Confessions of a Recruiter

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Your career can look “successful” on paper and still feel wrong in your gut, and that’s where this chat with Chris Barr lands straight away. Chris is State Director Queensland at Six Degrees Executive, and he’s refreshingly honest about what it really takes to build a recruitment career in Australia: making the calls when you’re nervous, doing the reps when you’d rather hide, and sticking with the long game even when the market turns.

We walk through Chris’s path from running 51 supermarkets in the UK to starting recruitment after a life jolt, six months travelling the east coast, and interviewing from a Brisbane backpackers hostel. From there, we get into the real skills that separate average from great in agency recruitment: a tight feedback loop, learning by osmosis in a strong team, and why investing in candidates early pays off years later. We also talk about the “playbook” culture in bigger firms, how it can crush authenticity, and why being yourself is not a soft extra, it’s part of your brand and performance.

Leadership is a big theme too, from inheriting teams and building social capital, to stepping into a State Director role and dealing with imposter syndrome. Chris shares how he thinks in clear buckets (people, performance, customer), why a personal board matters, and what he’s doing with AI in recruitment to buy time back for real human conversations. If you’re curious about practical AI use, you’ll love his example of building a Claude app to prep better one-to-ones and reclaim hours every week.

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Send us Fan Mail

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· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io

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Rikki Tiwari became a recruiter purely by accident. He arrived in Sydney with $500 in his pocket and no plan, having spent his early UK career on corporate sales floors, then in sales coaching and NLP training. 

Robert Half in Sydney threw him straight into it, and year one tested him hard even when he was doing everything right. His first major placement came from a move most recruiters avoid: meeting a client when there was no live job at all. 

From there it was Ourpath, then in February 2020, walking away from the corporate ladder to build ARCQ Talent, his own agency, niched into the Microsoft ecosystem across infrastructure, cloud, dev, data, security and AI/ML. 

Going solo meant learning the hard way that you're also the marketer, the finance department and the delivery team, and that the loneliness is real. So he built the systems and SOPs to protect his family time, while staying stubbornly human-first on the phone with clients and candidates.

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He landed his first deal within days of launching Trade Plus Recruitment. No inherited database. No clients waiting. No one telling him what to do next.

We sit down with Max Kozin to talk through the part nobody glamorises: payroll exposure, insurance, health and safety compliance, and the mental load of starting a blue-collar recruitment agency from scratch.

We get into the systems he built to move fast. Max uses Loxo to send candidates a structured pre-screening form that updates his database automatically, so when a client needs carpenters tomorrow, he can sort by tickets, location, and availability in minutes. If you've ever tried to phone-screen hundreds of applicants, you'll understand why this changes everything for labour hire.

We also dig into niche strategy and BD. Max breaks down how his niche tightened over time, why "carpentry" alone is still too broad, and why focusing on self-delivering builders makes the desk more profitable. He shares how he approaches market mapping, uses tools like Firmable, and why going interstate made sense once he truly knew his market.

The thread running through all of it: back yourself, build better processes, and make your edge the fact that clients deal directly with the person who cares most.

If you're thinking about starting a recruitment agency, scaling a labour hire desk, or just sharpening your niche, this one's for you. 

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A recruiter who still loves picking up the phone after 16 years is either wired differently or has figured out something most people miss. Rav Prasad joins us to unpack how he went from selling gym memberships to thriving inside major agencies, then stepping out on his own and building Humanistics in Brisbane. Along the way we get into what the Michael Page environment demands, why standards and internal reputation can shape your career, and how those early years harden the skills that matter when markets turn. 

We compare agency cultures and recruitment KPIs in real terms, including what the Robert Half contracting engine feels like, why activity and connected calls change everything, and the downside of being siloed when you spot a great lead. Rav breaks down why he stayed in accounting and finance recruitment, how Brisbane has become more transactional, and why human connection is still the edge when everyone is moving fast. If you care about candidate experience, client trust, and doing business development without burning out, there are plenty of practical cues you can steal. 

We also go deeper on leadership and building a recruitment business. Rav shares the mistakes he regrets, why focusing on titles can pull you off track, and what “consistency” looks like day to day when you run your own desk. Then we look forward: AI in recruitment, where automation genuinely helps (admin), where it falls short (context), and why meeting people face to face still gives you information you cannot get on Teams. 

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You don’t often get to hear from someone who’s spent 32 years inside one of the world’s biggest recruitment agencies and still has a clear view of what matters. Darren joins us to share how he “fell into recruitment” in early 90s London, survived the boiler room pace, and eventually helped build Hays into a powerhouse across Queensland.

We dig into the real differences between UK recruitment and Australian recruitment culture, especially in Brisbane and regional Queensland. London can be transactional and outcome-first, while Queensland recruiting often rewards relationships, trust and showing up in person. Darren explains how the same recruitment methodology can land very differently depending on the market, and what that means for client management and candidate experience.

We also get practical on systems and leadership: why CRM and ATS rollouts are so hard in big agencies, how to win buy-in (including pulling sceptics closer), and how to manage KPIs when your most experienced recruiters operate on instinct and deep networks. Darren shares why compliance and customer service can’t be an afterthought, plus what the GFC taught him about redundancies, humanity and leading when it hurts.

If you’re building a recruitment agency, running a team, or trying to stay sane while chasing targets, this one is packed with grounded lessons. Subscribe, share it with a recruiter mate, leave us a review, and tell us: what’s the hardest change you’ve had to lead in your business?

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