Transcript
Speaker: Do you know who helps recruitment agencies recruit, Adele? It's Wingman Recruitment, flexible recruitment support built by recruiters for recruiters. More capacity, less pressure, better results.
Speaker: Learn more at wingmangroup.com.au and visit the services tab. Welcome to Recruitment News Australia. This is your news for the 6th of October, 2026. Adele Last.
Speaker: The Reserve Bank raised the cash rate on the 29th of September, as we know, which was the fourth hike this year and the highest level since late 2011. For agencies, this matters on both sides of the desk. On the client side, there might be tighter credit and higher repayments that make employers more cautious about permanent headcount, which can push more hiring towards contract and temp roles.
Speaker: On the candidate side, higher mortgage repayments are already a factor in people reconsidering job moves, so expect some soft job mobility to make passive candidates much harder to shift.
Speaker: The HITECH group has completed its $7 million dollars acquisition of selected Hudson Global Resources assets out of administration, taking HITECH from a Canberra-focused ICT recruiter to a national platform spanning New South Wales, ACT, Queensland, South Australia and WA, with roughly $190 to $220 million dollars in combined revenue.
Speaker: It's worth flagging that the Australian Labor Hire Authority had cancelled Hudson Global Resources' own labour hire licence back in July, but that is against the old entity and not Hitec's newly acquired assets.
Speaker: It is a pointed reminder to any agency about the cost of licensing, non-compliance and that catching up with the business. Ashley Services has completed $162 bolt-on acquisition, of a major logistics company's labour hire book through its subsidiary Action Workforce, picking up around 213 client sites and 1,850 active workers.
Speaker: For agencies in blue collar, supply chain and warehousing staffing, this is a sign of where the growth capital is flowing right now and logistics labour hire remains a priority sector for the bigger players and client books are changing hands through these bolt-on deals rather than greenfield wins, so it appears.
Speaker: Victoria's Labor Hire Authority has been active. The Palm Scheme workers received close to $160,000 in refunds after substandard housing was found in Warragul, Sunraysia, has been flagged as a new high-risk region for passport withholding and underpayments. And the Labor Hire Authority has filed Supreme Court action over an unlicensed operator allegedly confining a worker for three years on Swan Hill Farms.
Speaker: Final amendments to the labour hire licensing laws took effect in October, tightening supply chain accountability and introducing a tougher fit and proper persons test for licence holders.
Speaker: In Sydney, former New South Wales ANZ CEO Archie Fraser has joined the Justified Talent Group as partner, reuniting with former colleague Michael James and launching Echo 3.0, new sales recruitment arm defining defence and adjacent sectors. That's a pointed bet that defence hiring will keep growing as government investment ramps up a space worth watching if you have adjacent specialisms.
Speaker: In Melbourne, Recruitment United founder Pete Watson has launched the Recruitment United Live event, which is a ticketed community day in Melbourne for recruiters at the Port Melbourne at timber yard. This will be happening at the end of October.
Speaker: Combining BD and LinkedIn training, networking, a practical event for anyone looking to sharpen their own agency's business development in this quarter or into the new year, you can look at Recruitment United's website for more details.
Speaker: Commonwealth Bank reversed a decision to cut 45 customer service roles after the finance sector union showed call volumes were actually rising, not falling, as the bank's AI business case claimed.
Speaker: CBA apologised, saying its assessment did not adequately consider all relevant business considerations. This is directly useful material for client conversations. It's a concrete high-profile example that agencies can point to when advising clients on workforce planning.
Speaker: AI-driven headcount decisions need to be backed by solid data and scrutinized as carefully as any other restructure or they risk a costly reversal, reputational damage and even union activity.
Speaker: It's also a reminder that replaced by AI roles can come back into the market just as quickly as they left. And that's your news for the 6th of October, 2026. Whilst Ross is still on extended leave, I invite you to listen to our guest question of the week host that will answer the question, where have all the recruiters gone?
Speaker: question of the week. This week I have a very special guest joining me. I have Michael Jones from Michael Jones Recruitment Training. Hello. Hi Adele. Welcome to Recruitment News Australia. I'm very pleased and honoured to have you on board in Ross's absence this week. People need an introduction to Michael Jones. He has a very prestigious recruitment training business and running training sessions for all levels, particularly focused on early years training in the recruitment space. He is Recruitment Professional of the Year from the RCSA and is hot off the stage of the RCSA Shape Conference. So i'm really excited to be posing a question to you today, Michael.
