Darren Buchanan | The Man Behind Hays Queensland’s Rise to #1 | COAR S3 E1

You don’t often get to hear from someone who’s spent 32 years inside one of the world’s biggest recruitment agencies and still has a clear view of what matters. Darren joins us to share how he “fell into recruitment” in early 90s London, survived the boiler room pace, and eventually helped build Hays into a powerhouse across Queensland.

We dig into the real differences between UK recruitment and Australian recruitment culture, especially in Brisbane and regional Queensland. London can be transactional and outcome-first, while Queensland recruiting often rewards relationships, trust and showing up in person. Darren explains how the same recruitment methodology can land very differently depending on the market, and what that means for client management and candidate experience.

We also get practical on systems and leadership: why CRM and ATS rollouts are so hard in big agencies, how to win buy-in (including pulling sceptics closer), and how to manage KPIs when your most experienced recruiters operate on instinct and deep networks. Darren shares why compliance and customer service can’t be an afterthought, plus what the GFC taught him about redundancies, humanity and leading when it hurts.

If you’re building a recruitment agency, running a team, or trying to stay sane while chasing targets, this one is packed with grounded lessons. Subscribe, share it with a recruiter mate, leave us a review, and tell us: what’s the hardest change you’ve had to lead in your business?

Transcript

Welcome And Why Darren Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It really was like a boil of robes. We've got one of Hayes's longest standing in Australia. This isn't verified, this is my claim. You're a very well-known man. You've stayed at Hayes for how long? 32 years in tall. Obviously, Hayes builds up and breeds great recruiters.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

When I came to Australia, the first situation I had to deal with was a dispute. Went and met him, and we spent probably an hour talking about the UK. And by the end of it, I said, oh no, what about this dispute? And he said, Oh, don't worry about it. Much more personable. That's the big difference between recruiting in Australia, or in Queensland, certainly, compared to London. We weren't the number one agency. We weren't the biggest agency, but within a couple of years we've taken that spot.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Welcome back to another episode of Confessions of a Recruiter. We're joined by a very special guest today. We've got one of Hayes's longest standing in Australia. Maybe this isn't verified. This is my claim.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Pleasure. Good to be here. We've talked a bit in the past, so it's actually good to meet you all in person at last.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

100%. So I think this podcast is going to be pretty special and pretty interesting. And there's a few reasons for that. One is you've been at Hayes for a very long time. So you would have more than anybody some really good insights around what makes a good recruitment business, a good large recruitment business work well. And some of the things to avoid in a good large recruitment business that we don't normally have. So normally our guests are either new agency owners, small agency owners, recruiters. Your experience is quite different to, I think, anyone that we've had on for that fact, which is awesome. And I'm really excited to like peel the layers back there. And then secondly, you're a very well-known man in Queensland, especially for a lot of our partners, give you a pretty big pump up and say you're a great bloke to speak to. They enjoyed working with you. We've got a lot of ex-Hayes recruiters that have gone on to start their own recruitment agency. Obviously, Hayes builds up and breeds great recruiters. So, you know, kudos, kudos to that. And you're probably a big influence in being able to do that. So where should we start today? Because I've got a range of different questions, and I just don't want to scatter our guests. But perhaps maybe let's just start with a couple of minutes overview on how long you were at Hayes, because you've recently gone a different direction. Um, when you started and kind of what that shift looked like from going from the UK to Australia and then getting boots on ground. And can you paint us a little bit of a picture on that for context?

Falling Into Recruitment In London

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah, so um like many people, I fell into recruitment, um, and even to this day, many people fall into it inverted commas. Um I'd been in Australia backpacking back in 1991, which wasn't that common back then. Um so that was really interesting, had a great time, wanted to go or had to go back, I couldn't get sponsored, so I had to go back to the UK and went to London, got a job at Selfridge's, the famous department store. Um, and a friend of mine there, uh a girl, said that she'd got a job in recruitment. And I thought, what's that? Never heard of it, never been on my radar. So I thought, well, I don't want to stay working in the menswear department for the rest of my life. So I had a look in the newspapers and saw a couple of adverts, one of which was for Hayes. So I thought I'd ring him up. Sorry, rang him up? Yeah, somebody will get back to you. Nothing for a week. Right? I rang them every day, three times a day for a week. Did ya?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Yeah, wow, hey, God, you were already a recruiter.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Well, I was in London with this North Eastern England accent, right? And they were, I think, hoping for somebody from the south. So they were like, oh, this northern bloke keeps ringing up all the time. So in the end, I persisted, good trait of a recruiter, and uh and they took me in. Um and since then never looked back, stayed with the same company, worked my way through. Um, about 11 years into my career in London. Uh I had a uh a family by that stage, and I decided that London probably wasn't the best place to bring up kids. Um, having been to Australia, I always wanted to come back, so put in an application, um, wanted to go to Sydney, like everybody does. And because I'd worked in Toowumba, I saw Queensland as the big country town. But the boss at the time, a a legend of recruitment, Nigel Heap, in his said, Oh, we we want you to go and have a look at Queensland. And I said, nah, nah, nah. Nah, it'll be too too big a too big a culture shock for the missus, for my wife, um going from London to a big country town. He said, Look, we'll send you out there for ten days, have a look, see what you think. Uh he did. He put us up in Noosa for the weekend, uh deal done. Yeah. That was it. And then in 2003 came here, um, and have been here ever since.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

And so you've stayed at Hayes for how long? 32 years in toll. An incredible tenure at one company.

