Confessions of a Recruiter
The show is hosted by Blake Thompson and Declan Kluver who respectively own Vendito Consulting and Blended Employment. Both have been in Sales & Marketing Recruitment for over 5 years. The podcast is about opening the door to the recruitment world and creating a community of recruiters who can share funny stories, educate and have honest conversations about the industry and their experience. All episodes are powered by xrecruiter.
Confessions of a Recruiter
Turning Athletic Passion into Business Triumph | Episode #104 SNIPPET
· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io
2025, we are back. Confessions of a Recruiter is going to a new level. To kick off the first episode of 2025, we had Ryan and Jack from your Tech Consulting Amazing recruiters been in the industry for over 10 years each. Now they started their agency in the midst of 2021, the biggest tech boom that's ever happened in the recruitment industry. Check this out. This is an episode you do not wanna miss. This is an episode you do not want to miss. Welcome back to the first episode of 2025. And we're joined with the boys from your Tech here we go.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:No worries, boys. So, Brisbane lads now and this is your three and a half years into business Mate, let's go back to where it all began.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can start that one off. So Ryan and I we met each other playing football in Brisbane at Brisbane Strikers, probably about 15, 16 years ago. I was living on the goalposts at the time. Brisbane.
Speaker 1:Strikers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so semi-professional. That was when the dream was still alive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we thought we were going to make it.
Speaker 2:Recruiting wasn't on our radar then. But you know, we I was there for three seasons. Over those three years we become pretty close. I was living on the Gold Coast. At the time I was actually doing commercial sales and leasing for Ray White on the Gold Coast and after you know a long time with those guys me and Ryan we sort of went on a few trips together, you know. And then Ryan was actually working for Robert Half, leading the IT division for Queensland there, and he randomly, you know, called me one day and said mate, I know you're happy with work, but you know we're looking for people with sales experience.
Speaker 3:We were getting desperate.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I think you were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Desperate's the best word in recruitment, eh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that as well.
Speaker 4:Referral fee.
Speaker 1:That's like this cheeky bloke too. I'm still waiting for my heart, by the way.
Speaker 2:And yeah, so I said, mate, I'm not really looking, but I'll come up and have a chat, find out a bit more about recruitment. I had no idea about anything recruitment. So I went up, had a few interviews and the first question they asked me was like why do you want to be in recruitment? I was like, to be honest, I have no idea about recruitment or anything. So I'm here to find out a bit more and, you know, after about eight rounds of interviews, got the job finally. Um, and it was pretty, you know, fortuitous that ryan was in the it division and I went into the software development team in the contract space. So ryan worked in a permanent division and I was focusing an the temp and then we were there. I was there for about three and a half years, yeah, because I joined in.
Speaker 3:I joined 2015 when I was sort of early 20s. I was doing football coaching for young kids and I literally got the job through coaching. One of the kids and he's the dad came up to me and said have you ever thought about recruitment? Again, no idea what it was, did the interviews and got the job started and again I was super lucky, went into a team with just high-performing people around me. So again, I had no idea what I was doing. But if I look back because again you talk about Lee Pollard, who I know has been on the podcast, steve Tung, tom Beachy, travis Steele, amanda Woodford I'm probably forgetting some, but all these people have now gone out and started their own businesses.
Speaker 1:True, yeah, and they've done well.
Speaker 3:Done unbelievably right. So me, as a young 21-year-old, I'm just sat there listening to them on the phone all day, every day, just taking it in, and Robert Harf as well. I mean we've got nothing but great things to say as a business. You know, we had the director.
Speaker 2:as horrible as this is, with you doing plug-in calls every week, absolutely shitting yourself when you're first as a rookie and he's plugging in. Oh mate, yeah.
Speaker 1:Is he plugging in on live calls? Totally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, he did it with everyone and again, which is at the time, it's horrific. Right, you're thinking this is the. I couldn't think of anything worse, but in hindsight, the fact that he put in the effort that he did, that's Kev Jarvis. It was a brilliant place to learn. It was almost like a university, because, again, I'm sat in between all these tenured people that are billing so much money and I think, more than anything, more than a training session, a whiteboard session, just sitting and listening to people on the phone, is the best way to learn it's epic and you just pick up little bits and pieces and sort of make it your own as well, and with those guys they will send you away for three days down to syd training and stuff.
Speaker 2:So you're training with the best people there and you come back and that's where you really understand the ways of recruitment and what to do and how to call people and get leads and all that sort of stuff from candidates. First it was all candidate stuff first and then we went into the 360.
Speaker 1:What were they teaching? Could you break down what they were teaching? Or what was like the golden nuggets where you're like fuck, penny dropped. Or there was a conversation you had on the phone with a client or a candidate and it completely changed the dynamic. You know when those things happen.
Speaker 3:I think, from like a business development perspective. So I reported directly into a guy called Steve Tung who runs his own business. Now he's the best business developer I've ever worked with or just in general seen or observed. He was just really strategic in the way that he did business development, in basically avoiding doing any cold calls. So rather than getting a huge list of clients tired of them saying I'm Steve, I want to work with you, he was extremely strategic in getting information from his candidates so that every call he made to a client he was going in there with information about their business and ultimately, rather than going in there asking for their business, was selling himself as a premium service and saying look the way that I operate. I'm really selected with the candidates that I work with and also the clients that I work with. I'm working with the best people out there, so you can imagine that they're really selected with the places that they want to work.
Speaker 3:So what I want to understand is why should my candidates want to come and work for you? And it's just kind of reversing it Rather than feeling like a sales call, he's getting them to sell to him and he's just so good at getting information that when he's calling a business, he's saying you know, I spoke to a guy called Jack Boxall. He said that your business is doing X, y and Z. You're working with this technology. I want to understand more if you're the type of business that I can actually recruit for. So it's just a different way of approaching a sales call, rather than going in and just and again. There's a lot of value in this going in and selling a particular candidate that you've got, but I think just coming in from a different perspective and really making it about him him being the premium service that they want to work with why should I actually recruit for you?
Speaker 3:And so that was a really cool and what they just get stumped A little bit, yeah, and I think as well, because where we try and work again is really targeting more founders so small to medium, fast-growing tech companies that are either building a product or selling a particular service. So we're actually trying to work with the founders and human nature. Is you like talking about yourself? I think, pump up their tires. Pump up their tires. Jack definitely likes talking about himself, and so when you're talking to someone and they're talking about themselves, but, more importantly, when they're talking about their business they're extremely passionate about and everyone thinks their business is amazing. So when you're saying to them I've got access to talent that you can't get anywhere else, um, why should they want to work for you? I think they naturally feel like they want to tell you why they want to sell it.
Speaker 3:They want to sell it right. So it's just a bit of a different approach, and I think then as well you're starting off the relationship on kind of a peer-to-peer level rather than a master-servant level, so that you can then be quite influential in how they run a recruitment process too, and you've then got more control and, I guess, more of an ability to go and actually deliver.
