knowledge is amazing. And so, yeah, we love that story. And the woman who recruited her and I all those years ago on Suzanne's first day, we sent her a selfie going look at us together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 3:And that was Chris McGinty. For those listening who want another history lesson in recruitment, chris McGinty was an absolute. She's still she's retired now. She is an absolute legend of the Brisbane recruitment industry and Suzanne and I were both so lucky to know her. Wow.
Speaker 1:And what type of companies were you recruiting for when you were working in Deloitte?
Speaker 3:A lot of it back in those days was look, still the energy industry and I still work a lot in that industry Mining. It was clients of the firm largely but that covered most of Brisbane really A little bit of government in the contracting space. It was super broad so but I kind of saw my clients as the partners because they're the ones who had access to all the networks. So if I could get the partners to give me leads then I didn't have to really go and make sales calls.
Speaker 3:So it was getting them to work for me.
Speaker 2:Which I'd be interested to know. Which agency did you work at that made the biggest impact in your recruitment career?
Speaker 3:Oh, there would be two. Can I have two?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, is that okay, definitely PWC or Coopers and Librand, the director there. He just gave me every opportunity to fly. I did every bit of learning. You can imagine the resources in a firm like that and they kind of thought I was strange because like who's this non-accountant person who makes money, what is that? And I really leveraged that and I was really taught.
Speaker 3:There was a managing partner there at the time, a guy by the name of Daryl Somerville who only recently passed away. He was just the most beautiful leader and the most amazing man and he kind of took me under his wing and I learned so much from all of those partners. I'll be forever grateful and I know PWC's had a bit of a bad rap of late, but I refused to have a negative word because it was so good. And the second one was the manpower group. I really I was there for probably about the same amount of time five, six years and my current business partner was my MD when I first joined manpower and she was an amazing mentor. At Deloitte I was lucky enough to work directly for Wayne Goss for a couple of years, former Premier, who was our managing partner, and he again. So it probably all comes down to those leaders. You know that mentor.
Speaker 1:So you're around those types of figures from the get-go. Yeah, and is that why you've always recruited in such high level positions, or?
Speaker 3:I've worked up to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And Wayne really helped me with that, because I had a really unhealthy respect for authority and seniority, so I would almost get a little submissive and be very overly respectful. And then he taught me to own my own expertise and whilst you're dealing with somebody who's got a whole body of expertise that you don't have, don't be intimidated by that because you've got something that they don't have. And he really taught me that and gave me confidence but not cockiness. So I'm really comfortable and confident now that I'm really good at what I do but I can't do what they do and I'm so respectful of expertise and I would hope that it goes both ways if you earn the respect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what were the? What were the? You mentioned that you got a lot of value from the leaders, that let's use manpower, because that's the most recent prior to starting your own agency. What did you get specifically? Was it like they had amazing training? They just led by example. You know what were those examples Like. What was it specifically that made such a difference?
Speaker 3:Yeah, if I use manpower, and Verena Nissen was the MD who's now my business partner and she's retired. She's still on our board. She's currently hiking in the Pyrenees, so she's got it absolutely right. Here I am crafting and she's totally earned that. She is a formidable woman. She is incredibly smart Like I can't go toe to toe to her with her on that level, but she was always so well prepared for anything we did. She was well read, she'd researched, super curious, super interested, super present and all of those things.
Speaker 3:I just I role modeled and I learned and I asked for feedback and I got feedback Some of it good, some of it sometimes not always that great and I just tried to keep role modeling those really great leaders and treat people like I wanted to be treated. And the training probably wasn't it at manpower, because it was largely around their core business and I was doing something different. I was taking them into the executive and professional space. But I tested a lot of my capability at manpower as I grew much larger teams and worked in a global. I mean I'd been in global with PwC and Deloitte, but like a truly listed, multinational, sophisticated organization, what's it like Is there a lot of politics?
Speaker 1:Is everyone just very focused? Lazy focus gets it done.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes or no?
Speaker 3:Look, there's always politics when you're competing for resources. That's where it normally comes from. When you set people's agendas and interests against each other, you will always have politics and it's a big company and we all want stuff and we all want to write our own horse of self interest. Where the politics melts away is where you unite on purpose and where you can singly unite. So I've seen some leaders that bring that purpose and that unity together and then I've seen other leaders that set people against each other. I don't last very long in that environment and, in the end, manpower. That's one of the reasons why I was happy to leave. But I left GFC time and it was tough. But I think an environment where you can try stuff out and you can try and fail and you can stand up for yourself is where people will fly.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you were your title at Manpower's General Manager.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:So what was that position? Like you were, who did you have reporting to you?
Speaker 3:So I reported to the CEO and I had a series of. I restructured the business so I was the Australian General Manager for one of the brands, which was called Manpower Professional in the day, and it was the culmination of a series of brands that were brought together under that brand. So I had an IT practice, what was called Manpower City in the day, which was white collar CBD based. It was a region based kind of deal. I had an executive team and I had an engineering and technical team around the country. So they were practice leads and state managers who reported through to me Was it 16 offices you managed.
Speaker 3:No, that was with another organisation, so I just had Sydney, melbourne, brisbane, perth and Canberra.
Speaker 2:So how many people did you have reporting to? Five or six?
Speaker 3:So I had an ops manager as well. I think I had about eight at Manpower.
Speaker 2:Were you ever recruiting?
Speaker 3:Not so much at the end at Manpower at the start I was, but I still did some. So I recall I was the only general manager who generated direct fees, but it wasn't frequent.
Speaker 2:Did you ever get billings on those direct fees? Or was it just like you're doing it out of the goodness of your heart because you're a general manager and you're probably not getting paid for your direct output? I?
Speaker 3:still went into the tin like it was under my name.
Speaker 3:It was my work, so some of it, but what I used to try and do was get emerging consultants to work on jobs with me, so it was a bit of a training ground. The first recruitment assignment I ever participated in in my career was the CEO and seven general managers for an organisation. I mean what an experience. And I played a support consultant and that's how I learned recruitment from John Mills at the time, who was the director at Coopers and Librand. What an experience that was. It was amazing. So I tried to emulate a bit of that. So I'm going to run this assignment. You're going to work with me. I'm going to do some of the interviews. We're going to sit together. You're going to do some of the interviews, you're going to do some screening, we're going to put the phones on and we're just going to work together and learn that way.
