Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Recruitment News Australia. This is the news for the 27th of October, 2026. I'm Ross Klenit. And I'm Adele Last. Well, Ross, there's no doubt what the big recruitment industry news story is from the past week, the Bullhorn cyber attack.
Speaker: For sure, Adele. For those not aware, Bullhorn began reporting sinking issues on October 16. The following day, its entire system went down The company later confirmed that it was responding to a cyber attack. It shut down its systems to contain the activity while investigating.
Speaker: Bullhorn brought in cybersecurity specialists from CrowdStrike, the outage-affected recruitment agencies that rely on the platform for core operations, including filling jobs, onboarding workers, managing time and expenses, and in some cases, handling payroll. Connected suppliers also faced extra work because they had to reset API settings.
Speaker: Jason Brown of iCounter in a post warned that the recovery period created an opportunity for fraudsters. Attackers could impersonate Bullhorn staff by email, text or phone and request passwords, MFA codes or changes to payroll and direct deposit details.
Speaker: Bullhorn restored services across its regions on October 20 Australian time. The company said it had implemented fixes for customers using SSO, although some login issues continued. Bullhorn says the incident was contained, but the investigation into whether customer data was taken is still ongoing.
Speaker: No threat actor had claimed responsibility, so the full scope of the attack remains unknown. Yes, I note the Bullhorn website makes no mention of the attack on their customer blog.
Speaker: And it was ah slightly awkward when Bullhorn, as a sponsor of the APSCO Awards dinner that we attended last Thursday night, was read out as a finalist in the Partner of the Year category.
Speaker: This category was a member vote that closed many weeks before the cyber attack occurred. In the end, Sophie Robertson won that category. If Bullhorn had won, the reception to any acceptance speech would have been interesting.
Speaker: Speaking of the APSCO Awards, let's go through the winners of the 17 categories. Well, Brisbane-based Access Offshoring dominated the winners list with three awards. Education Recruiter Trade Wind, IT Recruiter Talent and Canberra-based Wisdom were the other multi-winners.
Speaker: So let's go through them. Firstly, in the People and Culture categories, the winners. Employer of the Year Access Offshoring. Leadership Pathway Program, Talent, Candidate Experience, Beaumont People, Back Office Team of the Year, Tradewind.
Speaker: And in the Brand Innovation and Impact categories, the winners were Best Brand Samuels Donegan, Tech and Innovation, Aquent, Best Tech Newcomer Spot and ESG, Environmental Social Governance went to Talent.
Speaker: In the Client Service and Excellence categories, Client Service winner, Access Offshoring, MSP of the Year, Hayes, RPO of the Year, Harrison McMillan.
Speaker: And in the performance and growth categories, the best performance by a small team was Access Offshoring, by a medium team was Wisdom, and by large team was Talenza.
Speaker: Specialist Firm of the Year went as a tie to Cornerstone Medical and Tradewind. And in the partner category, or categories, Partner of the Year, Sophie Robertson, unique coaching and outstanding contribution, John McCluskey, owner of Wisdom.
Speaker: Any comments about the winners, Ross? Yes, Adele. It certainly shows how broad our industry is when successful agencies can fly under the radar.
Speaker: For example, winner of best brand, Samuels Donegan. I'd not heard of them and they're based in Melbourne. After checking them out, I can tell you the firm was established in 2019 by Sarah Donegan and Evelina Samuels.
Speaker: Prior to starting their own business, Donegan worked for HJB, AQuent and The Next Step. Samuels worked at Randstad Slay Group and The Next Step. Samuels Donegan won Victoria's Best ah HR Recruitment Agency at the 2025 Sourcer Awards.
Speaker: For me, it was Access Offshoring. They won three awards and like you with Samuels Donegan, I'd never heard of them. The business was founded five years ago by Tiffany English in Brisbane and they provide Philippines-based offshore staff to local businesses.
Speaker: When Tiffany accepted the awards, she was confident and articulate, pretty impressive for someone who looked about 25,
Speaker: ah Yes, to everything you said, Adele. I did speak with Tiffany after she had won the award and, yeah, she told me she's actually 36. Access Offshoring is a watch this space business, I suspect.
Speaker: Well done to Leslie, Carly and the APSCO team. By all measures, it was a very successful event. Kian Myers, formerly the National Director responsible for Hayes Executive, has joined Miller Leith as its new Director for New South Wales and Queensland. Miller Leith currently has eight Sydney-based employees and three based on the Gold Coast, according to its employees' LinkedIn profiles.