Speaker 4:So did you start applying that type of reframing to clients when you were working with Steve or like? When did you start adopting this kind of language?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think again because I was there a few years before, jack, like at the start, especially when I was very young and new to the industry you ultimately just copy the people around you and then over time you find your own style that you start to implement. I don't want to speak for you, but that's sort of how it worked for me. You, you, you're literally just going on client meetings, I'm taking his word tracks, I'm copying them, but then over time you start to find what works for you and try different things. You're going to fail a lot and then eventually you find sort of what works for you and then just kind of go with that Again. At the start, no shame in saying I was just copying what everyone else was saying.
Speaker 1:And you're just fortunate that you're in a room full of killers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, literally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we speak about this where I think new people coming into the industry. You know there was a sort of a honeymoon period during COVID where it was sexy to work from home In. There was a sort of a honeymoon period during COVID where it was sexy to work from home In our job. I would say for at least three or four years I'd be telling people be in the office every day listening to people around you. There's no better training than just listening to it happen.
Speaker 1:How has that changed in your own business? That osmosis is purely created by you two. Do you feel like you're always having to remind yourself, or because you can fall off the garden path because you're not? You're not around that anymore and we see it all the time. Like you can see some people that you know they could be absolutely crushing it and they go out on their own like holy shit. It happened to me like I was in a room of six, seven consultants, you know some of us were billing 400k, others were billing a million bucks, and then it was the biggest shock for me to then go into a single person office and then go oh shit, how do I do this again?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, look, I think you know we're quite lucky. We've got to do it together as well, keeping each other accountable. You know, because you know we would turn up to his apartment every day and our little. You know makeshift office. You know, stand up desk, stand up desk. And our first day we opened.
Speaker 3:Mate, we still got them. How good is this? That did exactly what I was talking about. Can't go wrong.
Speaker 2:Huh the only thing is I had to put him up. I had to put it up for you, didn't.
Speaker 3:I yeah, I was useless.
Speaker 2:That's not my strength. He couldn't even put up the desk or the chair, so I had to do all that. Yeah, on the first day. Okay, what do? We've got a network of people around us who have led those sort of founder companies as well. So we're just, you know, picking their brains all the time. Um, you know, and it's just been a bit of a whirlwind, but, you know, we've been learning as we go.
Speaker 3:Um, I think one of the big shifts that and jack really pushed this was was getting an office, where we're now in a shared space at hotel x where there's a lot of other recruitment companies, where we know the guys and you're kind of leaning on each other because the first year, or the in particular first six months when the market was booming, like we couldn't have had a better start, and I think from that we thought we'd figured it all out. And then year two right, we kind of got knocked back where we just had all this work come in. We weren't flexing kind of the bd muscle, so to speak, and just at the drop of the hat, like everyone's been through in in the industry, you realize like I'm behind the eight ball. Now we're chasing our tails trying to get more work on. But I think that complacency probably came from again, like just working out of a living room and not having the kind of energy that you get from like going to an office.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we would turn up just in our shorts and a T-shirt, you know, unless we were going to a meeting or a virtual meeting, you know. But now we're getting dressed, we're actually going to work, you know, doing the core hours in work and then going home and sort of breaking, separating work from home.
Speaker 3:I think that's quite important. Like you can underestimate the and again, I'm a big proponent for actually, especially with what we do, and I know there's people out there that can work from home. I need to be in an office Same same.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I can't survive otherwise. Yeah, there's a huge thing around changing your state and there needs to be some sort of ritual that you go through in the morning that you change your state from I'm at home, I'm relaxing, I can just be who I need to be, totally, um. And then when you change your state, you get changed. You have the shower, you put on your, your suit, you put on your work clothes, whatever it might be, and then all of a sudden you kind of switch over and go all right now I'm a recruiter and I need to get started.
Speaker 4:Whereas if you're at home, you just get up and you're like should I start now or should I start in five?
Speaker 2:minutes. Yeah, totally, I guess I'm just. You know, I'll walk the dogs, you know, and I'll come back and I'll, for a half hour, walk to the fridge, but there's just no structure around what you're doing. No structure, yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's made a big difference. I think, to your point. It's definitely been a shift for us, going from an office of sort of 20, 30 people where there's that kind of buzz on the sales floor in the morning and we've got to try and create that ourselves and I think we've gotten better at that where we're both in the office together and when we're out doing our meetings. That's just sort of happening in the afternoon, but in the morning we try and avoid booking meetings so that both of us are in the office on the phone and try and bounce off each other, because that kind of energy is infectious and it's kind of hard to create with just two people versus 30. Um, yeah, that that that was being a challenge for sure, and it was interesting. That second sort of probably six months, we got a big reality check because again, you having the start that we did, we thought we had it figured out and, yeah, the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like ryan said when the market was pretty tough for a lot of people. We were like quite protected because we were working with, you know, vc back companies that had injections of cash to grow. So our focus was on them and we'd done a really good job with them over sort of you know eight months of that year and then when they finished growing they were like shit, you know where's we haven't been doing any business development and our biggest clients.
Speaker 2:They were obviously not hiring at that stage because they was all hiring was on pool. So like we need to get back on that bd train. That's a big lesson for us. At ryan said you know we need. We've got in our calendars twice a week like mandatory times. We're all doing BD together and having like a little. We have like little point systems and make a little game out of it on a Friday just to get the team going and have like we've done a Harry Potter one. You know, like different teams and stuff that's how sad it gets now.
Speaker 2:But you, just you want to win, and the loser had to buy the other person lunch. Now we've got Beck in Melbourne, so she was involved in it as well.
Speaker 3:I think it's having some protected time during your week just to do it together. And again, the big thing, we're not allowed to book meetings through that time. It's just no-go. All of us are together and it just holds you accountable and forces you to do it. Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:It's pretty simple, right? Do many of your clients actually work from home? Like, is that still Totally?
Speaker 3:They do, they do, and again, I think it's a different world, in particular in the software space, I think.
Speaker 1:You're not in sales. I feel like sales and customer facing.
Speaker 3:I think it's a different world and like, because we've again a lot of the companies that we work with, if they're building a product, they ultimately just need the best people. They don't care moon, they're like we just need the best people to write code and build this product for us. And there's a bit of a different culture again. We're not the silicon valley here in brisbane or across australia, but there is that kind of culture of, I think, in the more the software world where people do work from home, um, what I do in terms of like it infrastructure, like managed services sort of work. There's definitely been a shift where during covid they went right, everyone can just work from home, and they quickly realised that you lose a culture, you lose people, and they kind of looked at returning to work, but in software they still….
Speaker 2:Yeah, we still do. We're seeing a bit more now with our local clients in Brisbane that they want people to come into the office more, and most people are open to that. But we're seeing a lot now with the younger generation coming through out of uni. They I mean through out of uni. They think it's their right to work from home five days a week. Well, no, you actually need to be in the office. You've got to earn your stripes.
Speaker 3:Because again it comes back to.
Speaker 2:If you're working from home as a junior, you're not rubbing shoulders with the senior people in the teams as much. You're not going to learn like you would be if you're sitting next to someone. You know be able to pick their brain. You know, day in, day out and working, seeing a shift in people going back to work. But a lot of the companies that we work with they can hire all across Australia. Like Ryan said, they just want the best people. They don't care where they are, as long as they can deliver.
