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Episode 135 - Welcome our new sponsor Wingman
151 Plays17 days ago
Episode 135 has news for 5 November 2025 including the return of the JobAdder co-founders , the latest public company results, the rise of 'job hugging' in Australia and how high-rated companies in employee public review sites suffer harder when they make layoffs and in Question of the Week - "Who is Wingman Recruitment?"
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Transcript
Sponsor Introduction: Wingman Recruitment
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and your
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Today's episode is sponsored by Wingman Recruitment. Connecting businesses with high-performing offshore professionals, scale faster, hire smarter. They handle training and onboarding so you can focus on growth, not hiring
Webinar Announcement: Wingman Recruitment
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headaches.
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Building recruitment agencies with offshore talent. Some of the founders of Wingman Recruitment will be on a free live webinar on Wednesday, November 5th at 10am Queensland time.
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If you're interested to hear how they scaled smartly with offshore talent, you can hear from H people. You can register for the event at wingmangroup.com.au slash webinars.
New Venture: AwesomeSource.ai by JobAdder Co-founders
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Here's the news for the 4th of November 2025. I'm Ross Klenit. And I'm Adele Last. Top of the news this week is that JobAdder co-founders Brett Airdale and Darren Watts yesterday announced their return to the recruitment industry.
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On a LinkedIn post, Watts announced the launch of AwesomeSource.ai. Yeah, I had a bit of a look at Dell's site, Promises, a weekly newsletter covering tech insights, trends for recruiters, a Gen.ai prompts library, and various articles, reviews, and productivity tips.
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Well, it will be interesting to see whether this is the start of something great. I'm sure it's going to be much more than just a newsletter. Yes, I can't imagine they're building a business model on a free newsletter. It would seem to suggest that they're moving into tech consulting for the recruitment industry, but we'll have to wait and see.
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For those that may not know, JobAdder was founded by Brett Airedale and Darren Watts back in 2007. And they grew that business into one of our most prominent local ATS systems.
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And they sold the business to Seek in 2020. Brett left the company then and Darren left about 10 months later. Yeah, they're very well respected. They've been quiet for the last four years in terms of the local industry. And we wait with a great deal of interest to see what this new venture will bring forth.
2025 Occupational Shortage List and Diversity
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Jobs and Skills Australia 2025 occupational shortage list was released last month. It shows an easing in labour market pressures with 29% of occupations in shortage, which is down from 33% last year and 36% in 2023.
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JSA notes the improvement reflects more qualified applicants, higher vacancy fill rates, lower recruitment difficulty rates and softer demand. Between 2021 and 2025, there were 139 occupations in persistent shortage, with technicians and trade workers making up just over half of those shortages, particularly those related to construction, engineering and automotive trades.
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In the opposite direction, 69 occupations changed from being in shortage last year to no shortage this year. Nearly half of trade roles and two in five professional occupations are still in shortage, particularly in health, education and construction.
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The data also highlights the role of diversity. Pleased to see that occupations with gender balance or greater inclusion of women, older workers, First Nations people and people with disability are far less likely to face shortages.
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In contrast, male-dominated roles, especially in the trades, remain persistently difficult to fill. Other factors about occupational shortages noted by the JSA release were low pay, poor conditions, and retention problems drive shortages in care and service roles.
Job-Hugging Trend: Career Stagnation Risks
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For some professions, employers report gaps in employability, skills, and experience, even in qualified candidates, notably in engineering, science, and management. Well, no huge surprises there, Ross, that low pay and poor conditions would drive further shortages.
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On to news about job hugging as a trend taking over Australia. According to a new report, it's urging employers to provide training to employees to avoid stagnation.
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Yeah, check this out, Adele. It's the latest ELMO Employee Sentiment Index. It's released quarterly and it found that only 18% of employees are considering a career move, down from 23% in the previous quarter.
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Caution continues to shape the labour market with job security now taking precedence over exploration, the report tells me. The findings of this report indicate that Australia may have begun a job-hugging trend, which is where workers decide to stay with their current employers amid pessimism about job opportunities.
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The report warned that employees choosing to stay could lead to career stagnation, with 11% of employees noting their current skill is already falling behind and 21% saying they haven't received any form of training in the past year.
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And when it comes to AI, just 20% of employees say they feel adequately supported by their employer with related training. 44% of respondents also said their employer is not doing enough to reskill or upskill employees.