Speaker: Myers joined Hayes from Sharpen Carter in August 2020 and held three senior roles there over the following six years. Before Sharpen Carter, he spent just under 18 months at Future u He joined that company during the large movement of staff from Michael Page.
Speaker: Myers' Michael Page career began in London when he joined the company's graduate recruitment scheme in 2006. He then moved to its Melbourne office in early 2010. His appointment also follows a leadership transition at Miller Leith.
Speaker: Myers has taken over from Christy Moses, who moved from New South Wales director to CEO five months ago. Myers and Moses were Sydney-based colleagues at Michael Page and Future You, so we assume they know each other well.
Speaker: Middle and Leith majority owner Stephen Borg has been active in bringing in no doubt at a significant cost, external leadership talent. So it will be very interesting to see the company's growth trajectory over the next couple of years.
Speaker: Recruitment platform owner Katrina Leslie has been named Australia's EY Entrepreneur of the Year after being selected from 27 national finalists. She also won the technology category.
Speaker: Her business, Swipe Jobs, operates in the UK and the US. An Australian launch is planned for next year. Job seekers upload their resumes or connect their LinkedIn profiles and the platform uses AI to match them with available roles.
Speaker: Which, of course, is what many job platforms now do. SwipeJob's purported difference is that the matches improve through feedback. Workers can share their salary expectations, flexibility needs, and workplace culture preferences, and those responses help update the recommendations in real time. Leslie said that when a job seeker gives feedback, they are training the AI. The platform's matching system is described as continuously updating recommendations based on skills, preferences and real-time feedback.
Speaker: Leslie says SwipeJobs supported more than 11,700 companies and filled more than during the past year. It generated close to billion dollars in revenue and more than million dollars in for the year ending June Leslie's career arc is a little unusual. She grew up on a Queensland cattle farm and after graduating, her career began in ah HR and recruitment roles at Westpac, Microsoft and then BHP. She left corporate life aged 29 in 1997 to found IPS, a jobs assessment and career centre company, which she sold two years later.
Speaker: She self-funded Swipe Jobs from 2014 until late before selling of her equity. to raise $80 million dollars from a small group of investors. Before launching SwipeJobs, she founded HRX, Australia's first specialist recruitment process outsourcing business, which she sold to US-based PeopleScout in 2014. Lesley will represent Australia at the Global EY Awards in Monaco next year, competing with entrepreneurs from more than 60 countries.
Speaker: Good luck. In a recent ruling, the Federal Court of Australia has granted an on-hire worker leave to pursue a disability discrimination claim against her labour hire employer, Zoom Recruitment.
Speaker: The worker, Esme Darlington-Thomas, was employed as a temp by Zoom recruitment and assigned to Elgas Ltd in 2023 to perform accounts receivable work at Elgas' Canningvale site in Western Australia.
Speaker: When she was preparing for abdominal surgery in early March 2025, she asked both Elgas and Zoom whether she could work from home temporarily. Elgas directed her to speak with Zoom and Zoom requested a formal fitness for work assessment.
Speaker: It also asked her for medical information and then later on more medical information and an ergonomic assessment. She provided everything Zoom requested, including the medical and ergonomic documentation. Even so, the hiring manager told her that working from home was not something we want to do. The manager later confirmed that position in writing, my preference is that you rest until you can get back to the office.
Speaker: Darlington Thomas questioned why the arrangement was unavailable to her when other LGAS employees in office-based roles, including a team leader, had been allowed to work from home. About two months after her initial request, Zoom told her that her assignment had ended because Elgas did not want her to return to the Canning Vale site.
Speaker: Zoom said it would look for alternative work, but it offered none during the 18 months between her departure from Elgas and the court hearing. She then complained to the Australian Human Rights Commission about both Elgas and Zoom. The commission terminated the complaints, including the Zoom complaint, on the basis that it was lacking in substance or misconceived.
Speaker: That meant she needed the federal court's permission to bring the claim against Zoom. Zoom argued that Elgas controlled whether the work was performed on site, while Zoom had no power to make adjustments. The court ruled the claim could go ahead. The test was simple. Is the case arguable or is it far-fetched?