Speaker 3:They're happy for people to work from home most of the time, but I think that's more at the senior end as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at the senior end mainly. But a lot of our clients are typically in the office but they just don't care where their team are as much, and typically your average salary is what?
Speaker 1:160, 180? Yeah, the types of roles you recruit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it ranges in the software space. You know juniors, you know early hundreds, and then it goes up to like sort of 120s and the senior sort of software engineers, depending on what type of skills they've got 160, 180, you know, if they're going to lead positions, know so getting up to there. And then we do do some like solution architects. We're getting up to that 200 sort of k mark as well.
Speaker 3:So it's a bit of a range depending on the level of of candidate that they need and the good thing is is with with again those product driven software companies to get the best people, you've got to pay, so again it helps us with higher fees and stuff. Because of the salaries, because we've seen a jump in Australia where it's getting a bit more competitive, because you've got Silicon Valley businesses tapping into talent here who are paying crazy money. So we've got to compete. So the salaries have increased quite a lot in that world that we specialise in, which has been great for us and people actually coming to the table and paying.
Speaker 1:What was the biggest reason for the tech downfall? Many of your clients say like, did everyone just get scared?
Speaker 3:at the same time, Well, I think that it just got completely flooded with cash post-COVID, where you could raise capital so easy, right, and people were just completely. Companies were being so overvalued, the capital that they were getting was just beyond what the company was worth and I think the burn rate for companies was just through the roof. So there was a lot of failures, a lot of VCs deployed capital in companies that weren't successful and I think there was just a bit of a I'd just say a reset, because I think people were just being quite reckless.
Speaker 4:So was it we're talking about. Last year was the hardest year right. Yeah, so was it really hard because the year before that was just cream, or was it actually harder?
Speaker 2:The year before that it was a back end of 2023 where we saw it all slowing down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we saw a slowdown prior to last year In terms of people hiring. Again, it's tough because different companies give you different signals and depending on what market they are in. Again, we still had loads of companies that said they had a brilliant year. But I just think in general it was more just sentiment. I don't know how you guys have found it. It was almost like a line in the sand. When the US elections finished, everyone just became more optimistic. Right, let's go and hire.
Speaker 3:That had way more of an impact on what people's outlook was than what anything happening here did, so it's kind of hard to put your finger on what exactly it was. Again, I think a lot of it was uncertainty, yeah, just fear of what's going to happen. I've noticed throughout my career, in particular in technology, what's happening in the US tends to have quite a big impact on what happens here, and it's more of a mental you know, whether people are optimistic or pessimistic and whether they're being protective or risk-taking. That seemed to have a big impact and again, I don't even think it was about so much the outcome of the election. It was more right. Now that that's done and we know what's happening, people are like right, we're going to start making decisions, which is weird.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have to make decisions regardless. I don't know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like how it impacts.
Speaker 2:The biggest um flavor that we seen when the market was dying down is we had a pretty decent contractor book, big consultancies who were like Microsoft global partners Microsoft Global Partners, yeah and they had contractors you know with like ATO, bhp, some big enterprise organisations and they had like, say, 900 contractors you know on their books working at different sort of areas and companies and we provide them with contractors. And then their books got cut down to like early a couple hundred people, all their contractors, just gone.
Speaker 3:And then that sort of because they work with the governments.
Speaker 2:You know that sort of was a signal for us Okay. Well, this is obviously going to be pretty tough and that knocked onto the private sector then.
Speaker 3:So it was like when the government slowed down with its spending on transformation projects, I didn't think that knocked it Cause that con I don't know about. You know your businesses and your partners, but the big thing for us, our perm work was quite steady. It was more the contracting stuff for us that really took a hit last year.
Speaker 4:Really? Yeah, it's usually the other way around, isn't it? Well, again not. Perm takes a hit and contracting keeps coming through.
Speaker 2:In the tech space, contractors, they can charge whatever they want. And 2022, they could name their price and they will get it. Yeah, and we're talking over, you know, thousand thirteen hundred bucks a day to them.
Speaker 3:so you know they, when companies need to watch their, their spendings, contracts are the first to go, and I think I think as well because with what and again maybe we're fishing in a different pond, right like we tend to stay well away from kind of government stuff. So it's a lot of um and the perm work. The reason again it's been steady is that the clients that were hiring through us are these people that have already been given capital. So they're kind of recession not recession-proof is probably the wrong way to put it but if the capital's there, the whole purpose of this money is to grow. It's to bring people on board. So again, this is not us being really clever that just really protected our perm business through what was a tough year. But just in terms of our customers, from a contracting perspective, they were saying look, sales are down the first thing, we need to do to cut costs is basically just get rid of the contractors.
Speaker 4:And that's what they did. Yeah, you said a couple of times that you've that you weren't being clever, you were just, you know, in the right time starting the business, obviously getting those good clients. So a lot of our listeners are either ambitious recruiters, growth mindset, want to learn from other recruiters, and or agency owners who are trying to learn from other agency owners. So I'd love to be able to understand why you started in the first place. Did something happen where you thought, hey, let's just have a crack now the market's booming and that was the trigger?
Speaker 4:or why, when you started.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were thinking about, well, Stephen Tung, who Ryan reported into at Robot Half. He went out and done his own Perpetuate company about a year or so before we started thinking about it and then we were still at Robert Half. We always thought we were thinking about it. That's what we were putting ideas, and you know we were always in motion we were always in motion. Then COVID hit. A lot of redundancies happened across Robert Half so you saw Steve do it and you thought we saw a lot of people.
Speaker 3:It's important so we've got a few different friends not just in recruitment but other industries as well who'd gone and we're surrounded by quite entrepreneurial people, gotcha, and I think that kind of gave us the confidence because I mean, look, we were both top performers within the business, billing a lot of money, and that's obviously a temptation. It's like, well, I need to go and do this for myself, right?
Speaker 2:You're making so much money and you're only getting a small slice of it.
Speaker 3:You know it gets to the point where you just think you know it would make sense to do it myself. But again, we were quite. This is one of the things I'm super thankful for is being surrounded by just really good people who kind of open the door for us. You just watch them do it and you go. Well, if they can do it, we can do it. Let's just go and take the risk and make this happen Again. It's the best decision we ever made, but I think a big thing behind it was being surrounded by people who'd done it and just giving us the confidence that right, this is achievable, this can be done. And obviously the other thing that comes from it as well is obviously performing in the job and knowing right. We're doing this well. Even if we went and did half of this by ourselves, we're doing a pretty good job.
Speaker 4:So so what did you? How? How did you get your ducks in line to go all right? Now's the date. What was like the mindset, the mentality to like work through, how you were going to actually pull it off?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was stressful, wasn't it? It was stressful, yeah. So once we, when COVID, hit and we stayed with the company, we realised that the market was still booming. The only thing that changed people working from home. So we were like we've got no mortgages, we've got no kids, you know like we've got no mortgages, we've got no kids, you know, we've got, you know, the less stresses of going out and trying. It's the time is now. Let's just do it. You know, and you know it was never an option to go back and work for an agency, but we're like the worst, worst case scenario. If it doesn't work out, for whatever reason, we can always go back and get a job somewhere. That's quite easy. So let's just, let's just give it a crack. Was it that simple?