UK Versus Queensland Recruiting Culture

SPEAKER_00 5:29

One question that this just comes to mind is what was the difference between UK Hayes and Australia Hayes? Because there's a bit of a cultural difference between recruiters from the UK. Yep. Um, you know, they're smashing deals, they're transactional, you know, this is the stereotype, not that they always are.

unknown 5:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

And then you come to Australia and we're like laid back, we're lazy, you know, we don't work very hard, we want work-life balance and you know, go for a surf on the weekends and so on and so forth. How would you describe the difference between UK Hays and Australia Hayes? Do you know what?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

It wasn't that different internally, because a lot of the people in the senior leadership positions back then, when I came here in 2003, were from the UK haze business.

unknown 6:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

So the methodology and the practices were very, very much the same. What was different was how you dealt with clients and candidates, um, because that was a completely different culture. So, for example, when I first arrived, um, I'd been in London, obviously, where it was very transactional, like you said, and clients just want uh a job filled quickly, no force, no messing around, most of the time didn't have opportunity to see you or meet you, just fill the job and get on with it. When I came to Australia, the first situation I had to deal with was a dispute. And I went and met this guy, it was quite a serious dispute, and I went and met him, and we spent probably an hour talking about the UK and how things were and having a chat over a coffee, and by the end of it, I said, Oh now, what about this dispute? And he said, Oh, don't worry about it. And I thought that's the big difference between, or one of the differences between recruiting in Australia, or in Queensland, certainly. Don't know about Sydney and Melbourne, but um compared to London. Much more personable, much more uh people wanted to meet you back then, you know, it was almost a prerequisite that if you didn't meet them, they wouldn't deal with you. May still be the same today to a degree. Um, so yeah, so quite different culturally, but the systems and processes very similar.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, that's a really good point. So relationship-driven, people want to meet you, do business with people that they like, this type of thing. But in the UK, they just want an outcome.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Yeah, they want it as cheap as possible, as quickly as possible, and then move on. Certainly in London. I don't know about some of the regional areas in the UK, because all my my time was spent working in London. But London was very transactional. But London can be very impersonal, you know, anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Gotcha. So so 10 years in the UK, 20 plus years in Australia, Brisbane specifically. What what are some of the what are some of the things that you've seen over the last 20 years? I I can only imagine how different it like the different kind of seasons of business. Even, you know, I think about my recruitment agency, it's 10 years old, and we've had so many different seasons of maturity and the way we do things and all this kind of stuff. I I could only imagine what that would be like for like a Hayes business. Is there is there many different like seasons? Like, what have you seen from like when you first got here to ultimately up to a couple of years ago that some like big shifts that you've noticed in recruitment either at Hayes or just in like the market in general?

Tech Shifts And Scaling Regional Offices

SPEAKER_01 8:48

The advance of technology has been a massive player or part to play in what's changed. Um This is a bit embarrassing, but it is what it is. When I first started in recruitment, I had uh a plastic box on the right, a plastic box on the left, one contained the candidate's CVs on a card, the other contained the client cards that you wrote your notes on, uh you had a handheld telephone, no computer, and to send CVs you sent them through a fax machine, right? Um and if and if you were unlucky and the job was registered with another agency, one of your competitors, they would block your fax machine to stop you getting your CVs to the client, was quite common, supposedly. I don't know if I don't recall experiencing that myself, but apparently that's what used to happen. Um so there was no technologies back then, there was no social media, um, we didn't have mobile phones or anything like that. Um sounds like the Middle Ages, and I guess it probably was, but it was actually quite nice because all the recruitment was about you and what you did, not the technologies or anything like that to uh influence in it. Um what's changed is um when I first left London, it was very competitive, very expansive. We were opening offices here and there, opening regions when I first came to Australia, certainly Queensland. I was surprised by how few agencies there were and by the fact that they only ever had pretty much one office. Um, the first thing I did was go and open a load more offices when I came. There were three offices, and by the time I left his, we had eleven in Queensland. Wow. It's dropped back a bit now because the market's obviously got tougher in the last few years. Um and I remember sitting there at one point and saying to one of my colleagues, I don't understand why the other agencies aren't trying to compete with us, like opening up in the regions, and you know, because we were certain that if we moved into those areas we'd pick up more of the market share, and we did. Eventually we saw that start to happen. And I think the big difference then was in in the UK back then, we often worked in a pyramid management structure. You had layers of junior management, senior junior management, and then um trainees and recruiters. Whereas when I came to Australia, it was a very flat structure. There was a boss, there might have been people with other job titles, but it was very flat. They didn't have any management responsibility as such.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Um so that didn't allow them to grow and expand um in the same way that we were used to in the UK.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Do you still feel like having a local presence is a competitive advantage now? Like fast forwarding 20 years, you obviously went from three to eleven. It's dropped back a little bit. But um how how much influence or how much business do you feel you can you can generate by having a local office? Is it is it still as relevant today as it was, you know, 10 years ago? I don't know that it is.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