Speaker 1:And do you find that's the best way to upskill a consultant?
Speaker 3:I do. I think new recruiters benefit from supporting a more senior recruiter to learn the way they work. What you can do, though, is lose those people that can go and hustle their own work, because they just become process people, so it's a really fine balance, but they've also got to want to learn which can be challenging.
Speaker 2:So you're the general manager at Manpower. I had a lot of direct reports. You're doing a placement here and there, but you're obviously managing a big business, managing a lot of leaders as well. So you're a leader, leading leaders, the lead managers, the lead consultants, kind of thing. So then you've moved to starting on talent. How did that come about? How did you go from? Because let me just actually give you some context on this question A lot of senior managers at Big Agency they're stuck. They're generally stuck with doing what they're doing because they've got a fat salary. They can't really pivot and go anywhere. There's not that many jobs out there, so they generally can't go anywhere. But you've been able to break the shackle, so to speak, and be able to go do that. On talent, firstly, how did it come about the decision to do that by being in such a senior position?
Speaker 3:So I had a job between Manpower and on talent. So I took a redundancy during the GC from the Manpower group and for the first time in my life I was going to take six months off. That was seven weeks. And I got approached by another organisation and it was in. It was a large, largely labour hire company where I had the 18 locations.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, who was?
Speaker 3:that that was IPA.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 3:And I learned that's not for me. So that high volume temp and I made this stupid statement in my first month, which was I worked at a number of the branches, hadn't seen management for quite some time. I will be in every branch, every quarter. Wowza Did I do some travel, and they weren't always the most glamorous of locations.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I kept that promise. But I fast realised and it was at the time, I mean I believe IPA is now not for profit or working in not for profit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, something.
Speaker 3:They were private equity owned at that time, so that was a really different world. But New York Stock Exchange listed company in the GFC was a pretty hardcore world as well. So it was good for me in that it told me what I didn't want to do. So Verena, my old boss from Manpower, she had been overseas doing a major acquisition for Manpower in the Middle East and she had finished that work and come back to Australia and we just caught up for coffee with her and her husband and we had a big old moan about the recruitment industry and how you've got, you know, the big global firms and then you've got great local firms and there's kind of this gap. And then there's the big firms and gosh, couldn't we just do it all better? And her famous last words.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they were driving back to New Sir and she rang me and she said so, ron reckons we should do this. And I said to her it's 2009. Are you insane? Like, seriously, the worst market ever. What are we doing? And she said I want you and Jason to come to New Sir for a weekend and let's really talk about it properly.
Speaker 2:Wow OK.
Speaker 3:So we drove up and we spent the weekend. By the end of the weekend we had the name on talent, which is a bit of Olson C, Joe and Nissen, which most people don't know. There's a confession. It considered her being the major shareholder. Maybe the end was good first, but we realised that wasn't good to put that one first. And I do know there's a couple of not so happy former staff members who might nickname us that. So shout out to them Thanks.
Speaker 3:And so by the end of that weekend we kind of had a vision. We developed the strap line credit to my husband with connecting people and purpose. We had an idea of what we wanted to be about. We had an idea of what we didn't want to be about and a draft business plan and she had a super fund and so let's, let's, let's talk about this, because that's really interesting, this kind of workshopping ideation of creating a recruitment agency. I saw what you did there with that word.
Speaker 2:It's really interesting because it is. It's a bit of a different journey going from being an employee to, you know, working within the lines to a to an extent, to then just having this like blue sky of we can do whatever. On, talent sounds good, no, talent doesn't sound too good. So so how did you, how did you work through? You know what, if this happens, what are we going to do? What are the kind of what's our agreement between each other if? If someone dies, or or gets divorced, or who gets that or who gets this? Or did you ever go through that in the early stages, or is that something that happens 100%?
Speaker 3:so both of us having really big corporate backgrounds was helpful, and Verena's husband, ron, had been the CEO of major multinational corporations so he knew how to do the funding. We got a lawyer and did a shareholding agreement. We did it like we were a big, grown up company from day one.
Speaker 2:Awesome.
Speaker 3:We both agreed that if we I mean she put up a sack of money, which was amazing, but we both had to get paid. So we got paid from day one.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:A lot less than what we had been used to being paid. But we then agreed that this just couldn't not work. But we knew and we were very clear on what her role was, what my role was, and I wasn't CEO to start with, she was MD. She was in the business a couple of days a week and we've transitioned that over time. It wasn't without its challenges and different ideas of what would work and what wouldn't, and what standards we had and how things would be managed and what IT systems would use and you know all that stuff that you've got to work with. But we basically worked with a client recruiting a CEO role almost in the first week, so we had a flying start. I said I'm not doing it from home and I'm not going to be in a service office any longer than three months. I want a proper presence. You know, back then it presence was more important than it is today and I want to do this properly.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:So we started with a plan to get to a reasonable, not too big a size. We never wanted to be huge, but a boutique size. Quite quickly.
Speaker 2:What was your pay cut going from manpower to then starting? Are we talking 50%, 50%, yeah?
Speaker 1:Okay, is that hard to fathom?
Speaker 2:Yeah, how did you get, how did you justify that to yourself? Because I'm just thinking of all the recruiters I speak to that are on, let's say, 110 K base and they know the grass is green. If they do their own thing, potentially, and then they think of a pay cut on the salary and they go absolutely no way and they just can't get the head around it. How did you, how did you come to terms with going all right, 50% pay cut, let's rock and roll.
Speaker 3:I was really confident that I could personally build a million bucks a year. So if worse came to worse, I could bring in enough money to cover Verena and I and quite a bit more. And I just had to believe it and and I also had to go and in my own mind say I'm building something of value. So this is a long game, this is not a short game. And you know, I put myself on an incentive plan so I paid myself like a recruiter, because I was being a recruiter largely to start with and I just, I just had to believe it. But I also I knew my limit and fortunately my husband was incredibly supportive and you know he did. He's got a marketing background, so he helped us with the marketing in the early days and you know we got a good deal with an accountant and all that sort of stuff. So and and we're both really commercial, so we didn't spend money on stuff we just didn't need.