Speaker 3:I think so, because you can create all these things in your head and I remember, like going into resign, because I've been with the business for seven years I was so stressed about going and speaking to the guys and telling them that I was leaving and I think in your mind you almost you made the decision a lot earlier than probably what you think. There's just so much going on in your head and in terms of getting your ducks aligned, there's so much to do that we obviously weren't prepared for just. I remember the first meeting with an accountant and it was like, sitting down, you're paying four, four, five hundred bucks an hour. We had no money at that time then as well, but we had a savings. We registered the business, spent all the money getting everything sorted and we're like, right, we need to go in there and just get this done. She may as well been been speaking Chinese.
Speaker 3:Like we came out of it and we were like trying to get the meeting and we walked out and we go. Do you understand any of that?
Speaker 2:And we've been going through the process.
Speaker 3:We're like in the meeting with her. We were saying yep, all makes sense.
Speaker 2:Don't ask too many questions, keep the cost down, and we did it and we looked at each other and we went.
Speaker 3:I have no idea what just happened.
Speaker 2:basically we were drawing diagrams and stuff and we took home looking at it like this um very, very lucky.
Speaker 2:After that, um, we've got like a bit of a mentor in our corner, stewart, who is now our accountant as well. So he's my mum's partner and he's um, he's led um and built um, founded um massive like 50 people um accounting firms and sold them, you know. So he's gone through a lot in his time. So we've had him in our corner as a mentor, which has been. You know we can't speak highly enough of him, but he's been.
Speaker 4:So he kind of simplified it for you.
Speaker 3:Oh mate 100% and made it simple Because I think that's something that you guys do which is so valuable which people don't understand.
Speaker 3:Again, doing recruitment and doing the job is one thing, right Like if you've had a career, you've been successful, that's great. There's a lot of stuff that comes with running your own business that you think you know, and then you sit down and there's just so much going on behind the scenes that you're not aware of. And so, to simplify that with what you guys are doing, I think is amazing, because, yeah, there's been a few days where you feel like you're just up to your neck in water and you're close to drowning because you just want to focus on doing the job. And so, yeah, to simplify that, it's been a huge help having Stuart in that corner, because that's been a big weight lifted off our shoulders, I think, because, even just like legal stuff, financial stuff, we're almost at the point where, again, we want to understand it at a higher level when you're getting into the details of certain things we just kind of can trust them, which I think is quite hard to do unless you actually know the person.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know, I've always I've always said that recruiters are entrepreneurial in nature. Right, you got to go find your own clients, find your own candidates, like try and make shit happen out of nothing. And so when starting a business, there's so many like little moving parts or nuances to it, like if you just had someone in your corner which is why we're really passionate about what we do like you just need someone to give you a little bit of a steer in the right direction and you're off and running, whereas sometimes you know, coming out of your accountant meeting it's funny, I resonate with that and you're like what are they on about? And then you feel like you're three steps backwards.
Speaker 3:You're not one step forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And then just having someone there to like simplify things go.
Speaker 3:No, no, no just you know, this is all you need to do. Just focus on that.
Speaker 2:We basically said to Stuart, talk to us like we're five. Don't use any accountant terms, you know. Just speak to us like we're children.
Speaker 3:There's obviously a lot of other things like that as well. Right, that you just need help with and ultimately you want, when you're running the business, especially at thought is let's just survive six, 12 months. You want to focus on what you're good at billing, making money, making placements. The other stuff is noise. But the reality is it comes with starting your own business and we probably underestimated that when we started.
Speaker 4:Really Okay. That was actually going to thread into my next question. Were there any oh shit moments where you thought have we made a mistake here?
Speaker 2:Not in the early, the first year, like Ryan said, when we'd done it. There was so much work there. You know, we had a six-month non-compete with Robert Harp and we were like we're not going to go near any of our existing clients because we don't want a global legal team coming after us. So you know, we made calls to new clients and they're like boys, love what you're doing. You know, give you a crack. So we went out and we actually got a lot of new work in the first six months and then, obviously, after that our old business came.
Speaker 3:So the first year we probably overachieved in what we could have expected. So I don't think there's been any point where I've looked back and gone. Have we made the right decision? No, it's definitely not as simple as just. It's not like you leave that job when you're doing the same job. There's so much more that comes with it, right?
Speaker 1:that we just were unaware of. It's funny the conversations that I have with you know willing recruiters how positive and ambitious and like they think exactly what you just said. And then you talk to someone that's two years, three years, years, four years, five years and they're like fuck. Everyone says the same thing, it's like a new recruit going to the battlefield for the first time and then you've got like a governor general who's been in three wars and he's like that's not how this war works.
Speaker 2:We've had some oh shit moments like longer into your tech, not like I say not in the first 12 months or 18 months. It say not in the first 12 months or 18 months. It's pretty smooth sailing, um, but then as time goes on, obviously you're dealing with more people, you know more things happen, but never an oh shit moment where like we've made the wrong decision. It's always been this is the best decision you know we've ever made. Yeah, in terms of the actual start of the business.
Speaker 3:It's the best decision we've ever made in our life. We've made so many mistakes I can't even begin to start. We need hours to go through them all. But yeah, in terms of the decision, it's the best thing we've ever done. I think one of the misconceptions I probably had going out at the start was we were always sort of told that having a huge global brand behind you, how important that is the difference that it makes, and it was honestly so. It was a bit of a light bulb moment and really refreshing that when we started we were forced to do loads of new bd's. We can't deal with any of our old clients and speaking to and again because we're speaking to founders, it really resonated with them that we've taken the plunge.
Speaker 2:They want to work with us.
Speaker 3:How receptive people are to people that just give it a crack. That's something that really kind of caught both of us off guard. It was almost like having the brand held you back a bit, because you're just another number in this huge cog in a machine, whereas if you're going in there talking about you.
Speaker 4:You've got more of a story to tell, um, and people resonated with it yeah, man, I love that. Yeah, like, and now you're in business. If you let's say I don't know, someone's coming to you trying to sell you a service that you might need and you're comparing it with a big company and some someone that's just giving it a crack, some young bloke that's just started his business, he's three months in you're probably naturally inclined to be like nah, this guy's three months in, he's having a red hot crack.
Speaker 4:Like, let's, let's give this guy a crack you know, at least meet with them, yeah so so many recruiters that come from big agency think that the reason why they're successful is the brand that's behind them um, and I don't know.
Speaker 4:I'd speak to dozens and dozens of recruiters that have then gone out on their own, nervous that they've got a no-name brand, and then all of a sudden it's just like they're getting way more jobs, like we had the boys on the gold coast. They've been trying to bd um, you know a tier one contractor in australia for like three years. As soon as they go out on their own and they have a crack again, they're like oh mate, we wouldn't fucking touch you if you're from that agency, but good to see you're out on your own, we'll give you a crack, it's crazy like what?