I think it's it's it's it's ideal if the business can support it because it's easier to access candidates, especially for interviewing and what have you. But obviously, with the advent of of AI, technology, social media, all that can be done remotely now. So I don't think it is as crucial. I think still getting in front of clients is still very crucial, but again, you can do that not as not as well as you can face to face, but you can do it over Teams calls or Skype or whatever it might be. Um is Skype still a thing? Not really.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Zoom, that's the one I meant to. I wonder if anyone um doesn't know. Do you know what Skype is, Sergi? Okay. So that's not too bad, man. There you go. So you scaled up a lot of the offices, but it wasn't a like a pyramid structure, it was like it was different, was it? Like when you were when you were running it in for Queensland, like how how was those reporting lines? What like what did you see work and what did you see that like probably didn't work? Was there a couple of different variations of an org chart that you guys went through, or was it always pretty like streamlined from you know taking what's working in the UK and just plugging it into Australia?

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Pretty much that. I I just took what I'd been doing in the UK, using that perimeter management structure, promoting people into those roles, um, which gave them a an extensive career path, and um and just followed that m model and it and it worked. Uh when I when I arrived in Queensland, we weren't the number one agency. Um we weren't the biggest agency, but but within a couple of years we'd taken that spot um in terms of revenue, in terms of size. There's still some of the agencies that were bigger than us in the trades and labour space, but from a technical recruitment, specialist recruitment sector, we became the the the biggest.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Biggest is like um like revenue, headcount, offices, profit, uh offices, uh headcount, mainly those things.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yeah, I I don't know about I don't know about turnover, because obviously turnover includes the money the temps get paid, etc. And in those trades and labour spaces, the turnover can be quite high, but the profit quite low. Um but look, it worked um and really enjoyed doing that, and it was great. We had some great times, um as as as you know recruiters do even to this day, from what I see on social media anyway.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of um gratitude from a lot of Hayes recruiters uh that I find around the Hayes culture, how they were taught what to do, how to think, how to show up every day, how to focus on what matters and drop what doesn't matter. Um, so I think like from my experience, I've obviously never worked at Hayes, but know a lot of Hayes recruiters, ex-hays recruiters, um, and there's a lot of gratitude from them that like they're so grateful that that was like their grounding.

What Hays Hires For In Recruiters

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Um, which leads me to like one of the questions that I did have around what you look for to hire in Hayes. Um, were you uh hiring uh primarily and were you participating in like uh interviews or were you mainly hiring like more senior people given given what position you held? Like what was the what were you looking for when bringing people into Hayes specifically?

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Well, I I think that was one of the one of the things in in when I was in Hayes is I would be directly involved for the majority of my career, a little bit less so towards the end because I had very senior people doing it. Um but it was almost insisted upon by the managing directors at the time that people at my level would be directly involved in the hiring. Um and what do we look for? We look for people with resilience, we look for people with um confidence, even if that confidence is confidence that deep down you know they're quite nervous, but they can, you know, present as confident and feel the fear and do it anyway type thing, hug the monster, whatever term you want to use. And people who were competitive and eager to learn and build a career. There's many traits, I guess, um, but the resilience is probably the biggest one. But yeah, I would be directly involved in in in most of those interviews. And look, within the business, we've had a lot of people come through who've gone on to work with yourselves or or do other things, but equally there's a lot of really experienced, outstanding recruiters still within the business. Um and I think that's a testament to how strong that business is. And whilst a lot of the bigger agencies are going through a tough time at the moment, um my company was always one that could weather those storms and come out the other side and always come out the other side stronger. Um whether that's the case now or not, I don't know. Uh, but the DNA is there, so hopefully they'll be able to do that when the time comes.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

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CRM Change And Winning Team Buy In

SPEAKER_00 17:15

One thing that always I goes through my mind, especially when it comes to like technology, AI, and trying to innovate the agency, when you've got like a Randstart, a Hayes, a Robert Half, like these businesses are just so big that any operational change would be a complete nightmare. Like, really, really tough. And so I sometimes I sit and I reflect and I think, how could you even pull off like updating your CRM from something from 20 years ago when you've got so much legacy data, processes, policies, you know, rules, terms, like all this stuff, all of it needs a rewrite. And it almost seems like it's like such a big job that you almost don't want to do it. And you just got to like bleed it out until until like I don't know when the time is to like redo your CRM or your database or get up to speed with things. So what have you put thought into like these new CRMs that are coming out now, this new AI that's evolving? And and I don't know, maybe you've experienced it firsthand, but like how would the big agencies be able to adapt given the their size and all this like legacy process that they've got?