Speaker 2:Did you have to make any life like personal sacrifice and adjustments for this, like, I don't know, get rid of a couple of nice cars and car loans or stop eating out to dinner or what? What kind of personal sacrifices did you have to make to try and get through the initial period?
Speaker 3:We, we had I mean I'd been in a corporate role for a while, so we were, we were OK, we knew how long we could, we could go for comfortably, and Rena and I both agreed that you know we weren't going to go to, you know, two minute noodles. So look, I had here's a confession I had. I had my daughter when I was 18. So I've always been pretty good at making stuff happen. When you have to make stuff happen, so nothing's as hard as that. So it was never going to be that hard and I survived that. So I wasn't so scared of what if I can't have a girl class, do membership or whatever. You know what I mean. You do make sacrifices, absolutely 100 percent. And it was probably a bit of home life stuff where and you know, I was lucky because I had my daughter so young she's kind of older, so I'm not worried about the kids stuff, and so it's lucky from that degree from. And there were things like I wasn't giving up the cleaner.
Speaker 2:OK, not a big fan of cleaning yourself, or?
Speaker 3:it's not a good use of my time. There's people who are much better at it than me.
Speaker 3:So it's really getting clear on what what. But yeah, we did, absolutely made sacrifices and we went down to one car because we didn't need to cause, but we did some stuff that that made life. We put off home renovations that we were doing, we stalled some stuff. So, yeah, it was certainly not without a sacrifice, but would I say it's, you know, being on the board of an organization that supports the vulnerable, we weren't near that. So, you know, in context, we sacrifice some stuff, but you know, first world problems really.
Speaker 1:And and you've obviously provided a lot to the industry what made you get involved with the RCS?
Speaker 3:say from your standpoint I got involved in the RCS say it's been 20 years this this year when I was at the manpower group.
Speaker 3:They were a member, deloitte and PwC hadn't been involved, so got involved back then and I was asked recently quickly if I'd consider joining a council. You know I was with one of the large members got on the council, which at the time was really small. We had real trouble getting people on the council. So I've been on and off a council for 20 years and coming out of a professional services environment and hearing what people said about my profession has always spurred me on to help make it more professional and the only way you can do that is by role modelling, good practices and speaking up, being present. So I decided to be a contributor. I wasn't a long time, I wasn't on council and I didn't have time for it early days of on talent, but we joined as members really quickly and I see the value and there's not that many search firms on who are members, so really trying to represent that that that part of the sector has been important to me and they really fly under the radar a lot Search firms.
Speaker 1:They don't they're not out there promoting and marketing themselves. They're sort of behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:They're a bit low key, aren't they? Yeah, super low key. They wouldn't be not many of them coming on. Confessions of a recruiter official.
Speaker 3:We're not just a certain like, we're not just a search firm, so we have general recruitment. You know I don't use the word agency, I actually don't like it. So to me that sounds really transactional and I think that doesn't matter what kind of recruitment you're doing. You've got value to add and you're making a difference in people's lives. So you know, I'm talking to Charles about this all the time at the house. He's saying about this to me is a profession. It's an absolute profession that should be respected.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a skill, everything and what. I don't know why it gets undersold, though, because recruitment is not. I think now maybe it's starting to get get popular, but most people presume a recruiter is someone that helps people get off the dole or something like that. And really, you know even us you know we've been in the industry now for seven years and the conversation we're having before about the type of roles you fill within government we never even probably stopped to think that there's a recruiter that does that and yeah, I think when I used to go out and like have drinks and you'd meet people, oh, what do you do?
Speaker 2:I'd be like, oh, I'm a recruiter. You're like, oh bless you, you must have such a big heart. I'm like I guess I kind of do what do?
Speaker 1:you mean by that?
Speaker 2:Like, oh, that's so good. Do you feel like good about yourself, like really helping people get jobs? I'm like that is definitely a part of why we do what we do. Is that that part of recruitment? But it's, it's almost like their instinct is to go. Oh, you know, it's kind of like a what do you call them? Like a placement.
Speaker 3:Oh the.
Speaker 2:Because Serena Russo.
Speaker 3:Back to you. Yeah, contracts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm like that's not. It's not quite like that. You're more depending if you're more candidate side or client side, but you're more like partnering with businesses to help them solve big issues in their teams. Right, and yeah, it's. It's just funny when you know you're first getting to recruitment, you tell people and when they don't really have a night, well, everyone thinks I've got an idea, unless you're in recruitment and they think you're a happy go lucky kind of interviewing, you know people to try and get them off the doll. It's, it's, it's good now that it's. It's changing where I think for the first time in a couple of well, ever, the last couple of years, I've actually met people to go. Yeah, I want to be a recruiter, which I've never experienced in the last eight years, which is interesting.
Speaker 1:Going off your point, yeah and I think, but how, how else could we raise the standard, because it's still very unregulated, like anyone could start a recruitment agency? It's, you know there's there's obviously labor hire laws now that if you're destruct a company you can't re register and be a director. But what do you think we could do as an industry to help, you know, bolster that up, because you know we're all only a few people.
Speaker 3:How could we as a I think the the commentary most people have is about their own personal experience. So it's it's one, one interaction at a time. And I think there's things and at the RCS say we talk about, you know, setting standards and upholding standards, and that benefits the whole industry, not just members. And that's one of the things I do love about what the RCS say does the work that we do with government and other things around, things that affect our industry, actually benefits the whole industry rather than just members? So, you know, go RCS, say I think one of them. I think recruiters are largely in a hurry. They're in a hurry to get a deal done. Oh, you've got a job, here's a resume. And we don't often stop. Well, I do, but I hear recruiters who just don't explain the expertise and the work that they do. So if you remember back Long time ago for me, but back at school and you'd have a complex maths problem, you would get marks for your working out.
Speaker 2:True.
Speaker 3:So if, when you're solving a problem for a client, you're actually explaining what you do and you're showing them what you do and you're talking about the process, that lands you where they are, not just history resumes.
Speaker 2:So how would you do that in is that? Are you talking? If I'm just using really practical, simple terms here, are you talking when you're pitching a candidate to a client, you like give them detailed walkthrough of the conversation and how it came about?