Speaker 4:three years I've been trying to bd this client and then all of a sudden, within four weeks of starting my own thing, they're happy to give me a go.
Speaker 2:I think a huge part of having your own business as well is you know when, when was it robert? You know the big companies. You see is a revolving door of recruiters, right? So, especially Ryan, when he was leading a division, he had to introduce his potential clients to a rookie quite often who were coming in, and you just lose that relationship with that client. You have to build relationships again when they leave and come back. So when you have your own business, it's us you're dealing with, it's our reputation on the line. We want to do the best job for you and I think that relationship there is. Just you can't really, you know, be it, Whereas you know the bigger companies. Like I say, it's a revolving door of.
Speaker 3:And people have bad experiences with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they get tagged.
Speaker 2:It's not relationship focused, more sort of transactional. They're calling people just to do a number and it's just not you know they feel it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And you're getting a call from a lot of recruiters every day, right, if you're a head of engineering or whatever. So when people are calling you, they've got their own story. You know they've launched their own thing. It's just a lot of it easier to build that sort of connection, especially if they're founders and they've done it themselves.
Speaker 3:It's also the brand. In recruitment, the brand is you, it's not the logo behind you. People work with people they like and people work with the human on the other end, rather than the brand specifically. I mean, I'm sure it's different if you work for a sales force. You're buying a particular product that's going to go and deliver a service and the account manager there could be you know anyone, anyone is going to sell it?
Speaker 3:Whereas what we do, and again, even let's say, you're scared about going and doing your own thing. Ultimately you've just got to think you're doing under your own brand what you were doing at a big brand, so ultimately, nothing's really changed. Are you good at the job? Are you good at building relationships? Are you good at actually going? Delivering nothing, they don't care who you work for. I don't think they want.
Speaker 3:It's a results driven business, right? If you're giving me the best people and you're giving me better people than your competitor, then job boards, then I don't care, I'll work with anyone. I think it's kind of their mentality it's just about delivering.
Speaker 1:What was the change? Like, how did you, how was your language? Um, what changed when you, uh, your pitch for Robert Half and then your pitch for yourself. Was it just like? They're like, oh so, what's this about, mate? And you're like, oh yeah, I've just started and sort of just made it up on the spot, and then it worked. Like what did you change in your language to be able to talk about yourself more, share more of your story? Let them know what was going on?
Speaker 3:The way that our team was run and, again, a lot of credit to the people that we work with. We always say the best things about the managers that we have, which I think have a huge impact on our success now is that we actually didn't need to change too much, because the way that I mean look, it was probably a bit of a misconception. We work for this big New York Stock Exchange listed business, yet the way that we would approach clients is quite similar to what we do now. So we built they kind of teach you the skills where it is about quality over quantity and it's about building long-term relationships rather than being transactional. So the pitch didn't change too much because, again, I think the way that I certainly was taught to do the job is it's about your brand, it's not about they don't care if you're working for this big that's what they were telling you.
Speaker 2:100%, yeah, yeah totally again.
Speaker 3:obviously they tell us it, it helped and you know you're working for the company've got to kind of buy into it all. But I think most importantly it's about how can you, how are you adding value on every call? They didn't want us just calling people from a list of 400 people and you hear these stories from a lot of businesses and I'm quite thankful that we didn't have that. And obviously you need to do that at the start of your career to kind of learn, fail, get told to F off, whatever it is. We all go through it. But ultimately the way that I was taught from from people like Steve Tung and Tom Beach is is every single call, add value and also try and differentiate yourself. So try and build relationships with people by going into every call with a piece of information about that person, so that you're not just blindly going in I'm so-and-so from here.
Speaker 2:The reason I'm calling is I heard X, y and Z about you from this person, so it's just a bit of a different approach, I think, than a completely cold you have certain value markers that you rinse and repeat every time, so like you're pitching a software company, they always, you know, as long as I say this, this, this to them, they're going to get yeah, so the way that, like we've never posted an ad on seek, you know, since we launched a business, we're a big believer that companies can just do that themselves and find the same people in the same pond.
Speaker 1:So one of our, you know save a bit of cash there too.
Speaker 2:So you know we that's a big selling point for us. We don't use seek. We all go and find your people that typically you can't find through your recruitment traditional avenues. So we go headhunting and we get recommendations and referrals by people that we trust in the market. So either people that we've placed before or people that are at a senior level, we'll call them up and if there's, like I say, a JavaScript developer role, we're like hey, mate, got this JavaScript developer role on who's the best person you've worked with?
Speaker 2:Or is anyone that you've interviewed in the past that was really close to getting it but for some reason you didn't hire them. And just picking their brains and just really trying to get people who are passive in the market not actively applying on Seek, but you also with that, you need to be working with a product that's going to entice them to come if they're happy where they are. So we really try and tap into that passive market but have the clients to back it up, the client to sell to them and if you've got something really good to sell to them, building a brand new product, working on the latest technologies 90% of the people want to hear about an opportunity right, unless, for whatever reason, they're completely happy with it, or they're on a visa, or whatever that may be.
Speaker 3:There's plenty of ways to skin a cat. This is the way that we run our business. I know there's plenty of value in being a company that's on seek for branding and whatnot, but the type of company that we want to work with, I'd say 95 of the jobs we place, the people that we're placing are not looking for work. So it's really kind of practicing what we preach, because when we're speaking to our clients, if we're just reposting kind of the job that they're giving us on seek, we're not adding the value that we'd like to think we're trying to add. So really for us it's about understanding intimately the market where do the best people work. But then we also like to think we're trying to add. So really for us it's about understanding intimately the market where do the best people work. But then we also have to walk away from business because we need to understand these people don't want to work for companies like you.
Speaker 4:So how do you do that? Like if there's a recruiter sitting here right now going? I love that.
Speaker 4:I want to copy you guys, have you just got like a hit list of 30 companies that you're like these are who we recruit for and then you're just trying to find? I mean for us? I'll give you an example I might make it easier to explain. For us. We've, in a certain industry I won't get the cat out of the bag for one of the market songs but we've got a list of like 200 companies and we've graded them ABC, you know. Are they? Are they in multiple states? Do they pay high? What's their brand like? Are they in one state? Are they just a local business, et cetera? And basically the game is just to speak to all the candidates in the B grade companies and then float them into the A grade companies, cause you'll get a lot more traction that way. Is that? Does that resonate with you guys? Is that what you're doing? Like, how do you actually go about finding these passive candidates and then are you floating them into clients?
Speaker 3:So we are, at times, when you get to understand again. This takes time in the seat right, like once we really understand the industries that we're working with. There's particular industries and clients that I've got where I know within five minutes of speaking to a candidate whether there's a job at this company or not. If they meet this person they're hiring them right. So that comes with time and really intimately understanding what they need from a technical perspective, cultural perspective. But I think it comes back to the best way to build out your client database is just speaking to candidates. So because we fish in quite a specific pond when you're speaking to good people, we're always just asking, even if we're looking to place them in one. But we're trying to find out who's the best manager you've ever worked for, what's the best product you've ever built, what type of company have you interviewed with that you wish you got the job with, and we're just trying to qualify things that way.