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Is is there any hope for them or in my time with the company, I was uh uh involved, I was the the the manager of the front office systems team when we were implementing some of these new CRM systems, ATS systems. Um I think over the years it's become increasingly difficult for big companies to implement them effectively, especially if they are they especially if they've been rushed through. I think one of the challenges that the big companies do face is that technology is changing so fast it's very difficult to keep up with it. But probably more importantly, if you go down the wrong path, there's a huge amount of money, time, uh energy invested in taking it down that path, and if it's the wrong one, it's very, very hard to steer away from. You're almost committed to it until the end, and if it's the wrong one, it's very, very costly. Uh and I think that that that that may have happened with some of the bigger companies, I don't know. Um but certainly that's where I think it's becoming most difficult. Whereas in a small boutique, smaller mid-size agency, it's very much very much easier to pivot, switch, swerve, but in big companies very difficult.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah, I think I I swapped CRMs three times at my agency, and you know, we only ever had, you know, 10, 12 people. For me, that was brain damage. Trying to get 10 to 12 people to swap their CRM, swap their habits, teach them not just the features and the benefits of this new CRM, but like an entirely new workflow. That is like that's one of the hardest parts. It's not like, oh, this CRM can do everything. It's like, all right, well, what are my new habits and workflows that I need to be doing now to hit my targets and and make life easy for me? And so I I just think about like Hayes and Ransdads and all these big agencies, and I just I get bamboozled with how on earth these guys are gonna pull this off with thousands of recruiters that are probably five levels below where they are actually making decisions. So you've got to get buy-in from the leadership team, then the senior management, then the middle management, then the billing managers, then the recruiters like the other.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Well, we were very good at that, to be honest. Well, yes, because that those layers of management that you have in place facilitate being able to do that. Um, you pick your best people who are good at doing that sort of thing, training and coaching on that sort of thing. You invest in a few people who um you know, we used to go for the detractors, the people who are most sceptical about it. We might pull them in and get them on board, and then you know, they're the best people to sell it for you if they were initially skeptical. And you've got to remember these big companies have a lot of layers of support, right? Much, much more than you can ever imagine if you're working in a smaller agency, unless you've worked in one of the bigger ones. And so it's cascaded down with the best people most effectively, doesn't always work. The most difficult people to convert or to bring on board are often the most experienced recruiters because they're used to a set way of working that works for them. Uh so they can be the hardest to get on board with this system. And in fact, in some ways, it can bring the business into a lot of conflict because you're trying to set KPIs or standards for everyone, and typically it's the bigger billers the most experienced recruiters who aren't meeting them. And then that looks bad for the juniors who are going, Well, why why do I do it? When he doesn't or she doesn't. Um so you've got to manage that, try and manage that. And it can be that can be a challenge. Um but the balance is if you push those top recruiters too hard, you're at risk of um impeding their ability to do their jobs effectively. And the best recruiters, they don't use the CRM systems or the ATS systems as much as the more junior ones because they know their candidates, they know their clients, they understand the depths and the nuances of recruitment. If the system went down, they could probably still manage to a degree far more effectively, certainly, than a junior person could.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

How do you manage that? Because I I'm very confident that there would be a bunch of agency owners right now who are in a situation where they've got their high performers who are not like lone wolves or rogue, but they just want to get left alone to do their thing and bring in the money, right? There's no nefarious, you know, rationale behind, you know, why they just want to get left alone. They just want to do their thing. But then when you're trying to set like good habits and KPIs and um, you know, install this in with the rest of the team, like have you found any meaningful ways to be able to bridge the gap between, well, he bills two million a year, mate, so we're just gonna let him do whatever he wants. You bill 200k, so you need to follow this direction. I think there's a bit of just exactly what you've just said.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Just saying to people, look, that person doesn't need to do what you're doing because they're billing X amount of money. With a lot more working from home now, it's it's easier to achieve in theory because those people, top people can work from home for a period of time. You can almost isolate them without isolating them entirely and say, look, you go and do your thing while we work through this. But the other method, and and there's a lot of complaints in recruitment about about top billers not being the best managers, right? Which often is true. They're great at doing it themselves, but they're often not very good at communicating that to other people because they do it fast, they do it effectively, and they're not good at trying to slow that down and explain how to other people. Um so the other way is to make them managers, and then they almost have to do it because they're teaching other people how to do it. If they're falling down on the management bit, we can train them on that, we can give them support on that. But yeah, if they're really outside of the square in terms of achieving the KPIs, make them a manager and then you'll find a lot of them will start doing it.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah, yeah. You typically get more aware and learn the process better when you have to teach it to somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

The best way to learn is to teach, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Yes.