Speaker: Oh, thank you so much. What a great intro. I'm so honoured to be here and standing in for Ross Klenit. Big shoes to fill. I'll do my best, but thank you. I'm having fun while he's away. It's all good.
Speaker: Now, you posed a similar question to Ross and i a couple of months ago about the recruitment industry and what's going on in the recruitment industry in terms of bringing in new talent. So I've taken the opportunity to pose this question back to you today, Michael. The question is, where have all the recruiters gone?
Speaker: Wow. Yes, absolutely. um It's a question that I get asked all the time as I travel around the country working with different recruitment agencies. Recruitment managers are crying out for recruiters and they ask me, where i have all the recruiters gone? And Adele, the question that I pose back to them is, we're kind of asking the wrong question. It's not really, where have all the recruiters gone? The question is like,
Speaker: Yes, where have they gone? But what are we doing? Where are we going to get our next generation of experienced recruiters from? Because in my opinion, the pipeline that we used to produce experienced recruiters from, well, we've damaged it. So there's a real shortage already and there's ah a bigger shortage coming. So yeah, concerning times. When you say damaged it, what do you mean by that?
Speaker: Well, I think one of the things that a lot of people will be ah well aware of is the bigger agencies like your Hayes, your Randstad, your Michael Pages. These agencies used to be our industry's main source of new talent.
Speaker: I worked for Hayes for a long time and we were bringing 30 to 40 rookie recruiters every month and those people would get lots of training, they'd get a great apprenticeship.
Speaker: And over time, those people would either stay with their business, move on to smaller boutique agencies, and maybe even in the future, go and start their own firms.
Speaker: But most of the big agencies have really cut back on their apprenticeships, their traineeships. And if you look at Hayes, for example, I believe the latest data highlights that Hayes has reduced its headcount by about 39%.
Speaker: since before the pandemic. So where we used to get our trainees from and our rookie talent from, that pipeline has all but disappeared and we don't have a replacement.
Speaker: I know you have a solution for this, so let's talk about that. where You say you post this back to agencies, but tell us about how we're going to solve this as an industry. Well, I think in the main we've got to look as an industry at how can we bring back the apprenticeship mentality Now, I'm not necessarily saying that every agency needs to go out there and start hiring rookies. um It's not always possible for agencies to do that.
Speaker: But I think we've got to move away from the mentality that um bringing in junior recruiters is just too hard because you can't say we're not going to do it and then complain that there are no recruiters available.
Speaker: um So i would certainly encourage agencies to think about Is there an opportunity to bring in that entry level talent who's going to be our future leaders, our future um recruiters? and And I think there are plenty of people out there in the industry and resources available who can help in terms of identifying great talent who's going to be successful in recruitment and then supporting those people getting up and running.
Speaker: Yeah, this is obviously a topic really close to my heart, having started Career Lasso many years ago, which was focused entirely on bringing people into the industry. But I'm really curious to understand from you. That was a while ago now, actually. I started it five years ago, believe it or not, six years ago now. So things have even changed since then. so I'm interested to understand from you.
Speaker: How do people go about this in in that sense? You're right. There is a change of mentality, of mindset. But let's say somebody does say, okay, well, we we want to take a rookie on. How are they going to you know go about that? How do they find them? How do they train them? How do they support them properly? What is the process here?
Speaker: Well, it's not easy. And I think it's important to recognize that. Bringing in an entry-level recruiter is time-consuming and If we don't bring in the right type of person, then we are going to potentially invest a lot of effort in someone who's not going to make it. So um I have spent nearly all of my recruitment training career working with entry-level recruiters. So I think I've got a pretty good idea of what makes someone a good potential rookie. But I think it's important for a recruitment agency owner to take a step back and think about What does my desk, what does my industry, what does my market require of a rookie? What are the skills, experience, and personal attributes that will make someone be successful in my particular specialist area?
Speaker: Obviously, to be successful in recruitment, you need to be very driven and motivated, hardworking. You need that level of resilience and persistence to deal with the ups and downs of recruitment.