Speaker 3:And when we're getting that information, when we're making a BD call to X company that they told us about, we't get the role but said the company's doing X, y and Z. So again I'm trying to qualify why should the type of people that we're working with want to work for you? It's just a bit of, I think, a different approach to maybe just floating people in. There's heaps of value for that right and in particular from a contracting perspective we do loads of. If we get a good contractor, we've got our list of A, b and C clients. Float them in. But from a perm perspective I think our approach is slightly different.
Speaker 4:So you're mainly going after clients taking a job brief and then headhunting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for perm specifically yeah.
Speaker 4:But the contractors.
Speaker 2:you're just trying to find contractors when they're ready to get back into work on the contract issues We've got a contractor market, matt, where we've got our contractors in a list where we know when they're finishing Mine's not even contracting for us. We know when they're finishing, if they're getting extended, what that date looks like. So as soon as they're coming up to their end of their contract, we're calling them or calling their people around them and just knowing are you going to be looking on, looking to move on? If so, then we get them out to our contractor market that we know hire people similar to them. Um, but we we do need to be better at our, our lists and things, and that's something that we've. We've understood, because when it was just us two you know doing different areas software and it we sort of had it covered. Now we've got beckon in melbourne using our crm. We need to have everything, sort of we can admittedly say it's more me like Robert Half.
Speaker 3:One of the running jokes was the only way that I existed in the CRM was the placements I made apart from that, I literally.
Speaker 1:I basically didn't exist as a person.
Speaker 3:I put my placements and that was it, and I'm getting better, but that's just something that my brain I don't know, and again it's nothing to be proud of. I can just remember things. But again, as we look to grow the business, bring people on board. That information is so important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%, especially if you got away to Europe for a few weeks or so and I'm looking after the desk and I need to call this person Where's the stuff? But you're getting a lot better at it now.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Obviously, I'm not the best at it as well, but Not the best as well but it's just something that we need to keep doing because we know in the long run it's going to bite us in the ass if we don't do it.
Speaker 4:That's so funny. When I started Venditto, the biggest mistake I made was because it was just me when I started. Yeah, when I'd make a placement, I wouldn't even make it placed in the CRM.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I just had the candidate's details so I'd just punch it out. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And it it wasn't until like a year in, where I'm like, oh, I've placed a person there, I've placed a person there. They're like where is the placement?
Speaker 3:I want to make sure that I'm not calling these people.
Speaker 4:I'm like shit. I haven't done anything in the CRM for a year and I wish I started with good practices when you first started. So when you get staff on board, the onboarding process is just so so much easier 100%.
Speaker 2:So that's a big focus of ours really going through and cleaning up all the data and making sure it's all clean data.
Speaker 4:What CRM are you with JobAdder?
Speaker 2:JobAdder, yeah, which is really good. When we used Salesforce there was so much set, but with JobAdder it's just recruitment specific With Salesforce.
Speaker 4:They built it. Well, how did so? It's Salesforce.
Speaker 3:It's built for Robert Half, but it's through Salesforce. I remember when they rolled it out again I don't know the details Apparently it was one of the biggest users of Salesforce for one company in the world and like there was for me anyway, like I struggled at the best of times with that stuff. There was so much going on and again they're a listed business, so they've got to do all this reporting and it was almost built for that, rather than us doing the job, if it makes any. Again, I'm managing a team. There's just. There's just too much noise. I think.
Speaker 4:Um, yeah, how did you go from this big sales force, you know not really user-friendly crm, to job at it was? Was it a little bit of a breath of fresh air, or?
Speaker 2:it definitely was, yeah, and we sat down with I think it was Maul Amanda Woodford who used JobAdder and she introduced us to it, and when you get onto JobAdder they do a training session with you. You can do your own training manually through it as well. So we've done half of it, I would say.
Speaker 3:It's just so much more straightforward. Yeah, it was a breath of fresh air for sure. Just simplify it. There was too much noise in the other one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%, because once you dial in your workflow, have you seen an uptick from using the CRM?
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely Just in terms of our ability to just be, I think, faster to market in terms of decision-making, like once we've got a job, you get into a list Again. We might have a NET contractor role, so you go straight to your NET contractor list boom, boom, boom boom. Or even just in terms of the way you it was just so much more simple with clients, candidates, leads jobs whereas with Salesforce there was just so much happening. And again, it's a business with over 10,000 employees so there's just too much noise.
Speaker 4:I think it made it a lot easier. Yeah, 100%. One thing that I'm noticing a lot with existing agency owners is strategy operations and the lack thereof. What do you guys do in your agency to refine your strategy, refine your operations? What is typically like? It's now 2025, what are your goals for 2025? What are you looking to do? Putting aside you know, bill more? Is there anything you're looking to do in your business to like tighten up, refine, get better at?
Speaker 3:I think you've sort of hit the nail on the head. It's doing exactly that, because again, because it was just the two of us for a while we're just focused on billing, processes, procedures, just getting everything streamlined just wasn't at the front of mind, and now that we've got beck on board, she's really holding us accountable and and making us think a bit differently and on your back good on your back 100, and then also like it's good, yeah, listening to, because I listen to the chat you guys have with lee and you listen to him and what he's doing for his staff in terms of building training program, so that ultimately, if we want to hire people at the moment, I think we've got to be honest with ourselves.
Speaker 3:We're not, we're not setting them up for success like you need to have those things in place. You know, training programs, real structure, so that again, it's in particular if you're bringing on a rookie that they've got everything they need to be successful. And that comes with streamlining everything from day one for the first six months, 12 months, I mean. You know I I definitely still haven't got it figured out, but it's was probably three years until you start to feel right, I'm getting the hang of this now. So it's a long time of learning and growing. So I think for us it's more just starting to streamline, getting processes in place, getting some training, so that we can then grow in terms of bringing people on board.
Speaker 2:Because I think that's probably the next step for us. Yeah, like when we first started, like Ryan said, they get 12 months and then we we sort of knew we wanted to eventually scale and grow, but we were quite happy, we loved doing that, the day-to-day job, and we love we were just bouncing off each other and then got an opportunity to, you know, to get back on board um, which obviously we jumped the gun at um, but now we're looking to potentially grow, grow more in the future. Now we need to start thinking about we need to get these processes in place. Where do we start with that? What do we need to start thinking about? We need to get these processes in place. Where do we start with that? What do we need to do to make it better?
Speaker 2:We're lucky with Beck. She was an associate director at Interpro, so she's come with, you know, eight, nine years experience in the game, so she wasn't like a rookie that needed, you know, all these training, manuals and things. She knew what to do. She had a massive contractor book um and she's putting in things in place for us now as well, coming from a associate director sort of level. So, um, but the next hires we need to obviously have a lot more processes in place to give them the best opportunity to really excel and grow. So where do you go with that like what, what?
Speaker 1:what are you going to do? Do you yeah? Because that's what I was that's what I was thinking because, like I was reading one of your posts and you were grinding away on for years to get back on board, you said yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So Get tapping on the shoulder, yeah.