Boiler Room Days And Hard Lessons

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Surely you have some pretty big highlights in your career.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Being put into management, I'd been doing recruitment, uh doing construction management in central London in 1992 when I first started, in the depths of recession. Turned up, didn't have a clue what I was doing, and the the uh New Zealand chap who ran the desk but was leaving, who I was replacing, said, Grab your stuff, we're going out on site, right? Off we went. I think I had five temps working on that desk that he left me, and I was just making phone call after phone call. We used to do business development back then, from nine in the morning till twelve lunchtime. Nice. And then from two till five, right? Wow. That was business development when I started. You weren't allowed to take the phone off your ear. Even when you were making your notes of the phone call, you had to, you weren't allowed to put it back on the receiver. I made the mistake of doing that once, and my boss at the time got a nod from the manager at the end of the table and slammed the phone, quickly picked it back up and put it under me. Because that's just unimaginable. Unimaginable now, right? I would love that now. But yeah, that's what you did, and you were just BD in all the time. So then they came to me and said, Look, we want to give you the regional manager's desk, which was a building services engineering desk at the time. It was the biggest desk in the UK. It had, I think, 55 temps working in the depths of recession, and they said, We want to give it to you because you've in impressed us. So that was my first really big uh highlight. So I took that on, struggled with it at first. What did you struggle with? I wasn't from construction, right? I was just this young lad from Middlesbrough who'd never even been in London, and uh trying to understand the difference between um uh contracting and consultancy was the bit I was struggling to get my head around. Didn't realise I was dealing with people who actually did the site work in mechanical and electrical, as well as the people who designed it. But very quickly I got I got my head around that. Um, and then I took the desk on to be bigger and bigger, and we split it, split it, split it um over over a pretty short space of time. Following that, I got my first office. That was probably the biggest highlight. Got my own office to manage upstairs in the building that we were in and ran that.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

How does that even come up? So you're you're smashing it, you're proving yourself, you're well liked amongst your colleagues. Is it a conversation that you steer and go, hey, like one of my ambitions is to have my own office and they kind of reward you with that? Or is that like they tap you on the shoulder and go, Hey.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Taking that desk on, I was then given responsibility for managing a couple of people within the the existing office. And we were the first team to do 100,000 coming out of recession, 100,000 pounds in the country. Um, so they tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey, we're going to give you your own office. Um You didn't really ask back then. Okay. Right, because you weren't involved in the plans and what was going on and what the the th the thoughts were. You just you you got tapped on the shoulder and said, We want you to do this, and you didn't say no. So I got my own office, so that was a massive, massive highlight. And I managed a region with I think it was five or six offices in the south east. Then came to Australia and built the business here, which has been an enormous highlight. Because in the UK, I only really I only the the way the business was set up, I worked in the what was called Montrose at the time, and it was all construction and property related. Whereas when I came to Australia, I was given everything IT, banking, office support, everything to manage. Uh so that was a highlight. And then taking that business from three to eleven, becoming the biggest recruitment, specialist recruitment business in Queensland, and many other small highlights along the way. Um I remember there was one year out of we used to work in four-week periods, so there's thirteen in a year.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Genius, by the way. I only heard about periods when I taught spoke to people from Hayes. And I thought, well, there are 13 periods in a year.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

And it keeps it very neat and tidy. It does. We had, I think out of the out of the 13 periods, we had 12 records in 13 periods, um, which that was obviously a massive highlight. And that was when we were really just going off the charts. So yeah, some some some great times. There were many, many more, but uh obviously we've got to keep it limited.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

I I guess just to just to follow on with that question though, was were you always set out to like be a director of Queensland and be in the position that you were in? Or was it just something that happened through just hard work, tenacity, showing up, getting tapped on the shoulder and getting told what to do, and you're going done.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Never planned the career path that I took. I didn't even know how long I'd been in recruitment for, to be honest, when I first started. Um there was a there was a fear of failure, which is very common with recruiters, that's what drives a lot of us. So there was certainly that years many years ago. But I just turned up, did the best I could, worked as hard, I loved it, I loved doing it. I enjoyed the haul. It was you know something I'd never encountered. The London scene back in 1992, uh the the the fast pace of recruitment. It really was like a boiler room. You know, I know people it's a bit of a cliche for sales, but it was. People would smoke in the office, you eat your lunch at the desk, always. That wasn't a choice or expected, it was demanded. Right? You work you get your lunch and you come back to your desk. I'd work till nine o'clock at night, I was totally absorbed in the thing.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to work at another agency? Surely you toyed with it, you went for a few interviews, you got a few counter offers and you stayed. Did that ever happen? I'm making that up, but you know, 30 plus years in the one business, surely you've dipped your toe in the water.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