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This is not good news for the recruitment industry. It speaks to candidates window shopping in their job search and perhaps even taking longer to make decisions or to make a move. What do you think, Ross?
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Definitely bad news. Fewer candidates on the market and those that are on the market being cautious and taking longer to make a decision, definitely not good for us.
Impact of Layoffs on Glassdoor Ratings
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And finally, from the US, a piece of research about layoffs and ratings on Glassdoor.
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So there have been major waves of layoffs in the post-pandemic labour market, the most dramatic taking place in 2023. And so the researchers analysed the impact of these layoffs on Glassdoor ratings for the two years, in other words, 2024 2025, those layoffs.
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Some really interesting key findings here that layoffs trigger an immediate wave of Glassdoor reviews, which tend to be more critical. Layoffs drop Glassdoor ratings by 0.13 stars out of five.
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And ratings that were most heavily impacted were for company leadership, career growth and culture. Ratings from current employees take more than two years to recover. And they drop twice as far as the highest rating companies,
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and do not show any signs of recovery over the two-year window, strongly suggesting the higher you rise, the harder you fall when layoffs occur. Ratings drop the most for key talent, managers, and new hires.
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And layoffs trigger a 26% increase in active disengagement and a 40% increase in the number of current job holders, disproportionately comprising key talent looking for jobs.
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Well, we're certainly going to see the reality of this very soon, Adele. UPS last month announced 48,000 jobs would be going across 93 sites. And last Wednesday, Amazon announced that 14,000 white-collar roles were going to be cut immediately with expectations that it could be up to 30,000 white-collar roles losing their job at Amazon. So we'll be watching the Glassdoor ratings for those two companies with a great deal of interest over the next two years.
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And now your news is up to date. Stay tuned now for our question of the week.
Offshoring Insights: Wingman Group's Success Model
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For question of the week this week, we have some special guests. Very excited to welcome Johnny Bell from the Wingman Group and also Jory Humphreys, who's a partner in that business and owner of H People Recruitment.
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Welcome. Thanks for having us. Thank you very much. We're going to ask you some questions because we want to find out a little bit more about the Wingman Group and Wingman Recruitment. So those that haven't heard of you, can you tell us a little bit about the business and um tell us a little bit about your model?
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Absolutely. I'm excited to be on here. and love what you guys are doing. um So Wingman Group started three years ago. ah the whole vision of Wingman was to change the perception of offshoring. I think in the offshoring space, everyone's a little bit, you know, that they see offshoring as something just to cut costs and they see it as an industry that reduces the level of service where um I've got a few businesses and and in my businesses, I've had extremely good success by using offshore.
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um So over the last three years, we've grown. We've got 1,200 staff in the Philippines. We work with about 800 businesses, um predominantly at the moment in the real estate space.
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And then I met the amazing Jory and Sam, and they had um this recruitment agency that was firing and had an incredible offshore team. And um we came together and we said, hey, why don't we build a model for the recruitment agency that specializes to support recruitment agencies?
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But offshoring isn't new for the recruitment sector. Tell us why the wingman model is different. I think the the key reason that offshoring hasn't worked in the past is one, is the offshore team are not trained in recruitment.
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So if you don't train them in exactly the softwares and the way to do things, it's really hard to be able to get them to execute on what recruiters need. And then two is the integration. If you don't train them and then also support the recruitment agency, know how to use them, how to delegate and help their team get on the journey, um that's typically why it hasn't worked. So they're the two pillars of what Jory and I are focusing on in wingman recruitment.
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Fantastic. It sounds like the fact that you have run recruitment businesses or you're really intimately involved with recruitment agencies that you've really addressed some of those key issues, like you've said, that often don't work. But tell us what ah the relationship would look like for a potential recruitment agency client. Kind of what's the day-to-day look like and how can you make sure that it's really seamless? Because I agree The pitfalls of this previously have been about how well you know the relationship is set up. I see a big difference between outsourcing and offshoring.
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So outsourcing is when you push your whole department overseas to a call centre and you say, can you do all of this for us? Offshoring for us is we actually fully train a staff member and we integrate them into our um clients' businesses. So they only work for this one recruitment agency.
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They have an email address with this recruitment agency. So they're actually tailored to that agency. Ultimately, they're a strap they're an Australian staff member. They just don't work in your office. And that's part of the model that I think we've seen a lot of success with.