Speaker 3:Do you have like a hitty of ideal candidates that you want to bring on board, or what's the We've earmarked some people that we know, both in the industry and then people that we've met in particular through sport. I mean, we're a bit biased, but it's something that you need resilience in this job, and usually sports are pretty, you know especially if you play at a semi-decent level.
Speaker 3:You've been told you're not good enough at some point, which I think builds character and resilience for the job.
Speaker 3:So we've definitely earmarked people, but we want to make sure maybe we're being a bit slow to it because we could hire now, but I think we want to make sure that when we're doing it we're setting them up for success. But also we've got some financial stuff that we want to do in terms of setting ourselves up as well, because once you bring people on board, you've probably got to be less risk averse to what you're doing with your cash in the business, right, because you've got people on board that you've got to take care of. So there's a few things that we want to achieve. And then also, it really resonated listening to someone and again we're fortunate, we've got awesome people around us Like, again, lee's a great example, the way that he set his business up to hire people. Like if I'm a young person, I want to go and work for the guy. It sounds awesome. We're just not there yet. So we've looked to that and gone right, it'd be great to hire someone.
Speaker 2:The best opportunity to come in and we need to be ready for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, true. What do you want to achieve financially before hiring people, like what plays on your mind or goals that you have that you want to achieve financially before bringing people on?
Speaker 3:Totally so.
Speaker 3:I guess, again like investing you know I bought a place recently, jack's looking to buy, but I think, more than anything, we've got a unique opportunity with our business where we've got clients who are in seed funding stages right, where we actually get the opportunity and get offered splitting fees with equity in the business, which is quite cool Because we're dealing with the founders who've got cash that they need to be really careful in how they utilise and deploy this.
Speaker 3:And so we're really interested, and something that's just kind of happened through again being in the industry is we've both kind of fall in love with the tech space and sort of vc world, and the ability to have that exposure to companies at that time in their life cycle I think puts us in quite a unique position. Now, obviously, you need to be extremely, extremely selective as to the type of companies that you invest in at that point, because 90 of them 95 of them don't make it, but their opportunities that we've had over the last kind of 12 to 18 months is to kind of take on equity in these businesses that we're actually recruiting for. And what was also cool about that is we're then really involved in the journey and the people that we're placing there. You feel like you're part of it, so they're things that we've been doing that again, I think you probably shouldn't be taking those risks if you've got a lot of stuff. So there's a few things that we want to set up for ourselves first before making that next step what?
Speaker 1:what is the vc world like? Like, since the afr article and going down there and speaking in sydney, there's been a lot of people reaching out to us to have chats and conversations and we just haven't had any because it's a bit like another new thing that we've never thought of or dealt with shiny ball, shiny balls.
Speaker 4:Yeah right, I'm sure you speak to founders and sorry to cut you off, but I'm sure you speak to founders that have taken VC money and they're like fuck, I shouldn't have done that.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, you hear different stories. Right, like as a founder, I think a lot of people want to protect their business and still be in control, and I think every VC would be different. You hear the stories of them coming in and dictating what they should do, whereas you know a lot of people would say, well, you're trusting in me, you're backing me with your cash, let me go and do what needs to be done to kind of build the business. It's an interesting world. Just the risk that these people can take, the amount of money that floats around and it's definitely changed, I think, in the last few years through that kind of bubble that happened in the crash, where there was so much cash injected into the market and then a lot of people I think thought it was a sexy thing to kind of get into and it's a lot harder than what I think a lot of people think right I don't think getting vc money and then parading that you've got 15, 20, 100 mil, it's like job done you're like brother, you're at the starting line and you've got a fuck load of responsibility 100% and there's loads of different stages to it, right
Speaker 3:and you go from literally that initial it could be half a million, 5 million, 50 million, 300 million and you're just like, yeah, I can imagine there's probably a lot of pressure coming with 300 million bucks of someone's.
Speaker 4:Imagine owing someone 50 mil oh dude, it's crazy.
Speaker 3:It's a crazy world, but then it's really cool as well. And again, it wasn't something that Jack and I were interested in prior to being in the job, but seeing these companies and you're dealing with smart people that are trying to change the world and build things that change the world and that's one of the most rewarding things for us is seeing when a company can go from here to there and the people that you put in. Ultimately, you know they're the people building these things. So, even though we're definitely doing half the job that the guys that we're placing in there are going in and doing, but you feel like you were part of the journey and had a bit of an impact, which I think is something that's really rewarding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we aim to be like an extension of our clients' businesses. So you know, we want to be on that journey with them. If they grow, we grow, you know, and we want to make sure that we're putting the best people in there. So when they do grow, you know we we feel like we've, you know, been a value part of that growth and get in there. Obviously not all startups, you know, work out, um, you know, and we've we've had a few where you know they the funding has stopped and things like that.
Speaker 4:So it's not always you know what's that like when they go funding stops. We're going backwards, we're wrapping it up. Have you been in that scenario?
Speaker 2:Yeah, mate. Well, this is a tough one to swallow, but you know, we got a startup company we partnered with exclusively and they were building out a real estate application and we paid three people.
Speaker 2:Was it air listing no, and we paid three people in the business and the founder was like, yeah, getting all this funding coming. And this is where we learned massively from this. This is where we didn't actually dig deep into have you got the funding in the bank or is it coming? So he was saying, yeah, we've got the funding. It was pretty ambiguous. He was showing us all these letters from, you know, these investors that oh yeah, we're just waiting for signatures, you know. So these people were working and it went on for about oh, how long?
Speaker 3:Well, we placed three senior people in there, didn't get paid.
Speaker 2:Business went under, so again that was a pretty tough build as well. About About nine weeks we were chasing our invoices and it's three people in a senior software engineer role. You can imagine how much that was Do the maths.
Speaker 3:They're decent fees and we're not going to get the money.
Speaker 2:We flew down, met with them in person and it was real eye-opener because we believed so much that it was coming, it was coming, it was coming.
Speaker 3:It also bought into what they were building as well. Bought into what they were building, yeah, into what?
Speaker 2:they were building as well Into what they were coming in building. Yeah, and it just fell on its face. Basically, what did you learn?
Speaker 3:Well, it's kind of a tricky one because we've sort of looked at each other what could we have done differently here? Because to a certain degree, you know, we can't ask, for every business that we deal with, show us your bank account. You know you're taking them at face value and this is, you know, part of those moments in running a business where you know 10 years of doing. I've never had something like this happen. You know you've had people you had to chase up invoices but eventually paid. So it's a first, yeah, and I think over time things happen and you know things go wrong in the job every single day and I mean, what could we have done differently?
Speaker 2:I think we just we needed to just do our due diligence a bit more on terms of have you actually got the funding or is it coming?
Speaker 4:I mean, that was the biggest question we should have asked, Hindsight, you know that sounds like a real straightforward question Do you have the money or is it coming?
