Stellar Recruitment-Industry Update

This is a special edition Industry update as part of our companies’ recent achievement of changing 20,000 lives. In 2012 Stellar Recruitment set a goal of placing 20,000 people into work before 2020, and we are proud to announce that as of November 2019, we achieved this goal and want to celebrate the people who helped get us here. This podcast features leaders from across the company who have been a part of the Stellar journey, sharing their stories of people’s lives who they have helped change, and who in turn have touched them in some way as well.

 

Highlights

 

0:30 – Andy Marsland, Business Manager of Oil and Gas

9:45 – Rachael Fitzgerald, Business Manager Perth

14:15 – Jesse Egerton, Division Manager, Trades & Labour Mining

22:40 – Robbie Mcilraith & Shaun McCambridge, Founders of Stellar Recruitment

This episode features Sussanah Osborne - Production General Manager for BHP. Susannah has had an impressive career that has spanned across Australia, New Zealand, Mongolia, Singapore, Canada and Spain. In this podcast she reflects on the decisions she made that dictated the direction of her career, how she sees the future of the mining industry, her experiences as a graduate all the way through to a leader of teams. She offers actionable advice on how others can learn from those around them, engage with mentors and how to be effective on the home front as well as at work.

Highlights

1:00 What has driven Susannah’s career and her decision-making process when advancing between roles

5:55 How the thirst for knowledge has driven her need to succeed

8:35 What her vision was at her time of graduating

10:30 Sussanah’s take on how to reverse the downward trend of mining engineering as a career

14:15 Pivotal moments that stand out in Sussanah’s career

17:00 Tips on how to transition between an expert in your field to a leader of people in your field.

20:00 How Sussanah has developed her Emotional Intelligence over her career

22:38: Mentors Sussanah has engaged with and how she has further developed her skillset

26:52 How to balance career and home life

31:15 Sussanah’s habits and rituals to get the most out of every day

34:45 Sussanah’s view on how to present the mining industry in a positive light

38:45 What makes Sussanah so passionate about mining, and why others should consider it a career option

Sonia Winter is the General Manager and SSE for BHP at the Poitrel mine in Queensland. She was one of the first female mining engineers to graduate in 1994 and today is a leader and mentor for many young engineers and mining professionals across the industry. In this podcast, Shaun discusses her work ethic behind achieving what she has to date, her pivotal choices in her career and how she balances her demanding role along with being a full-time mum. 

 

1:00 – Sonia’s vision as a young graduate and the pivotal moments in her career

3:15 – How she developed her EQ and IQ

5:15 – Importance of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone

7:45 – What Sonia looks for when hiring team members

9:00 – How Sonia has used and found mentors in her career

10:55 – About challenging the status quo to achieve positive outcomes

14:40 – Moving from being a mining engineer to managing

17:40 – About balancing career and motherhood

20:25 – Habits and rituals Sonia uses to create more success

22:30 – Tips for work life balance

23:60 – What the mines of the future look like

26:00 – Sonia’s passion around mining and why others should pursue it

28:00 – What is unique and exciting about mining?

What was your vision as a young graduate and what career decisions did you make along the way that were pivotal to getting you where you are today?

I think as a first year graduate you kind of want it all, I remember being on site and seeing the general manager as sort of that pivotal role that you aspire to want to be as a graduate, I didn’t know what that meant at the time, I didn’t know what skills or experience I needed to get there I just knew that on site that was the role that everyone sort of aspired to be. Starting out as a mining engineer that weaved around different technical pathways and there were some pivotal conversations that were had throughout my career that lead me from a mining graduate to my current role. I remember spending a lot time in that technical space and a senior leader had a conversation with me which was about me being at that point of whether I’m going to stay in the technical stream and continue on that pathway or moving into that people management side of things. So I took that conversation on board, had a think about whether I would jump out of my comfort zone into that people focused space as I loved my technical space, and the way I did it was moving to managing a smaller technical team and realising I loved that, to managing a larger technical team realised I loved that, then the next pivotal movement was into managing large teams where you weren’t the technical expert and you actually had to deliver through others and it was about engaging in that people management space. I guess through that journey I discovered that I really love that people management and leadership side and for me it has been a challenging learning curve, but I love seeing others achieve success and unlock their own potential. 