Speaker 3:So even pre that, when you're, when you're pitching to do a piece of work so look, I'm coming at this from where 100% retained, so it's. It's always a retainer. So for a client to be comfortable to stump up money at the start, they've got to know they're getting some value. So we're walking through with them the steps, the tools, the, the expertise that goes into. You know the analogy of it's not the cost of the hammer in the nail, it's knowing where to put it. So, how, this is how I'm going to get you here and this is this is what I need from you to understand this and walking them through the steps and the decisions, but disciplined, weekly updates of what you've done, what work you're doing for your fees, and educate them. You know I've spoken to, I've reached out to 85 people this week. I've spoken to 27. This is what I'm hearing about your brand in the market. This is where I'm at with these people.
Speaker 3:And the day you say to a client I'm actually not satisfied to present you with shortlist, I need to do more work for it to be good enough and I need some more time is really empowering because they go oh, you're actually taking this really seriously, you're not just happy just to land good enough, it's got to be, it's got to be right. So, doing all of that, working out, debriefing at the end and talking, we do a facts and stats document so they can see all the, all the inputs, so they know the activities that have gone in at the end and, like in government, there's a lot of division, there's a lot of diversity, reporting and things that you do to make sure that it's the right level. But it's really just explaining what we do and not being so quick just to solve it really quickly and get it done. That's when they say oh what? I'm paying 40 grand for two resumes.
Speaker 1:That's why you're on the flip side. That's why you're paying me 40 grand, because I got you these two people.
Speaker 3:That's 28 years and they're working right there.
Speaker 1:So what would be if you're on the could sometimes clients like make just send me the CV? You're saying you got someone and then you're trying to get them to go through a whole process and they're a new potential client. How would you then revert them back to selling retained? Would you say, look, we need to meet before I send you a CV, or would you always?
Speaker 3:For me it's. It's the consultancy assignment rather than the candidate. So if you want to pitch retained, the worst thing you can do is mention a candidate, a specific candidate. You're dead in the water. You know that. Why would they retain you? You've already told them that you know somebody. Why don't I check that person out first? It's it's actually pitching the process and the you know, the higher guarantees, the investment they would make and and and the time that goes into that. So it's really about how you pitch the solution and getting to the solution, not the actual solution, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3:So the actual solution is the person who gets a job. The solution is the process that you get there to make sure that they're spoiled for choice.
Speaker 1:Hey, just want to jump in here. We got a confession hotline, so give us a call, send us a text if you want to share any juicy stories or even just ask a question that's been on your mind, because we'd love to hear from you. The phone number is 0485-865-483. Enjoy the rest of the show.
Speaker 2:Just circling back to what you said about sending them a report and I really like your analogy there around. You get marks for showing how you've worked out the answer. I haven't heard that ever, but you're right, you know. You answer a math question and it's just the answer. They're like oh, you didn't show me how you did it, so you only get half a mark, and so do you send them a report, let's say and just feel like connect these dots for me. But at the end of like a Friday, hey, this is a formal PDF document or this is a bit of a writer.
Speaker 3:No, it's an email. No, it could be a text. Oh cool, so it's just a hey, just FYI, this is what we're doing, but it's got some detail in it, gotcha, and it links back One of the conversations I like to have when they're when we're pitching a role and again I'm in the executive space, so I'm going to use my executive stuff and is where are you at in your strategic cycle?
Speaker 3:What's stopping you from meeting a strategic goals? How does this role contribute to that if you get it right, and how does this, this role, hurt your business if you get it wrong? So what's the opportunity cost of a good decision here and linking that to this, the strategy, and where are you at and what are your opportunities in the market? And if you could shoot the lights out, what would that look like? And how do we get you there? And then mapping that back to some skills and some experience and you know, executives have really done stuff, no stuff, and seen stuff and you know what. What is that and how do you match that up? That sounds very casual, but how do you match that stuff up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 3:And that if you go with candidate A and these are your strategic objectives you're more likely to land here in this way, but if you go with candidate B, you might end up over here. Or and and there's another little cute analogy that I use that every executive is like that table in the restaurant with a wonky leg, everyone's got a short leg, and what's the bench of the company to support that short leg? So which leg is okay to be short and which leg must reach the floor because there's no one else to prop it up? And do they understand that? So when you start talking to organizations about this stuff, sometimes they're like oh, I haven't really thought about it that way.
Speaker 1:You could use that on a micro scale, though still. You could be recruiting a sales rep for an organization and you can have that exact framework. Okay so, the analogy.
Speaker 2:Let me just confirm I understand this analogy. So you're basically what you're doing is planting the seed that, yes, we understand that this person is going to have a shortfall somewhere, yep, and they are acknowledging that, yes, I'm happy for them to have a shortfall in this area of their experience, and then that way, you can at least advise and sell them in and go hey, we've spoken about this. These three areas are really important and this was the one area that you're happy to be flexible on. This is your man. I like that. It's 100%.
Speaker 3:And it's understanding like every single human has a whole range of unique inputs your social stuff, your experience stuff, your workplace, the leaders you've worked for. There are all your inputs which design you uniquely to solve specific problems. But you have to understand the problem. So when you understand the problem you can find the person to solve that problem. And at the leadership level no one has it all, because every company, every problem is so unique so you're never doing an absolute. Sometimes you shoot the lights out with someone who's you know got it all, but frequently there's something and then it's what do you have the capacity to coach and mentor in from some, from some area? And with our executive placements we do a three month onboarding coaching program so we help with that coaching and that's really, that's really valuable.
Speaker 1:And these. When you say executive, just to give everyone context, these salaries are from $300,000 to $1 million. So they're they're pivotal for Sometimes they're not that high.
Speaker 3:I mean, if you're if you're talking a CEO and not for profit, it could be in the low hundreds, but it's really important. Some of the board roles we do don't have a salary. We still get paid to run the process, but the boards don't get paid.
Speaker 2:This might be a naive question how?
Speaker 1:do you recruit? For them?
Speaker 3:Because people volunteer for a cause. Flat fee.
Speaker 2:Is that a flat fee? Flat fee Because you can't charge a percentage on that.
Speaker 3:No, we very rarely work on percentages.
Speaker 2:Oh really.
Speaker 3:I would say 90% of our work is on a flat fee, because it's the work, is the work. It doesn't matter what the salary is.
Speaker 2:Really Okay. Well, that's what I was about. I was, I was about to ask you something that could be a little naive, but if you're recruiting a, like a CEO, and you're, who are you talking to to to recruit this role? The board, the board is a few people, one person.