Speaker: The court also noted a few things. The labour hire contract said the provider kept control of the workers. Her own contract said she took directions from both Zoom and Elgas, and Zoom shared responsibility for her safety at work.
Speaker: So the court has not determined whether discrimination occurred. It has decided that the claim against Zoom has sufficient merit to continue. The case will now proceed to mediation.
Speaker: Question of the week. Who goes on a nine-week holiday and comes back with a labour market report? Ross Clennett does. That's who. Oh, it's a little harsh. I know you've been reading my blogs, Adele.
Speaker: Well, tell us about your holiday first. Tell us where you went, Ross. Okay. Well, Michelle and I had three weeks in Vietnam, two in Thailand, and four in Indonesia, and it was wonderful. We had a great, great time.
Speaker: Fantastic. And you weren't there for a labour market report, but you did make some observations, I understand. Well, yes, as ah you and many people know, I'm a bit of a recruitment and labour market nerd, so I can't help but ask people about their jobs, observe what's going on and look up some data. So, yeah, certainly there were some things that I found out that I think people might be interested in. Okay, please share.
Speaker: All right. So, firstly, I am going to generalise. I did go to three different countries and I'm going to provide examples from Indonesia because that's where I spent the most time and had the most conversations But generally, across those countries, government jobs are the more desired jobs. They have good salaries. They have well-defined conditions and reasonable working hours. And they've got superannuation or pensions.
Speaker: Private sector jobs are much less regulated, so pay is not as structured, conditions are not as universal, and pensions or superannuation, they are more at the discretion of the employer, whereas, of course, in Australia, we have ah national employment standards. That's not really the case, certainly not to the degree in um in Southeast Asia generally.
Speaker: You mentioned government jobs there, and I find that interesting, having worked in a lot of environments, sectors, let's say, that have employed new migrants to Australia that might have come from these countries. I often, I don't recall seeing a lot of people having had government experience. So you're probably right. They don't leave those countries. They stay because they've got good paid jobs. We know in Australia about 18% of people who are paid ah paid via a government form, either working for the government or with cac taxpayer dollars. But that can't be the case there. I wouldn't have thought it's as high. wouldn't have thought so yes i i don't know. I'd imagine the percentage of the population employed by the government would be less than 18% of the labour market.
Speaker: And we're talking about a larger population potentially as well yeah in terms of of the size um based on those countries. So, If they're not in government opportunities, what other things did you observe? What other industries did you observe people working in?
Speaker: Well, just to give you, again, an Indonesian example, I was staying in Uluwatu and I wrote a blog about the Uluwatu construction market or what I observed. So an unskilled construction labourer or hospitality worker in in Bali, they're sort of roughly the same level. They earn a daily rate, something in the range of Australian dollars,
Speaker: $12 to $15. So that's a daily rate. Now, if you're a skilled worker, so you're a tradie in the construction sector or a chef in a kitchen, then you're going to earn about 30% to 40% more, so up to about $20 Australian a day. So to be clear, in terms of annualised salary, we're talking a range $3,500 to just under year for a skilled person.
Speaker: 6,000 a year. We're not talking right a week or a month here. So Australian workers, 10 times that minimum probably. ah ahhu Yes, correct. Yes, exactly. And that's the difference between a labour market with a lot of people and not as many jobs as people and Australia where clearly we're always struggling to get enough people to do the jobs.
Speaker: So how do people there improve their prospects? Well, English, basically, or a second language, but predominantly English, because, of course, in Indonesia, particularly Bali, Australians are a big source of tourism revenue. So about quarter of Bali's annual tourists are from Australia alone.
Speaker: So to give you a particular example, so a tour guide. So a tour guide who's fluent in English would earn about two to three times the amount of a tradie just in annualized salary. Then they have the opportunity to earn tips. So for example, Michelle and I were part of a 12-person two-week trip with Intrepid through Java and Barley. So based on salary bands for the experience of our guide, and I spoke to him about his experience, I know what experience level he has, he'd be paid about a thousand Australian dollars a month.
Speaker: So that's high compared to most of the workforce, that's basically twice what a tradie would earn. But of course, a tradie can't earn tips, whereas our tour group gave our guide ah a tip which was basically the equivalent of about double what he actually earned across the two weeks. So in other words, his total earnings for the two week trip were a third base salary and about two thirds tip. Now, that's just an English speaking guide. If you're a guide who speaks a more difficult language like German or Japanese or Mandarin, you can command significantly more than that.