Can you tell us about how you developed your EQ and IQ?

I focused on the technical aspect in the earlier years of my career journey and I guess reflecting what pushed me into that space was life in general, and as a parent I’ve learnt a lot of lessons parenting teenagers. You have to learn to flex your leadership style and parenting style to get the best out of your kids and the people around you and that was a lightbulb moment for me that was when I realized that the human element, the personality and tapping into peoples innate potential is where the key is to unlocking the secret of high performing teams.  

Have you always consciously pushed yourself out of your comfort zone? And why do you think it’s important?

Growing up I loved competitive sport and it applied that level of discipline to life to balance out the training side of it with the academic side as there is only so many hours in the day. I found growing up that I was a harder task master on myself than any of my coaches could be, and I think I still am. I have high expectations of what I need to be doing for my teams on site as well. If I looked back on my whole journey, I always so failure as a negative, and it took me a long time to realise that you got more incredible learnings when you’re not coming first but by actually trying hard, and that self-reflection of unwrapping of how you can do better next time. You get that sort of internal drive to pick yourself up, you learn how to conduct yourself when you’re not at the top of your game, its that resilience piece that I think is really important coming through because you’re not always going to be number one every day. 

What are some of things you look for in people when you hire them for your team?

I think you put your name forward for roles, and its not always about having all the skills you need for that role in your toolbox at that time. What I particularly look for is that self-awareness of where people are in regard to their skillsets and capabilities, I look for that engaging nature so that they can actually communicate and articulate those aspects, for me values are big, integrity respect, doing what you say you are going to do, and at the end of the day that energy that motivation that willingness to learn if you have all of that then everything else can be taught on the job.

This episode features Tom Scantlebury – Expert in Customer Experience Management. Tom has 20 years experience in customer experience management, chaired customer experience forums, he has appeared as a keynote speaker and thought leader for Australia’s biggest brands and he has shared the stage with Obama, Branson and Opera. He is an expert in experience management for both Customers and Employees.

What is the elevator summary of what customer experience is and what your firm does in this regard?

Customer experience management is hard to measure and hard to capture, a customer experience is how people feel about that business through the entirety of their journey with you. Those interactions can start long before they become a customer and sometimes long after they leave. On the flip side – employee experience is the equivalent – how do your employees feel throughout the employee life cycle. That’s what CX and EX are and essentially what we do is, we provide the management to that, we put some methodology and tangle steps around how to handle that.

Why are companies doubling down on experience management? What are the tangible economic benefits of that?

Around the year 2000, a paper came out of Harvard saying the one thing you need to grow is NPS or Net Promoter Score. The sharing was that if you’ve got advocates for customers then you’re going to succeed. You had the GFC which saw companies trying to retain more customers as there were less out there, then you had the digital revolution of smartphones, which put power of information in the consumers hands. What we say now is that customers have a megaphone and super hearing. Over the last 20 years you’ve had a huge shift to the power of the consumer. Why are companies doing this? Because it makes money, companies that outperform the market are offering better customer experiences. More than ever they are disproportionately rewarded for it, if you do the wrong thing you are disproportionally punished for it.

What are tangible benefits of nailing experience management?

The Net Promoter System basically asks this question – ‘How likely are you to recommend x company or product to a friend or family?’ What that does is it categorises your customers. 9’s and 10’s are promoters, 7’s and 8’s are passive or neutral and 6 to 0 we call detractors. Essentially what happens is when you start measuring how people think and feel about you then you can track how they behave. So what we know is that if you have promoters, they are loyal, they are not price sensitive, they actually want to help you succeed. They will problem shoot for you, but most of all they are out their recommending and talking about your product. What people do is they believe strangers more than a company’s own marketing campaign. They will look on a review website and believe what a stranger says about a company before they make a purchase. You have more promoters; your business grows without you investing in things like traditional marketing channels which are becoming less and less effective. Your advocates are you new marketers. From a CX perspective, it reduces a lot of costs and you find a lot of efficiencies a lot of the time, a customer will tell you how you can do things better and faster next time. There’s an increase in productivity there’s an increase in customer retention there’s a decrease in churn, increase in loyalty.