Speaker 2:You know, our first ever deal. We placed two developers into a pretty big company. We got two-week payment terms. But then you realise these big companies, they don't go by your payment terms. We were like okay 14 days, 15 days, there's some money. You know, we were like, oh my god, like, because we've never, obviously, run a business before, never.
Speaker 4:And you know, do I call them, do I email them. I don't want to seem needy. What should I do here? Should I leave it a few more days?
Speaker 3:but then it's funny, isn't it? The big, the bigger companies like they pay you, but they just don't. Your payment terms are irrelevant, they don't care, it's their payment terms. So you can learn that pretty quick. So yeah, that was funny.
Speaker 2:So one of my good mates on the Gold Coast his dad's the founder of Healthcare Logic. So they were one of Australia's fastest-growing startups a few years ago and they basically build software to help hospitals operate more efficiently across the world. So they're in the UK, they're in Switzerland, all across Australia Queensland Health and they're expanding into different sort of countries as well and they've basically their software, because hospital software is so backdated Totally. It's so, so old. So these guys got a product which is basically streamlining the hospital systems, patient journeys. So it's essentially it's real-time data for key decision makers within hospitals to have actionable data right there and then, instead of obviously waiting for however long to get to get that data, so it's really sort of streamlined the hospital process.
Speaker 2:And we've placed a load of people because they they on the gold, they're based on the gold coast but they hire all across australia. So a lot of the work sort of data engineers, data architects, software engineers. So we've helped place them and we're basically the exclusive recruiters so they come to us, they put their own ads out and they come to us. But it's just really been on that journey with them, seeing them grow, seeing them sort of take on new countries and really get into their hospital systems.
Speaker 3:But it's a product that's live in production. Live in production and again. It's one of those good stories where you think what they're building makes a difference, like it ultimately helps doctors and nurses make critical decisions. Yeah, so again that's a really nice one for sure.
Speaker 2:And when you're calling candidates about, you know you're making a positive impact on the world blah, blah blah, instead of working for a bank or something you're making a good business, that you have ownership and value and interest in Totally.
Speaker 4:I see so many recruiters who are recruiting who would be amazing recruiters recruiting in an industry that they just do not care about and they suck at it because, there's just no personal interest.
Speaker 4:And then as soon as you see them get out of recruiting for accountants and then they're recruiting in marketing because they're probably a little bit more fun and exciting and love that digital marketing world, then all of a sudden they absolutely crush. It is a really big difference. So how much does that play into who you prospect in? Do you find tech and go wow, that would be awesome, and you probably just give it a little bit more?
Speaker 3:effort to try and get them on board, and I'd encourage anyone getting into the industry try and really embed yourself and embrace the industry that you're working in, because it makes the job a lot more enjoyable and I think it's then you get a lot more respect from your clients.
Speaker 3:Because, again, I'm listening.
Speaker 3:I'm obsessed now, not just because I feel like I have to do it, but I'm genuinely interested in what's happening in the technology world.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to clients, I'm talking to them about things that I know are happening all over the world from all the podcasts I'm listening to. I'm doing it because I genuinely am fascinated by it and it makes the job so much more rewarding and I think you just get much more buy-in from your clients and candidates because, again, you put me and him in terms of being able to talk about what's happening in the industry, giving people genuine advice, understanding what they're trying to build and how to build it. I think that that's why a lot of our clients have worked with us for seven, eight plus years, because we genuinely love what we do, we're interested in the industry and we really embed ourselves in it. So, yeah, definitely try and find an area that you're interested in in terms of the, the industry, and even if you've got no experience because we didn't have experience, try and embed yourself in it, cause I think it makes the job a lot more rewarding.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, love that. This has been awesome.
Speaker 3:No thanks, guys, this has been fun.
Speaker 4:So, as we wrap up, the one question that we always love to ask is what would you have asked your younger self when you first got into recruitment? What would you have said to them? Would you have? What kind of advice would you have given them before getting into recruitment?
Speaker 3:Before getting into recruitment yeah, I would say the key word that stands out for me of everyone I've seen be successful. The one characteristic that stands out above all else is resilience. It's a job that is going to be like stuff goes wrong every single day and you kind of learn to embrace that. And the people who are resilient and can keep turning up every day keep following the same process do the right things, you'll eventually be successful. And that's the other thing is you're not going to get success. Well, you, I've seen people get success overnight in your first few months, but then you quickly come back to reality.
Speaker 3:So that that's the other thing is just be, just keep turning up every day and it's such an incredible job and, in particular, taking the risk and going and doing your own thing and I think what you guys are doing is amazing and, and you know, if you've sort of feel like you've hit a ceiling and you're scared of going out and taking, you know, taking the leap of faith, because I just think back to how nervous I was before doing it, you're not you know if it doesn't work out, it's not the end of the world I just think, why not just don't try, try and try and limit the regrets that you're gonna have? And again, it's the best decision.
Speaker 2:Yeah I think, for for me, definitely the resilience I turn up and just pushing forward every day, because in business it's never smooth sailing. You know People, you know you put things on how good you know it is on LinkedIn and socials, but there's also a lot of you know downfalls for it as well. But I think for me, starting out in recruitment, you know a big thing I always just tell myself is it's always in your head, you know, just do it. You know, because sometimes you play over a conversation in your head, you're going to have a BD call with you shooting yourself. You know, and it turns out the BD call was great, they, they, they didn't very rarely have I ever got told to, you know, piss off or hung up.
Speaker 2:I have obviously in the past your head, if you, if you're thinking too much about, oh, how's this conversation going to go, you know nine times out of ten it's not going to go that way. Anyway. You know you're going to get some sort of outcome or get something from that call at least. But yeah, just definitely, just just do the basics right. You know keep. You know upskilling yourself, um, and learning, and you know, just enjoy the journey as well.
Speaker 3:Surround yourself, just to expand, finally surround yourself with really good people, pick a good boss. And again, like we started the conversation, I couldn't encourage more people enough to go into the office and just take it, listen to everyone, take pieces from every person and eventually you'll find your own way of doing things. And I think, finally as well, because it's quite intimidating, especially because, I mean, I started in my early 20s. If I'm calling a someone who's really experienced, I used to just think I'm a child.
Speaker 2:They're not going to listen to me. Why would they listen to me?
Speaker 3:and you do you just overcome. They're a human being and, at the end of the day, if you're able to figure out how you can add value and be liked, people buy off who they like don't care how old you are, just really don't. Don't be scared, don't overthink things. Pick up the phone and eventually you'll find your own way of. You know your style, but try and take bits and pieces from everyone around you.
Speaker 4:Love that, appreciate that boys. Thanks for sharing your journey.
Speaker 3:Thanks, guys, good job All the best for the weddings On you guys as well.
Speaker 2:Fastest growing startup in Australia. Not bad, huh, Epic Mate. That's so good for you boys.
Speaker 1:Well.
Speaker 4:Thanks for tuning in to another Confessions of a Recruiter podcast with Blake and Declan. We hope you enjoyed and got a lot of value and insights out of this episode. If you do have any questions or you would like to recommend someone to come on the Confessions podcast, we would love any introductions and remember the rule of the podcast, like share and recommend it to a friend. Until next time.