Speaker: And it's also... acknowledging that recruitment is a sales job. So we need to be looking for people who are sales driven and comfortable working in a sales role where there are, that people are going to be doing cold calling, outreach, they're going to have to be selling jobs to candidates, candidates to clients. And that requires a level of resilience and persistence that is important for us to be looking for in a recruitment process.
Speaker: This is a challenge I think overarchingly we have as a society around resilience, of course, because we are in different times now in terms of the way young people come through school and the education system, you know, parent support, you know, their first jobs. Ross and I have spoken a lot about that having a big impact. Your first job has a huge impact on on where you end up, all of those things. so Again, i think this is something that is a wave that's come through, but if we we put our head in the sand, as you said, we're not going to deal with it
Speaker: what about the things that can be like trained, I suppose? Are we putting too high an expectation in the fact that we're looking at a rookie and we're expecting all of these things, like you said, motivation and sales ability and resilience and all of these things where perhaps we need to look at somebody's um attitude and some of the raw skills, but but bring them through that. I mean, don't we all get better at these things over time?
Speaker: Absolutely. And I think that's a really important point. Where we are bringing in someone who is entry-level or junior We've got to stop expecting them to be immediately productive. So I've already seen this myself. I've i've helped an agency hire an entry-level person who's got the right drive and characteristics that we think is going to make them successful in the future. But after three or four weeks, that manager is saying they haven't done a deal yet. They haven't hit their targets yet.
Speaker: And and we've we've we've got to understand it it takes time. And I often say to them, well, how long did it take you to get your first deal? Absolutely. So I think it's an interesting one, isn't it? Yeah, they soon forget, don't they? I mean, it's easy to see, you know, 20, 30 years go in the flash of an eye and you forget where you started and how hard it was, I suppose, in those early days. So what's a reasonable timeframe then if an agency owner is listening to this and they've hired a rookie or they're thinking about that? When would you expect somebody to be able to be a little bit more productive operational billing, I suppose? And what support do do they need to give them for that?
Speaker: it's It's a hard one to quantify, isn't it? But you you obviously want to see continuous improvement over a period of time. If you are bringing in someone entry level and they are doing all the right things that you're asking them to do and they're getting more confident and more better and they're gradually getting closer and closer to their their targets and their goals, that to me would feel like good progress.
Speaker: um Some people do a deal in their first month and it's like, wow, fantastic. Other people can take three months. But I think the important thing is that if you're bringing in somebody entry level, you need to have A, brought in the right person with the right personal attributes, which we've touched upon. B, have a very clear onboarding process in place with training and development and coaching so that person is learning and moving in the right direction.
Speaker: And I think C, you also need to have clear milestones in terms of at three months, this is where I would expect this person to be at six months and nine months. Then you can measure the progress as opposed to it all being very loose and open and getting frustrated if you haven't had someone hit a deal in their first couple of weeks.
Speaker: Excellent. Some fantastic advice there. So in conclusion, Michael, how would you like to sort of bring this in? Where have all the recruiters gone? They're still there, they're just not recruiters yet. Is that the answer to that question?
Speaker: I think there's certainly a challenge in our industry in terms of there's only so much experienced recruiters out there and experience isn't a product that you can keep buying indefinitely. Someone has to create it. And in the absence of the bigger agency's bringing in that fresh talent through their apprenticeships programs, we as an industry need to look at what can we do to create that pipeline ourselves.
Speaker: Excellent. Thank you so much for your time today and for answering that question. Tell us what's coming up for you next. Yes, happy to. I'm you know very busy and booked, which is a fantastic position to be in, but I am going to be offering an online webinar in a couple of weeks' time for leaders and managers all about how to create a high-performance sales culture, which is an extended version of the keynote that I delivered at the Shape Conference for the RCSA.
Speaker: So please feel free to sign yourselves up to that. Great. Where will they that? the new year Is that on your website? Yeah, if you go to my LinkedIn page, you'd be able to see it there. Excellent. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much again, as I said, for your time. I've really enjoyed asking you the question and hearing the answer. Nice to hear a different voice. ah Ross might be in trouble, perhaps. Watch out, Ross. I look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks, Michael.
Speaker: Thanks so much, Adele. Bye-bye. Thanks for joining us for this very special episode with guest co-host Michael Jones. If you enjoyed the episode, please make sure you're following us on LinkedIn so that you'll see our weekly episode appear in your feed. If you're also listening via Apple or Spotify, please give us a five-star review. We really appreciate your support.