Speaker: That's really interesting. So does he get to keep the tips, presumably that's straight in his pocket or does he have to declare it? No, no, it's straight in his pocket, definitely. So that makes a massive difference. And of course, for those of you been to Bali or Indonesia generally, you know that there's no coins and it's all it's all dollars. So he could barely get his hands around all of these notes in the because, of course, we gave him the tip in cash. So, yeah, it was fairly funny. I can absolutely picture that. And I can absolutely picture you going through these countries, making these observations. I can see it happening. But, look, that sounds great for somebody like a tour guide who's got a lot of personality, who's outgoing, likes to talk to people.
Speaker: What about people who who don't have that same nature? What opportunities do they have? Again, another example. So we hired a driver with his own car for a day in Bandung or out of Bandung.
Speaker: Andre was his name. Now, of course, i know you're driving in a car, the traffic's bad, you ask the driver about his story. So he left home at 18 or 19 to go and work on a cruise ship.
Speaker: And it was an American cruise ship because in Indonesia, that's your ticket to a decent amount of money. He earned, to start with US$750 a month, Adele, and that was for working seven days a week.
Speaker: 11 hours a day, and he had to pay back the recruiter who found in the job about a third of his earnings for the whole of his eight-month contract, that first contract. Now, once that first contract finished and he got hired again by the ship, he didn't have to pay the agent.
Speaker: So he started working in the kitchen, so an unskilled job. He didn't like the pressure, and then he got a job as a room attendant, and he ultimately finished up being a room attendant ah with the suites. So he was dealing with the highest paying passengers. So that did give him an opportunity to earn some decent tips. And he finished up ah ah total working a total of nine years on cruise ships and that enabled him, and he did learn English across that period of time because when he left, he didn't speak English. So he came back and he had enough money to buy a house outright, and to buy a car. And that car is now his business and he now takes tourists around. But it's not a huge earn.
Speaker: I mean, he charged us $80 for what was effectively an 11-hour day and we gave him, i think, about a 15%, no, sorry, 20% tip. So that's still, you know roughly $100, which is petrol, wear and tear on the car and effectively being a tour guide for a day. So,
Speaker: And yet he's in a good position. Yes, absolutely. He's got job and he's got a house and he's got a car. And so he's doing quite well there, even though to us that seems like a really hard road, one that most of us would never have to travel. Correct. And that path and earning really low wages for really long hours.
Speaker: That's right. So he now, what he likes is he controls his own hours and he's only dealing with a small number of people because he's an introvert. He didn't like the kitchen. It was too busy. There were too many people. He liked the room attendant work because he's just talking to, i mean, he's either there in the room by himself. or he's talking to the guests, there's only one or two guests. So driving a car, the most number of people in the car is going to be three, ah sorry, four maximum plus him. So he really enjoys that. And in the high season, he said he could work, you know, 17, 18 days straight. And then when it's the low season, he may only get one job a week. So you do have to also tolerate the ups and downs of the seasonal nature of um being a driver for tourists.
Speaker: I can tell that you spent a lot of time in the car and you gave him a full interview. You were very thorough as a recruiter. Michelle had to dig me in the ribs. It's like, God, just like you're interviewing him, Ross. It's like, well, I'm interested, darling. I'm interested.
Speaker: And now you've got a blog and a podcast out of it. It was worth Yes, yes. Thank you so much for sharing ah those observations, Ross. It is really insightful. We always enjoy your view of things even when you're on holiday. So thank you for that. What would you like to send as your final message?
Speaker: Well, I just think it's easy to take for granted the conditions that we have in Australia, national employment standards, minimum wages, fair work, ensuring that employers are doing the right thing, mandated sick leave, public holiday leave across the whole workforce, not just for government workers. And, ah you know, it's a reminder that that that is not enjoyed by many millions of people Australia.
Speaker: in other countries. And clearly in Asia, there's billions of people, not all of them in the workforce, but yeah we we do have it lucky here. And the high standard of living that we have in this country is due to many of those things. And you know when you go to a country like Indonesia, it really hits you in the face when you've got someone doing hard, unskilled labour on a building site in 34, 35 degree temperatures with no hard hat, no closed toe shoes, and they're earning like $10 a day. Wow. like that's ah That's a big reality check.
