The Lone Recruiter

There’s always love in the room until there isn’t. In my view, our job as recruiters is to keep that love, because the moment it leaves, the deal usually goes with it. In this ep, I walk through a scenario from my own team that holds a big lesson for junior recruiters and a timely reminder for the seniors. You know the feeling. The brief looks great, the candidate looks great, they shake hands, an...

We all know about KPIs in recruitment. Calls, CVs, interviews, placements. But what about the habits behind the numbers? I've been working with a health coach recently, and he's introduced me to habit tracking. It got me thinking about how we measure success in recruitment and whether we're overlooking some of the most important things. KPIs tell us what we're achieving, but I reckon our daily hab...

What if you could swap your biggest problem for someone else's? Would you take the risk, or would you stick with your own? I heard this question recently and it really got me thinking. We all have problems. Some big, some small, but when you're in the thick of one, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the stress, uncertainty and emotion surrounding it. Here's the thing. Sometimes the problem isn't near...

Feeling stressed about your recruitment desk? Worried about a tough market or where your next placement is coming from? Here's something I want you to remember: one job is all you need. In this episode, I'm breaking down how to take a single vacancy and turn it into a pipeline of new opportunities. Because when you've got one good job, you've got everything you need to start rebuilding your desk....

Ever feel like you're spinning your wheels, juggling a hundred things and not actually moving any closer to making a placement? I've been there. But there's one question that's stuck with me throughout my recruitment career. A manager drilled it into me every day for six and a half years, and it's still my North Star whenever I'm feeling scattered, overwhelmed or unsure where to focus. What's clos...

If I followed you around with a camera for 24 hours, would I believe you were going to hit your targets this month? It's a bloody good question. And if you're consistently falling short of your goals, you might not like the answer. Here's the thing. Most recruiters have a pretty good idea of what they need to do to succeed. But knowing what to do and actually doing it are two very different things...

Are you prepping your candidates for interviews but forgetting to prep your clients? Here's my simple piece of advice I gave a client that completely changed the way she interviews candidates and helped her achieve better hiring outcomes. The idea is simple: stop grilling candidates in the first interview and start selling the dream. 👉 First interview: Sell the company, the opportunity, the proje...

What if recruitment isn’t always the answer? Brett is joined by Rachel and Shannon from Stitch Partners to unpack their move from a traditional recruitment agency into a broader advisory model. After more than 20 years in the industry, they realised they were already helping clients with far more than filling jobs. The difference? They decided to start treating that expertise as a service in its o...

You can’t sprint forever. Recruitment works well in bursts — 10 or 11 weeks of pushing hard, followed by a chance to stop, recharge and reset. So if you’re coming to the end of a quarter feeling depleted, this ep is your reminder to take the break. Book the week off. Switch off properly. Touch some grass. Put your feet in the sand and unwind. But before you clock off, there are a few things to get...

Recruiters are a superstitious bunch. Placement bells. Lucky songs. Weird office rituals. Things that make absolutely no logical difference to whether a deal lands… but somehow become sacred agency traditions anyway. Today I’m counting down five of the best, weirdest and funniest recruitment rituals I’ve come across over the years. 👉 The placement song that announces to the entire office you’ve m...

Hiring a great recruiter is only half the job. What you do with them in those first few weeks can make all the difference. I’m not a fan of the old “sink or swim” approach. Throwing someone a laptop, a desk and telling them to go build a market from scratch might show you what they’re made of, but it also creates a massive amount of unnecessary pressure. Instead, I believe in setting people up for...

How do you treat someone when you don’t think they’re the person you need to impress? A conversation with Beth in my office got me thinking about the way some people treat support staff, EAs, receptionists and the people standing between them and the person they actually want to speak to. Most people are brilliant. Some, however, are dismissive, abrupt or just plain rude. And here’s the thing: it...

What happens when AI starts automating people’s jobs? IKEA has given us a pretty interesting answer. Rather than simply using automation as an opportunity to slash headcount, they re-skilled thousands of customer service employees into new roles. For me, it’s a brilliant example of what AI integration could actually look like when businesses bring their people along for the ride. It also got me th...