Speaker 3:So it's usually a committee of the board is nominated to appoint the CEO. It's normally a nomination and remuneration committee, so they would normally form a panel. One of the things I insist on when I work for a board is if, as long as the CEO that you're replacing knows they're being replaced sometimes they don't, so it's all a bit clandestine, but generally, generally there's a vacancy, we will brief with all of the director reports to that CEO. And then we will take back to the board the reality of the organization.
Speaker 3:Interesting which is interesting Because it's what the board sometimes thinks they need and want is different to what the organization needs and wants, and you've got to come in the middle to to agree what that actually looks like You'll potentially have in a client meeting.
Speaker 1:Then you're speaking to getting the view of 10 people, including director reports plus the board, and then how long does this process go for Before you even start recruiting?
Speaker 3:Oh, a week, like not long Okay.
Speaker 2:Are you pumped that out? Yeah?
Speaker 3:so you're building your marketing. We use a lot of microsites. You're building your marketing. You've got your researcher on it, because your researcher doesn't have to be perfectly on it. They're doing a big mass getting the research done. I'm meeting with the board. Then Mel Super EA Lines up the conversations and I might sit in a boardroom and do six or seven in a row when people are coming in and out, or I might do groups, so there might be, you know, the CFO and the chief HR officer or whatever together, or. But that conversation is always do you think you're an applicant?
Speaker 2:As well.
Speaker 3:So some of those people might have aspirations.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so you got a flesh out.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's say they are yeah and you're like all right, well job placed. I just found the person, or no beauty.
Speaker 3:Oh no no, it doesn't mean they should be. Let's get Barry the CFO.
Speaker 2:You get it. Let's get him a promotion doesn't mean that's 50 Big ones, guys.
Speaker 3:Thank you it doesn't mean he should be the CEO based on the brief. So my conversation with them is let me talk about how I'll support you through the process and they might be the end applicant, but let me also talk about if it's not you. What does it look like and what will make sense to you and will will help retain you in the organization if you don't get the job because you create a flight risk and and and. My job, I said to them, is to give you a run for your money. It's to support you to do a really good job through the process, but to give you a run for the money. So when CEO turns up, if it's not you, you go. Okay, I get it.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. That's um, that's really interesting, very dynamic. It's fun, had it is. It does this. Do you ever go to external training programs, or do you have your own coach that goes through this, or is this something that you're picking up naturally? What are you doing to get like a little bit savvy with this stuff? Is it just doing it for a long time?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's, it's experience. But one of the one of the most valuable things that's really helped me with my client work Is sitting on boards myself, so understanding what a boards looking for and Understanding how the CEO board dynamic works and having been on leadership teams it helps, and being a CEO it helps. So that experience has really has been sitting on the food bank board has been incredible Growth for me personally, which I really enjoy and the.
Speaker 3:RCS, a board as well, you know it's all of those. Things are great inputs into having knowledge. Gonna, be careful, you don't assume you have the knowledge, though. You've got to be super curious because every company is completely different.
Speaker 1:Can't assume anything. What was your first board experience?
Speaker 3:as in me sitting on board, Um Formerly food bank. So that's only been the last six years.
Speaker 1:Wow, what made you get involved with them?
Speaker 3:I was recruiting for the board. I didn't mean to. I Sort of finished the work and the the chair at the time and the Norman rem committee chair, we went for coffee and they said so we've got a question for you. You know what about you? And my response was well, what about me? Like, what do you think I'm, what do you think I'm gonna do on a board? Like, I've got no board experience, I haven't done a ICD, what do you, what do you think I'm gonna do? And they had a clear idea of that and the rest has been history. I'm deputy chair now, so it's great.
Speaker 1:What circulates in those conversations? Yeah, in what do you talk about? Conversations for food bank?
Speaker 3:Oh, oh gosh. Well, we're a major food distribution company, really so, and we serve as 330 charities. So we've got member needs, we've got you know we we talk about safety or all the usual governance stuff financial performance, performance of our CEO, where our money's coming from, how we, how we support our members, like we had. We had a board meeting today to sign off the financial statements with the auditors. You know that every board meeting is quite different, but there's always a schedule of the Decisions that you need to make. As the board and the CEO and the executive team are coming to us with his things, we need to have signed off and agreed and we have to and your job to keep them accountable.
Speaker 2:So let me just kind of backtrack this a little bit, because I'm really interested to be a fly on the wall in this. How many people are in this board?
Speaker 3:on the food bank board. We have nine.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm just imagining nine people around a big table. Someone's talking about something that they got a PowerPoint, they're clicking through slides, sometimes Yep, and there's some sort of decision needs to be made. Who's? There's a lot of decision makers in that room. Who's like to someone go?
Speaker 3:I've got this one, we'll do it that one, and then it's the next person's turn you do resolution, so you have a chair who guides the board meeting and then you have usually have committees who have have reviewed stuff before it gets to the board. So the nomination Remuneration committee for food bank. Recently the CEO brought to us a decision to hire some additional outside of budget roles. So we had the PDs, we had the impact financially, the rest of it, so we we agreed those and then it went up to the board. So the board knows that we've had a look at it and then the board has to agree to spend this out of budget money on these roles and so we ask for support and resolution. So anyone raises concerns, but if you have a majority who vote yes, then that decision is passed through. Do you ever get like?
Speaker 2:stalemates.
Speaker 3:We haven't really like we're. We're a, we're pretty good. I think we're pretty good board. But you do have you do have items that are pet projects for particular board members or someone's really passionate about, and it's for the chair to moderate that and. But a lot of this stuff is socialized pre board meetings. So you kind of get a heads up that something's going to be tabled and when you sit and does someone need to be Influenced and you know what do we need to do to get this through, and this is why it's important or it might be. Oh well, I'm just not going to support that. But if the rest of the board agrees, then you just kind of have to support it.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it's. It's not like you're sitting there and then all of a sudden you get thrown three or four different things and you just got to make a decision like that.
Speaker 3:No, that okay. You get board papers well in advance. Usually things that socialize things have been through committees, but that's if it's done Well yeah, so they're very refined and you have.