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um At Wingman, we do about 1,000 interviews a week. um And we've got 25 staff in Australia that are our integration team. So um the if Adele, you said you were interested in using Wingman, we would go and interview candidates. We would then find you the three people we think are the best fit.
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We would email you those interviews to um to review. You would then do a Zoom call, like similar to what we're doing now. You would interview them and then you would select the best candidate that you think is the right fit for you.
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Once you've selected them, they then go into specialized training with one of our specialist onshore recruiters who then fully trains the staff member. ah before going into your agency so they're fully trained they're vetted and then ultimately we give you the discretion to choose who you think's the best fit for your business and then we go on a partnership journey with you we check in every three months we help you and if you've got any issues or you want them upskilled in it and in anything um we will support make that happen so jory people would automatically think well outsourcing is going to be cheaper would
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I think overwhelmingly be a money issue, but I'm sure there are other good reasons that people choose the outsourcing model. What what are they? You know, it's always like obviously one of the things is is regards to cost, but there are so many benefits that I've seen in our business and HP people and and the value that we've had with our offshore team. um So along with being able to get more more stuff into HP people as an example, like we've been able to integrate multiple companies
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offshore recruiters where we may not have had the budget to necessarily do so with an onshore worker. um It's also the case of not having to worry about those below-the-line costs which would be things like um office rent and desk space, um looking after all of the the other statutory requirements that you do have here in Australia. So although that they are coming in at ah at a lower wage or whatever it might be, um The fact that we've been able to integrate and like sort of Johnny touched on really develop a person that is ah totally across your business to then be able to support um the service more than anything. So, um yes, it's been ah it's been a big thing for us.
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But the the value isn't just in regards to how much more money that you would save or pay. the the cost, it's being able to offer a wides for ah write ah a wider array of solutions um to support your client, to support your businesses out there or other clients that you're working with.
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So, it always sounds good in theory, outsourcing. So, what about in practice? Have you got a you got an example or two that would convince me that it it really does work in a sustainable way and it really is something that makes a big difference to a recruitment agency compared to building out some or all of their own internal team.
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Yeah, definitely. I think that like a really good case study is probably with HP people. So, um us as a business, we're now got 12 offshore our workers in our in our business and we partner our recruiters one-to-one.
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um with an offshore recruiter as well. um That's been able to, it's enabled us to scale as rapidly as we have been. um We were able to scale to an eight figure recruitment agency within 14 months and that's because we had the manpower to actually deliver that service ah for our clients. And um we've seen such a, it's been so transformative in in our company.
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um And we've really sort of, we've really delved into it so much so that before we hire an onshore recruiter, we make sure that we have someone that's trained up from the philipine from the Philippines, that is across all the systems processes and things that we do at HPVL, which is so great to have a recruitment academy with the WIGMET group.
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So before they come on board, they're experienced with our CRM systems that we use, the way that we format our CVs, they understand the candidates and the clients that we work with. So that when we do have our onshore staff member that does come on board, that offshore worker is already across, they're already trained up on the systems and it's enabling them to be able to support ah the recruiter very quickly. and We see a really strong ah ROI um fairly immediately. And I would say on a...
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Over the 12-week period, we're going to sort of have that integration. We see around $20,000 per month increase in GP per consultant's desk when they've got an additional remote professional working with them.
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And um tell us a little bit about the Filipino culture. I'd say most Australians, if they're familiar with the Philippines, it's probably more in a tourism sense rather than a corporate or worker sense. So what have been your observations and experiences?
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They're the most, oh, are you going, Jory? No, no, no, I was like, you go, Johnny. Yeah, and the most loyal, um caring people that I've ever met. And I remember when I first went to the Philippines three years ago, i went over there and I, they, on a Friday night, right, they will go and they'll sing karaoke with their family and friends till 4am in the morning, and they are having the time of their lives. And I remember when I first got there, it was chaos. There's cars going everywhere. There's a smell. There's the noises, the food's average. And i was like, how do they live like this?
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And then by the end of the week on the plane home, I said, this is how life should be lived. they're so great They're so grateful. They're so grateful. They're so appreciative. They love the little things.
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And the biggest thing is they're extremely loyal to their employer. So they it's very cultural in the Philippines that if you're providing for them, the offshore, you're not only providing for them, but also their family.