What if you’re doing all the “right” things for your health, but you’re still not operating at your best? I train five days a week. I eat pretty consciously. I supplement. I don’t drink a hell of a lot. On paper, I’m doing alright. But a lot of it is still guesswork. So I decided to find out what’s actually going on under the hood. In this ep, I’m joined by health and high performance coach Luke M...

Today, I’m giving you permission to do something that sounds completely wrong for a recruiter: don’t pick up the phone. Hear me out. We’re trained to answer calls. Client calls, candidate calls, callbacks... the phone rings, we pick it up. But what happens when you answer and you’re not actually ready for the conversation? I recently watched a colleague do exactly that. A callback came through, th...

The Australian jobs market is slow, tougher and uncertain right now. But what does that actually mean for us as recruiters? I’m joined by SEEK Chief Economist Blair Chapman to cut through the headlines and look at what the data is really telling us about the Australian employment market. Employment is still growing, but at a much slower rate than we’ve become accustomed to. Job switching is at his...

Have you ever felt like you KNOW how to do something, but it still takes a huge amount of effort to get it right? That’s where the four stages of mastery come in. In this episode, I break down the journey from having absolutely no idea what you’re doing to reaching the point where a skill becomes almost automatic. For recruiters, this can apply to everything from interviewing and taking a job brie...

The recruitment market is changing, but where are the real opportunities right now? Today I’m joined by Andrea Collins from Connecting Recruiters, she has spent more than 20 years in recruitment and the last decade specialising in Rec2Rec. She recruits across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, giving her a pretty unique view of what’s happening inside agencies across the country. We talk about what s...

The 2026 Census has added 349 new occupations. So naturally, my recruiter brain went straight to one question: Where's the opportunity? If you're looking for a new recruitment market, the Census could give you some very interesting clues. Tune in for: 👉 Why 349 new occupations creates potential new recruitment markets 👉 What changing industries and technology mean for recruiters 👉 How to spot g...

This simple recruitment tactic can significantly shorten the time between getting a client interview request and actually getting the interview booked. The key idea is simple: don’t ask “when?” Instead, know your candidate’s availability and give the client a specific option, ideally today or tomorrow. Rather than asking, “When can you meet them?”, try, “I’ve got them available at 3pm today. Can y...

What if your best incentive wasn’t more money, but more time? In today's ep, I sit down with Zakary Nash, Co-Founder and Director of HarperLloyd Recruitment, to unpack one of the most interesting incentives I’ve come across in recruitment. Hit your quarterly target, and you earn Fridays off for the entire next quarter. It sounds simple, but the psychology behind it is fascinating. Zakary shares:...

I’ve spent 20 years measuring my success from behind a recruitment desk. Placements. Revenue. Generation. Deals.  But now my role is changing. As the agency and the podcast grow, I’m moving away from full-throttle desk recruitment and into more of a leadership role. I’m not disappearing from recruitment. I still love the clients, the candidates and the deals. But I can’t keep doing everything myse...

What do a packet of soy sauce, a door handle, and recruitment have in common? I know it sounds strange, but this week I found myself thinking about how the smallest details can have the biggest impact. I grabbed my usual sushi lunch, something I do Monday to Thursday because it’s predictable and easy for my specific dietary needs. But when I got back to my desk, I realised they’d forgotten my glut...

Retained recruitment is something many recruiters talk about, but few fully commit to. In this ep, I chat with Jack Creith from Yakka Solutions about the unconventional retained model that transformed his recruitment business: 10% upfront and 90% on delivery. Rather than following the traditional retained search structure, Jack created a model that is simple, low friction for clients and still cre...

If I had to build a recruitment desk from scratch today, this is exactly how I'd do it. One of the biggest mistakes recruiters make when starting a new market is casting the net too wide. They pick an industry, start calling people and hope the opportunities reveal themselves. That approach wastes time and confidence. In this ep, I walk you through the exact framework I use to identify profitable...