Speaker 3:You have a board calendar of decisions that have to be made. So the RCS has this. We've got a number of committees, we have a schedule of decisions that have to be made at different times of the year, which which relate to the Constitution of the board, which is basically says this is how this board is going to be run and this is what it will do and when it will do it, and the rules of the board. So you, you live to those constitutions and, in terms of reference, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:And what? At what point did you bring a board on for on talent day? One day, one day, one day one.
Speaker 3:So we? How many people in the business? Well, it was the three of us. We were the board.
Speaker 1:Okay, and we had. You can be your own board.
Speaker 3:You can. So we appointed Verena's husband, ron, as our chair, and Verena was on the board. I went on and off the board at different times and that was around. At one stage we didn't have the right insurance to cover me for work cover as the CEO, so I stepped off the board as a director until we sorted that out, because otherwise, if I hurt myself at work, I would have no insurance coverage. So and I've remained on the board Ever since. We have an independent chair right now and we have it. We had a company that invested in us and they had a representation representative on the board as well. So we run formal board meetings, we do board minutes, my CFO is our company secretary, we pass resolutions, but it's it's a board for financial decision-making really and you think and, and is that fundamental?
Speaker 1:so you got 26 FTES, is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's a lot Good on you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, many millions dollars in revenue as well. What's the best part about having a board? Is it that accountability Is it? Is it where?
Speaker 2:should we all be having a board? I don't have a board. I feel like I need a board not everybody needs a board.
Speaker 3:I think when you have multiple shareholders, it's helpful to have a central, agreed Decision space. So one of our shareholders is not on our board and that's because she holds her shares in her superfund. So you can't be on the board and and acting the best interests of your super fund if you're acting in the best interests of your company. So there's some rules around that. So it's good to have a responsible Group for making key decisions, which might be a dividend policy. How much money are we going to pay the shareholders this year? Are we going to take out any, you know, debt to invest? We're going to do something different. We're going to sign a lease. You know there's some of those bigger decisions. It's it's helpful. I think you can over complicate your life if you, if you don't really need it with multiple shareholders. I think it's a good thing. How many shareholders are in on talent? So we got four.
Speaker 1:And what was the buying and selling process like for you when you, when you went through that and deciding at what point did you go? Hey, I think we should raise some money, or we should get another shareholder on for a certain injection, or we want XYZ.
Speaker 3:We. So Verena and Ron were the major shareholders from the start because they put the cash up. I bought my shares my early shares at a good rate and then we actually had a client invest in us so they bought a portion of the company for a particular amount of money and they are currently divesting, so we're buying back their shares into the company. And then one of my senior Staff wanted to be a shareholder, so she bought some shares off another shareholder. So it's really been that process. But you've got to, you know, be valued and work out what the share price is and do all of that. You know we've got shareholder agreements and, yeah, it's a bit of a process.
Speaker 1:So are you grateful that recruitment's given you all of these opportunities. Like you know you're, you're chatting before you. What was the come the board that you're on for the disabled? Oh the waterness, yeah the waterness.
Speaker 3:They're supporting athletes, it's for emerging athletes, so some are able-bodied, some aren't, but they're all athletes who struggle to make ends meet, to attend training, to, to compete. And so Rachel, our CEO, and the advisory board not, it's not a direct ship she basically goes and finds corporates who will sponsor these athletes in return for marketing participation, a whole, a whole bunch of stuff. So that's cool, it's fascinating, yeah. And then you're, you're a.
Speaker 1:What you love. Reviewing restaurants. Yeah, tell us about this.
Speaker 3:Well, I won't say who with, because it's meant to be a bit, you know secrets grills, but I am a judge for one of the Awards in the hotel industry, so Mel it's, mel isn't it.
Speaker 2:So when Mel was telling us this, I was like, are you telling me she runs this hectic company and she's a secret shopper? She's like not quite a secret shopper and I was like, wow, she's doing everything right now.
Speaker 3:So we Jason my husband is a judge as well and we go and stay in hotels and visit restaurants and pubs at a different, a particular time of the year. But I also run all the people awards, so say, for example, it might be a chef of the year or front of house person of the year. So we have criteria and I judge.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so you're coming through the door.
Speaker 3:They're like, oh quick, no, they don't know when you interview for the people awards they do, but not when you're going in and we've got these little cards that you leave behind that says you've been judged. And I have to sometimes remember that I'm not judging a restaurant when I'm in a restaurant because, I totally want to leave what I do behind.
Speaker 1:What would be some of the best restaurants you've judged.
Speaker 3:Well, that's kind of tell you who I judge for.
Speaker 1:How did you get into that? I just tell us it's confessions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's not my job, it's so probably some of the best restaurants. I won't say the names, but often they're family run and owned rather than part of bigger chains.
Speaker 1:Oh, of course yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know the chefs just got that. Some of the chefs I interview are just the most gorgeous, amazing, hardworking people.
Speaker 1:They're not putting steaks together from the graziers menu.
Speaker 3:No, but they're. Some of them are pubs, you know, and, and they're just they're, they're incredible. The ones that run good kitchens, you know, the team work is is amazing and they, they mentor, and there's so much mental health oh, it does sound like a typical rest, like a typical restaurant restaurant like in the chef world.
Speaker 2:I thought chef worlds were tough you know alcohol drugs not many, not much sleep, swearing, throwing things at each other. Yeah, so you're. You're describing a great place to work as a chef.
Speaker 3:Yes, some of them, some of there is that in the industry. But there's also there was one chef that I interviewed who actively took on chefs with who had or were still having drug problems, to help them rehabilitate. I mean, could you imagine if you had a recruiter walk in the door and say I really want to work for you, but I'm just trying to get off cocaine, would you? Would you and they're honest about it, and I'm really having serious mental health problems? Oh, would we, you know? So you look at people like that and think, wow, you're just amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how did that come about for you? How did you create that opportunity for yourself with oh, I involved in that.
Speaker 3:You, the CEO of the Association. So we've been doing that for eight years.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's a long time.
Speaker 3:And it's a lot it is. It sounds really glamorous, but it gets it's work. It is actually hard work because you do have to take the judging pretty seriously, because these are people's livelihoods and it's for me it's such a great balance out of, you know, walking the halls of one William Street top in a government to interviewing someone who owns a regional rural pub. It's really cool.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, and so a lot of these opportunities come because these people are your candidates or your clients. Oh, this was a friend this was this was, this was more this was more friend, but and how would recruiters go from that step to go, from you know mid tier roles and trying to step up and get into that executive space. How do you? Is it a big leap? Is it not all it's cracked up to being? It's not a? Or is there a huge gap? And you're going to be high school? Just ask for it.