No, I'll tell you what happened, right? When we hit a thousand, hundred thousand for the first team in the in in the in the UK, it's hit hundred thousand coming out of recession. My bosses on the Monday, we celebrated on the Friday. I kid you not, this is absolutely true. My bosses at the time, the regional director and the senior manager, took me downstairs and said, Congratulations on you know, achieving the hundred grand, blah, blah, blah. We're gonna cut your wages. And I went, what? And they said, Because you're in London, I was earning at the time, they said you're earning more than some of the managers are earning, right, in the other regions. And because you're in London, you have opportunity to earn more than they do, so we're gonna cut back your commission. And I argued the case and everything, but they were not for changing, right? You they just told you what they were gonna do. That wasn't the first time that it's happened a couple of times, to be to be honest. Slightly different scenarios, but it's happened a couple of times. So then I went looking and I went to see this agency that was one of my main competitors competitors in that engineering space, and they said, Come in, come and have a look at the office. And I went in, and there was one guy sat with his feet up on the table reading the newspaper. Another girl was just walking around the office. The whole thing was so relaxed. This was about nine, ten o'clock in the morning. And I've looked at it and I've thought, they're not doing anything. Compared to our house, no wonder we're smashing them, because we'd be on the phones by now, hitting it hard, and I just thought, nah, the grass isn't always greener. So then I went back and knuckled down, got given more and more responsibility, and of course, my salary grew with that responsibility. And yeah, never, never look back, really.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Good on you. I don't I don't know how I could sit someone down after, like your best performer down and go, We're taking your comms away from you, mate. You've got to have a bit of a sp a backbone to be able to straight face your best consultant and go, we're taking your comms away.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

It was very different times back then, right? Jobs were hard to come by. People didn't change jobs anywhere near to the degree that they changed jobs today. So it wasn't easy getting a job. Yes, I could have left, but like I said, I looked at see what was on the other side, wasn't impressed. So they could get away with it then. They wouldn't get away with it now, I don't think. Or maybe I was just too soft.

unknown 32:22

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

The bottom line is I stayed, you know, and then from there we hit a massive record in that office. And and my two bosses, the same two who'd cut my wages, came up and we were all celebrating in the office, and they said to me in front of everyone, they said, This is the best office in the company. Wow. That was a massive, massive highlight. We were disciplined, we worked damn hard, um, and and we got things done and we cared. Some recruitment managers, some recruitment businesses would just chase the revenue, do the sales piece, but fall down on the service or the compliance or whatever else. I always focused on both of those in equal measure. So customer service was always very important, and so was the compliance. In Hayes, I was the top compliance almost most of the time. Number one, we used to have a chart as you do to measure performance, and I was uh more often than not, my region was the top. Did that mean that sometimes we might sacrifice a bit of sales? Maybe, but I knew I could sleep at night, so could my boss, and so could my staff, because we were doing things right. And that's that's I think one of the most uh aspects of of how I manage my business. I'm I'm proud of.

GFC Redundancies With Humanity

SPEAKER_00 33:27

What are some of the like the low points where you go, man, that was a really tough time. Every recruiter goes through these like slumps where they just gotta keep cracking on. Probably 2008. A KGFC.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

That was a tough one.

unknown 33:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Um, because we obviously had to let people go. Can you describe like the moment or like the realization that you had to go through where whether it was a conversation with leadership or senior management, whether it was a conversation internally where like the decision was made, hey, the way to get through this is to cut staff. Um, what was that conversation like? Can you kind of describe that feeling or that that conversation that led to that moment?

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Yeah, it's um look, it it came in uh in discussions with the with my boss at the time about where things were at uh for all of us as a as a board, and we all collectively as a board made the decisions that we had to make. Um we we we did a couple of things that time. We we decided we were gonna continue to invest in training. I was talking to Serge about this earlier, um, because we knew that coming out of a downturn it would stand us in good stead, and it did. Uh whereas often when when times get tough, one of the first things that used to go was training, HR, etc. We invested in it, and that was probably one of the best things we ever did. Uh but the decision to let people go was a real gut punch. Uh, because you become, as you know in recruitment, it's all about personalities and they become like people become like family, and having to let some of those people go, many of them very junior, just coming into recruitment, so it wasn't the end of the world for them, though it might like might might have felt like it at the time. But you could see the potential in those people, you could see that they've got to be great, they're gonna be great recruiters, but you just couldn't hang on to them. So it was very strategically done. It was about, you know, who do we keep to take this business forward when it things improve, um, and who do we have to let go to ensure that we can stay profitable and and and and weather the storm.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

How did you make those decisions? Was it just because I've heard some like crazy redundancy stories where there's been an org chart, you bring in the whole team in, you go, if your name's still on the org chart, you still have a job. If it's not, like you're gone. Like crazy redundancy stories.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Horrendous, horrendous. And you see some of that in the tech sector, you know, with the emails and stuff. It's worse.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Yeah, emails just at 5 a.m. Hey, sorry everyone, you you're done.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