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So when they they take that with such pride and respect, and I've got a real estate business, right? And we were employing property managers. It felt like when you employed a property manager, you owed them the job.
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and that they And you had to look after them. But in the Philippines, they yeah it's the opposite way. They feel like they owe you for giving them an opportunity. It's a completely different dynamic. To put that into context, my first staff member started with me six years ago, um still with me today.
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Since working with me, she's bought a house. She's bought a car. um I'm the godfather of one of her children. Like it's this but um unique, amazing experience. She runs a training academy over there. So they become an integral part of your business and I'm so grateful to have met them.
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They have university degrees. They're extremely qualified to do the jobs. One of my staff members over there was a chartered accountant in the Philippines working in the Bureau of Investigation.
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um now is um one of our accounts doing ah account reconciliations. like And it's a piece of cake for them, right? So I think the probably the biggest misconception is that they're not quality at what they do and they only tick boxes. Where these guys are creative, um they're extremely loyal and they're very, very intelligent. And if you treat them like that, you will get the results that we've had.
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Yeah, I definitely agree with what Johnny said as well. Like when you, when you're speaking to businesses or like when talking to recruiters and they know that you've got an offshore team, there's that perception that they can't handle or they can't speak with my clients or they can't speak with my candidates. And it's a, it's a limiting belief.
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Um, in my opinion, like a high performer is a high performer. And like Johnny touched on, like, they are so appreciative to be within your business and I've been over there a couple of times as well and i've got to meet our remote team in person and it's such a powerful experience to see that the impact that you have on their lives um and in return the impact that they've had on our business. um It's quite profound. um It's an awesome experience and what I suppose for for us as I can't see our growth journey stopping with the the offshore team, like just because of the profound impact that it's had here at HPL. And I'm hoping and and looking forward to sharing that success with other recruitment agencies across Australia.
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So if we've got agencies excited, they've listened to this conversation and they've started to feel a little more comfortable with the model. They like what you guys are saying. What are some of the other things that, you know, that they may need to be aware of? Any other misconceptions, perceptions around things that they need to kind of overcome?
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I think for the the number one thing that I think will have an unlock in your business is to treat them like an Australian staff member. So anything that you don't need to meet in person, which in the recruitment agency game now, you don't need to meet many people in person.
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They can do anything via the computer. So they can do candidate interviews. They can run your diaries for you. They can be doing all of your administration. They can be doing contracts. They can be doing all your communication. So one thing, ah exercise I would do is I'd write out every single thing you do or every single thing your onshore admin does.
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And I would highlight in green anything that you think an offshore could do And that's your starting point. You'll start to realize that 70% of your day is freed up but and then you can focus on more dollar productive activities.
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So I think that's probably the biggest misconception is they can only do one thing. They are a support mechanism um and and it's not the H people way or the wingman way. It's your way and we'll support integrate the offshore into your business um in your process and your systems.
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um And then, you know, I think the the second thing I always say, Adele, is you can't have a plan B. So we are in the we are in the game of recruitment. If we find you a staff member and the first one doesn't work out, like that's no different to hiring someone in Australia and then not working out. In the Philippines, if you have someone you hire someone in the Philippines and they don't work out, everyone says, oh, offshoring doesn't work.
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It's like, no, that one person out of the 20 million people in Manila didn't work. So it's actually it's actually going through the journey that the first one might not work, but if that you find the right second or third person, they can change your business.
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It's pretty compelling when you hear that, that there's a workforce of 20 million to choose from when we have such a shortage in Australia, right? and like And they all want the job.
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Great to hear. And some really great stats there from Jory around some of the outcomes and results ah with H people and hearing some, I guess, real ah case study evidence to suggest that it's made a real difference to your business. So thank you for sharing that with us. And if anybody wants to reach out to you and find out more information,
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I've got a variety of options. um Obviously, being in in the recruitment space, very active on LinkedIn. So definitely feel free to to reach out to us on LinkedIn. um You can go through the Wingman Group website.
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um There's a tab for services in recruitment as well. um That's got a bit of an overview about Wingman recruitment, the service, and the delivery option, also a bit about the Recruitment Academy. Well, Ross and I are certainly enjoying finding out more about Wingman recruitment.
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We are very proud to have them as a sponsor of Recruitment News Australia and we look forward to finding out even more about them in future episodes. um