Speaker 2:Just going to find someone that does it partner up with them or just get your first job on and have a crack with your client and just seek had BD call I've got three.
Speaker 1:I've got three.
Speaker 2:CEOs I'm thinking of right now I can send you. Do you want to go return?
Speaker 3:I get calls from recruiters who want to give me the perfect candidate for your job and split my fees.
Speaker 2:Oh, what do you say to that? Thanks for no thanks. You understand how the industry works.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I do try to educate rather than ridicule. But you know, I even got one today saying you know, can I send you some CVs for admin roles, like why?
Speaker 1:I can understand that, why that happens yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or, and it's like, have you researched my company?
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you know where? A recruitment agency? To actually on that note, I'm really interested to understand. So you've got a really successful recruitment agency. 13 years in, you're at the top of the game.
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't know about that.
Speaker 2:You're at the top of the game. What are your goals now? Like you know, declan and I were 12 months into a business that you know we started together and we've got our one year goal, two year goal, five year goal. But when you're 13 years in and you know you've got all this success, are your goals different today as they were five years ago, and what are they?
Speaker 3:Well, they, yeah, they, they change. They probably get a little more complex. And in our business where we have, we've recently shifted into from almost pure executive into what I call professional and specialist, so we've kind of gone down Down's. A terrible thing but it's a, it's a different adjacent. Yeah Well, that's the next rung, it's the next, so we're we're recruiting our own clients and they say, well, you've just recruited the CFO, how about a senior financial accountant?
Speaker 3:And I'm like, don't do that. But now we do so for criticism great people in that space. But the other side of on talent is our careers, leadership and consulting business, where we do career transition and leadership development coaching, and on the 1st of October we're launching something called amplify, which is basically our career transition materials digitized so people can be to see by the, the programs that we run for people who've been made redundant and then we're going to grow that out into better evaluating leadership team sort of material.
Speaker 3:So we we don't want to go necessarily national or or much bigger, but we want to keep contributing in the markets that where we, where we enjoy and we've got a really deep relationships with clients. So we're not even really going too far beyond our core.
Speaker 2:So you don't have like basic in this again, this I don't want to list.
Speaker 3:I don't want a hundred branches, I don't want 300 people. No, no, no, we just want to do really good work and build something of value. But we do have aspirations of setting up an employee share plan at some point. So we do want the business to be largely owned by the people who work in it, so that if in the future there was a sale event, there would be value returned to everybody who's helped build the organization. How?
Speaker 2:do you implement something like that? That seems like, because I it's really hard. A little bit of advice that I got from a gentleman in Sydney. He runs a couple of ASX list of companies himself. He's got a few family businesses and the one thing that he said to me is, if you want to give your staff equity, don't give them actual, actual equity. Give them some sort of synthetic, pseudo equity where you're not having to speak to lawyers every time someone wants to resign.
Speaker 3:Some people call it a phantom shares Phantom shares. So what it says, that is, you have an agreement that if the company was to sell, you would get 5% or whatever.
Speaker 2:Gotcha.
Speaker 3:So you can do that, and we're weighing up our options. We haven't decided.
Speaker 2:That seems like a much more responsible thing for everyone involved, then oh well, I don't know. You can tell me.
Speaker 3:Except you then don't have the dividend piece that you can return. So if they don't have actual shares, then you probably doing a profit share bonus rather than a.
Speaker 2:It's true. It's just an incentive plan really, at the end of the day, then, isn't it? Yeah, what about you personally? What are your personal goals?
Speaker 3:Keep going for now. I reckon I've got another 10 to 15 left in me.
Speaker 2:Another 10 to 15,. What Years I was thinking? 30 to 40.
Speaker 3:I love you, thank you. I would see myself probably moving to kind of like an executive chair role and maybe someone else running the company eventually, but I'm not ready for that.
Speaker 2:In like 10 years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe I don't know I could be next year. I don't know. Right now I'm loving what I'm doing, so I'll keep going and look. Someone might come and throw bags of cash at us at some point, so as if you're going to say no to that.
Speaker 3:And then I might go and sit on a beach in Italy, I don't know. It's interesting. I've never been that really detailed goal oriented. To me, success gives you choice and freedom, and it's not necessarily about big houses and it's all about that choice of what you want to do, which one, which convertible you want. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What colour convertible you drive and how many assignments would you do on a quarter for like it Executive roles?
Speaker 3:Don't ask me that right now, because I'm doing way too many.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've heard you crushing it this quarter. What are your figures? What are your best quarter of a long time this quarter? What have you built this quarter?
Speaker 3:Depending where I finish up in the next two days, it'll be 350. 350?
Speaker 2:Boy, oh boy I shouldn't do that.
Speaker 3:That's bad. That's bad.
Speaker 2:You've heard it here first on Convexions yeah, that's not realistic. And so they're flat fees. How many deals?
Speaker 3:is that? Yeah, but it's all retainers. So over the quarter it's probably I don't know Eight to 10 jobs, I suppose.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's so many jobs, but I'm starting some as well.
Speaker 3:So you're finishing some, you're starting some, you're in the middle of some.
Speaker 2:You're still hustling, that's a lot of recruitment. Exec roles running a business, being a leader, mentoring and managing and doing. I don't see how you got the time.
Speaker 3:I probably don't. I probably don't. I need to scale it back a bit. It's finding the people to you can't say no right, you guys run a business, clients got the work, you're going to do the work.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I have great people, but they're all really busy.
Speaker 2:Do you ever seek out? Do you ever sorry, man, I'll let you go, that's all right, man, let me just slip this one in the Blake and Tash podcast. Do you ever seek out or look for external coaches? Or because I hear a lot of high performance like people will like, yeah, my high performance coach, that's, you know, my life coach and teaches me how to I don't know do things yeah.
Speaker 3:Have you got something like that? Yeah, totally so. Part of our business is that. So I need to live what I speak, right, so I'm a member of a tech group, so that's the TC, which is the executive connection, and that's a group of CEOs who get together once a month for a day and we have speakers and then my chair of that group I have a one on one with for two hours once a month, which is about the business but also me and how I'm going and what I'm doing and what my aspirations are and what our strategy is.