After all these years, right, where there's been many, many instances where people have had to make redundancies for one reason or another, we still have not learned, business has still not learnt in many areas how to do this effectively and properly. We would hear stories of agencies where they'd get them in a room, obviously not naming names, and they'd get them all in there and say to a big group, you're all being made redundant from today. And then they'd end up in the pub near our office drinking. Some some horrendous stories. Hopefully, people are better at managing it these days, but as you've seen with some of those tech companies, not really. Um you've you've got to have you've got to be human, right? You've got to have a heart. This is careers is one of the most important things to people. It doesn't matter if they've just started it or they've been in it for many years. Um you've got to talk to the people, explain, help them understand and send them off with a positive attitude towards what's ahead of them, right? For some of those young people, look, you were great in the job. If things improve or when they improve, we will certainly consider having you back and we'd love to reach out to you. Um but these are the things you've been great at. Go on and and find something in the meantime or whatever your passion is to take you forward. There's still a lot of work to be done.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Yeah, it's it just seems like um uh very uh reactive for a lot of businesses. It's like, oh, this is the decision quick, yes, make it quickly, let's just rip the band-aid off and keep get it over and done with. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

It becomes a transaction rather than a human. All the emotion goes out of it, becomes purely transactional. Let's get it done and dusted, like you say, um, and then move on and just forget about that bit. That could be because people are uncomfortable doing it, it could be become or it could be because people are uh more attached to the business than the humans, the personnel within it. Who knows? But yeah, I think there's still work to do that.

Leaving Hays Plus Leadership And Balance

SPEAKER_00 37:55

A couple of years ago you decided to change scenery. Well talk to us about why after 32 years, 33 years, you've decided to try something different.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

I was dealing with some other issues uh uh uh at the time and I'd been on a course with Hayes, was all about leadership, and it was in the UK, and the the it was army guys, and and what they were telling us was you've got to look after yourself first and foremost. They were showing us that leaders in the army think about the people first, which was complete epiphany to me, right? Complete revelation. Because I'd always thought in the army you get told what to do. It was like Hayes back in the early days, you get told what to do, and you did it. Yeah. But no, they were saying, no, f you know, that the that the soldiers eat first before the officers do. It's all about um people following you, you not telling them what to do, but them wanting to follow you because of the great person that you are. And I just thought, you know what, I haven't looked after myself enough over many, many years. Um and it's time I did a bit more of that. I've been so committed to the company, we'd been very successful coming out of COVID. Then we got a kick-in from the CEO because he'd overpromised the market at the time, and even though we were probably going to do our second best year ever, it wasn't good enough. Crazy, isn't it? So we got a big kick in, and I thought, I'm too old to get a kick in. You come out of it thinking the world's my oyster now, and it is, but it does take a little bit of time to adjust to not getting up every single day, going to work every single day. So it does take a bit of an adjustment. And in the last two years I've spent a lot of time doing the usual things, playing a bit of golf badly, doing a lot of fitness stuff. I have significant back issues now for a number of reasons, probably, but certainly one of them would have been sitting down with a phone to your ear for that many years. So I am I actually quite like to see that a lot of younger people these days are doing the fitness. You know, should they be in the gym at 10.30? I don't know. But they're looking after their health, they're moving around because as as as is now recognized, sitting down at a desk they reckon is as bad as smoking, I think. Real health, yeah, this is damaging smoking. And certainly for your back, I can attest to the fact that it is. So, yeah, so I spend a lot of time doing those sorts of things, obviously doing some consulting. I have a company, Ardent People Solutions, uh, where I do coaching and mentoring with um some of the smaller agencies. I recently did some work with a construction and property company uh looking at their internal recruitment and how they could best work with an ex with the external recruiters. Ah, gotcha. And that was really interesting seeing it from the other side. What are the challenges the internals recruiters face dealing with agencies, and what are the challenges, which I already knew a lot of them, that the agencies face in dealing with an internal team? And how do you bring that together? And I ended up producing for them a 25-page document spelling out how best to do that and how to get the most from each other and make it work more effectively. So that was really interesting and something different.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Nice, nice. And is that like the direction that you want to go moving forward, or like where where do where do you see yourself over the next, you know, five years, ten years in the recruitment industry? Do you feel like that you're gonna get a lot of fulfillment out of that, or is there other directions you see yourself going? Like what's what's in store for you?

SPEAKER_01 41:03

Don't fully know yet, to be honest with you. I feel too young to fully retire, but too old to go back into doing what I was doing before. Um and it's not necessarily too old, but the pressure and stress of that I just don't really sort of need anymore. I'm quite quite enjoying. There are a lot of lot of businesses starting up, especially in Queensland or moving up here from interstate. Some that I'm I'm working with have again fallen into recruitment, but they're making some decent money. Seems like a lot of the smaller businesses, smaller recruitment industries are going gangbusters in Queensland at the moment. Part of me goes, Do you know what? Maybe as I'll just do some Uber driving. Yeah, 100%. Go and work in woolly stacking shelves somewhere. No press, no stress, no pressure, just taking it easy. Um, and then doing, you know, something I've never been able to with recruitment go home and leave it behind. It's a lifestyle recruitment. I don't know if it still is as much for people who are at the level I was back then, but certainly it was a lifestyle for me. And I always struggle to leave it behind. So doing something that I can leave behind, and with the coaching and mentoring, I can do that because I can guide people, but ultimately the decisions they make are then on them.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

It's funny you say that. I was speaking to someone the other day, he's a multi-million dollar biller running his own agency. And then, like I've you know, I've gone through my trials and tribulations of pressure, stress, etc., and so is he. And we were just having a bit of a joke the other day where he goes, mate, sometimes I just like I line up for a coffee and I see the barista making the coffees, and I go, fuck, you've got it good. Like, you're a multi-million dollar villa running your own agency, creaming it, and you're looking at a barista going, fuck, I wish I could just do that. Yes. I was telling him as well, I was like, dude, I feel the exact same way. I drive past like a construction site, and there's like a lollipop lady that just goes, stop slow, and I just go, Oh, that'd be such a good job. You just stand there, stop slow, go home, rest. Like, what a what a life to live.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

But you also know that you'd probably do it for two days and then you'd go, I'm bored. Yeah, exactly. Because we do recruiters, true, recruiters thrive off that competitiveness, that closing a deal, all that sort of stuff. Many years ago when I first started. I remember saying to my boss at the time, because I was on £10,000 living in London, right? And they'd upped it for me. It was normally nine, and they gave me £10,000 to live on. And I remember going into my boss at the time and saying, Look, my my mates in Middlesbrough get working, some of them work in factories and they get paid more than I do. And he said, Well, go and fucking work in Middlesbrough then. And I thought, all right, okay, that's that's as far as I'm gonna get with that conversation, right? Maybe as I should off.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

You know what you'd be really good at? Like I sometimes get these emails from there's like these companies that do like fractional board advisory. And I don't know, like I don't know, like the pay or the responsibilities and so forth, but there's all these companies out there kind of like recruitment companies, but they try and get like senior execs. That are like they just don't want to be smashing 50 hours a week anymore. But they've got a lot of like wisdom and guidance to give people where they go, do you want to be a fractional board member to you know these six different companies? And they, I don't know, pay you a monthly salary or something like that. Might not be massive, but um, I always saw that as like, you know what, you know, when when things end and you know it's time to just like slow down a little bit. I th I feel like that could be a really fun path where you could go to like a board meeting once a quarter and put in your wisdom and help guide you know these other people running their businesses. So maybe I'll forge you an email of some of the things that I get.

SPEAKER_01 44:38

Yeah, that's the sort of thing I'd I'd like to do. My my again, one of my strengths, I think, in the role that I was in for many years was developing and helping other people. Um when I was in the UK, I used to get very frustrated because my managers at the time would steal my staff to go and run other offices that weren't under my regional management, or to go and do a job over here or a job over there permanently. And it used to frustrate the hell out of me because I'd be saying to them, Look, I've got to now replace that person and train someone from scratch, and I've spent all that time, and it took one of them to eventually turn around to me and say, Look, so you should see it as a good thing because it shows you're doing a great job of training and bringing people on and progressing their careers. And he said, and ultimately these things have a habit of coming back to you. And I thought, yeah, right, or when, how? And lo and behold, in one instance, um guy was put into to to run the Luton office. I didn't manage it at the time. The regional director there went or was let go or whatever, and they said to me, Oh, can you take that over? Because obviously you know the manager, you you trained him, and my my portfolio grew. So then I started to realise how you've got to let these people go because they will come back to you, and even if they don't, they'll be massive advocates for you within the business more broadly. Yeah. Say good things about you, you know, spruke your experience and your and your and your strengths. So um helping people and giving something back, because I had such a great time in recruitment, it was hard as hell often, but it was the most amazing thing. I did things I would never have done if I was probably working anywhere else. I had experiences I would never have had. I travelled the world, I went from the UK to Australia, uh, I've got a fantastic lifestyle, all because of recruitment, all because I fell into recruitment. It's one of the few jobs still in the world or still in employment where with very little experience, very little qualifications, you can still make a lot of money and make a massive difference.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

You have said that beautifully, and that actually ties in to our very last question here, which you'll be able to just expand on what you've just said. What's one piece of advice for someone starting recruitment today? What advice have you got for them?

SPEAKER_01 47:06

Try not to let it consume your life. You can be at the demands of your candidates, at the behest of your clients, your boss wants a piece of your you're working all the hours because you're paid commission, and the more hours you work, the more money you make. Try and have a better life balance or maintain a better life balance and don't let your job become your life.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

That is awesome. Well, Darren, I really appreciate you spending an hour with us today, sharing your wisdom, sharing your journey, and chatting all things recruitment. So um, if anyone wants to find you, talk to you, ask you advice, pick your brain, what's the best way for someone to do that?

SPEAKER_01 47:46

Uh either via email. I won't give my telephone number out on a podcast.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

The easiest non friction, non intrusive way would be to LinkedIn. Yeah. Connect with Darren on LinkedIn. Darren, thank you. Appreciate it. Hopefully you enjoyed, and we'll see you next week.