Speaker 3:And that group of 16 that I mean I've been in for going on eight years now and I can call on any of those largely guys because that's the world we're in at any time for a bit of advice and they're from a whole broad range of organizations. So, and look, there was one of our guys recently whose business almost went to the wall and three of the other members not me, because I couldn't have, I didn't have the skills to help him but three of our members took leave and went and worked in that person's business and helped save it.
Speaker 2:Holy moly Amazing. That is awesome. It's amazing. How do you get into this?
Speaker 3:You pay for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So tech is part of a group, a global group called Vistage, which is mainly in the US, and so there's a bunch of chairs in Queensland or around Australia Charles from the RCSA is in a tech group and you get matched up with a group and you've got to be able, you've got to go to most meetings, so you've got to have a day a month, like it's. It can be hard.
Speaker 2:Is me and Declan qualified for this, or you've got to be some? Oh, you can just Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And if you don't want to do the full day, there's a thing called a key group, which is kind of like a general manager level group that you can join. So it's I'm trying to remember it's about $1,700 a month, and is that it? Yeah, I get enormous amounts.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I do that At one stage we were doing a bit of a share sale and I wanted to understand what I thought our value might have been. And you know, a managing partner of one of the mid-sized accounting firms is in my group and but a lot of the guys had bought and sold businesses. So they all did a bit of a back of the fag packet for a born and for better term calculation and said we reckon the share price is this. And then we got a formal valuation and they were within 10 cents.
Speaker 1:Like oh.
Speaker 3:I probably didn't need to pay to have a valuation?
Speaker 1:Yeah, is it pot like who you get? Yes, a little bit.
Speaker 3:But, being in the group for eight years and being a recruiter, I do sometimes speak to my chair about, when he's bringing members on, whether I think they'd be a good fit or not Do the screening process A little bit a? Little bit.
Speaker 2:Do you get a clip of that? That reoccurring income of the?
Speaker 3:No, but it means I don't have to put up with someone I don't want to. And we workshop. We've had members with spouses with mental health problems, We've had kids with cancer, We've had you know lots of stuff, and we do a retreat every year where we go away with our partners and do some goal setting and it's great. I love it, I love it and I love my. I love my group.
Speaker 2:Awesome, we're looking to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're still a million dollar bill up running a big team.
Speaker 3:Yeah, try not to be a million dollar bill up. Yeah, but I'm not going to do that this year. Yeah, pull it back.
Speaker 2:Pull it back a bit 900. And imagine that I'm going to try not to bill a million this year.
Speaker 3:No, but I've got a team who can do that, yeah. That sounds bad it doesn't normally sound like that.
Speaker 1:And what do you do to switch off? Like, how do you downtime Swim in the ocean?
Speaker 3:I love swimming in the ocean, so I have my fur kids that I hang out with. I have a daughter, I have a grandson, my grandson Saxon, who's 12. I have a great circle of friends. I cook, I hang out at home. I'm trying to renovate my house. My billages went broke. It's great. Although he'll still give you a quote if you want one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've got that.
Speaker 3:I try to get away, but that's hard.
Speaker 1:How do you instill all that? Do you instill that type of stuff in your consultants, so they're not always in that psychological next year?
Speaker 3:I try to tell them do what I say, not what I do yeah. Yeah, it's not good. I'm a bit of a workaholic though.
Speaker 1:I just love it, I love working, yeah, like us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can't not do it, but I'm in desperate need of a holiday at the moment, so I will get that shortly, I hope.
Speaker 1:Because Hamo was short-lived.
Speaker 3:Well, COVID didn't help.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, kind of sucked. Sorry if I gave it to anybody up there, and whoever gave it to me, thanks. So yeah, hamo was a bit short-lived.
Speaker 2:Yep. So when's the next holiday? Christmas?
Speaker 3:Yeah, although I am going to the AFL Grand Finals this weekend.
Speaker 2:Who's it with Collinwood and Lyons?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:One of the boys in the office just got scammed two greens today. He was trying to buy tickets Because there is 130,000 Collinwood supporters and there's 55,000 Brisbane Lyons supporters and there's just physically not enough tickets for anyone except the members.
Speaker 3:We got given tickets. Oh really, yeah, Would you sell them? My husband did no.
Speaker 2:You must have the best network.
Speaker 1:It seems like you can just pull on anything at a moment. It was through his work.
Speaker 3:So we're going for the long weekend, so we've got that. And, yeah, we're hoping to get away for a couple of weeks of Christmas.
Speaker 1:The Brisbane Lyons or Collinwood Lyons, lyons yeah, totally yeah, all the way.
Speaker 3:It'll be great and he went 20 years ago. It was 20 years ago today that Brisbane beat Collinwood in a grand final, and he was at that game. So that was the last grand final he went to, so he's beyond excited. He rang me. He goes. I'm heading into a meeting. I got given tickets. This was on Monday. I'm heading into a meeting I got given tickets. Do anything you can to get flights and accommodation. See you at home. Bye, I'm like now I'm a freaking travel agent.
Speaker 2:That's when you're EA.
Speaker 3:That's what you do I just did it. But yeah, we're going, so that'll be cool, that'll be super fun.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, tash, thanks so much for coming on. It's been awesome, great insights and for us to learn about a whole new level of the recruitment industry.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me no worries. Thank you.
Speaker 2:It's been fun and you did say I-D-8 and you did circle back, I tried to drop in a few nuggets. That was me trying to be witty. What's I-D-8? I-d-8?
Speaker 3:Oh, when people get together and create ideas, I hate it.
Speaker 2:I-D-8, circle back Pushing base.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's just like oh, all those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah there's just heaps of them.
Speaker 2:Pivot.
Speaker 3:Yeah pivot.
Speaker 2:I'm going to pivot to this quickly. Love it Awesome, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Tash.
Speaker 2:Thanks for tuning in to another Confessions of a Recruit Up podcast with Blake and Declan. We hope you enjoyed and got a lot of value and insights out of this episode. If you do have any questions or you would like to recommend someone to come on the Confessions podcast, we would love any introductions and remember the rule of the podcast, like share and recommend it to a friend. Until next time, bye.