This episode features Lydia Gentle – Engineering Manager at BHP. She has been awarded the Order of Australia medal for her service to engineering, has worked on various projects internationally and is a successful mentor and leader in her field. In this podcast she discusses her experiences from getting started as an engineer, to her progression as a leader in the largest mining company in the world. She shares her philosophies on leadership, mindset as well as the future of engineering and how aspiring engineers can best prepare themselves and learn about entering the industry.   

Rewind back to when you were 17, I understand you had a pretty pivotal conversation with your teacher that set all this in play?

Yes I did! Growing up in north Queensland where you’re exposed to the farming industry and agriculture, I was talking to my teacher and he mentioned I should be an engineer and honestly, I had no idea of what engineers even did. It was a pivotal time for me, I was absolutely in awe of my maths teacher and I always enjoyed maths, it was that simple correct or incorrect answer which I liked. He explained the profession and said I had the perfect maths brain for it and that I should apply for it at Uni, and that’s exactly what I did!

You’ve worked in a variety of capacities, as a graduate working on design in industrial projects, and then on to London working on high-rises. You’ve worked on smaller family owned companies and large-scale oil and gas projects and mining construction projects, for large construction companies and now you head up large cap-ex projects for the biggest mining company in the world in BHP. The question is, was that deliberate in gaining various experience in building your career or was that just you figuring out maybe where you wanted to be?

A lot of that comes down to never saying no to an opportunity. I grew up in a small country town, went to university in Townsville and had never really left the state. I thought if I got a job closer to Brisbane it might at least get me over the border every now and then. I was lucky enough to get a job with GHD and then really enjoying my time with them I really wanted to broaden my horizons, so I went to England as many Australians do which was phenomenal. I was thrown into the deep end as a structural engineer working on some of the oldest buildings in the world and I am really grateful for that experience and the opportunity to rise to that challenge. We then spent 6 months travelling around Europe and I was sitting in Venice having a coffee when a gentleman I had worked for before sat next to me and he worked for a contracting company in Australia. He said to give him a call when I went back to Aus, which is exactly what I did and that’s how I ended up working in construction. So I think just saying yes to these opportunities has what lead me to these places in my career, then with BHP they’ve got a phenomenal history and when I saw an opportunity come up for an engineering manager it was just one that really suited my skillset, I wasn’t looking for a role it was just one that popped up on LinkedIn and I thought ‘Why not?’. I was looking for a change and I’ve been blown away by the opportunities that I’ve had since so its just saying yes when an opportunity presents.

Talk to us about that transition about being a competent engineer and performing well to taking that step to leading other people to being a manager and leading other people with different values different skillsets?

I think the important thing is you never stop learning. So when it looked like I was getting close to my career to when I would start leading a group of people, I did a lot of research on different leadership styles and what works for other people and look at those that had inspired me. I think its just understanding that, it’s like anything in life if you do your research and prepare for it it will set you up for success. You can have a fantastic group of engineers but if you can’t build the culture of a team, you’ll never be successful. It’s important to understand that people react differently in different situations and they have different motivations in life. If you can key into that you can key in to their why, then you can sell the strategy and you can be a great leader. 

You’ve been in a position where you’ve had to stand out amongst other candidates for a job. What tips can you offer to others about this?

I think it’s really important that you never stop learning. If you look at my CV I won’t just have one qualification on there. I’ve got my masters, I became a welding inspector when that was a requirement, I became a heavy lift designer when that was a requirement. I’ve just stepped out and when I found something that interested me I just pursued it. I think it’s important to stand out that you don’t just have that very narrow career, that you have broadened your horizons. Even if they’re activities that you’ve taken on in that extracurricular space. I think that really shows you are a lot more focused if you are involved in the community. Those are the type of people I really look for when I’m reviewing resumes. 

Tell us about the intersection between intelligence and mindset, and how you’ve grown your own mindset to sort of intersect with that level of intellect?

Mindset will account for about 80% of your success in life I believe, and its understanding that sometimes you find yourself in situations and its often not so much a direct attribute of yourself as a person but more that of the situation. So it’s having that positive mindset and that growth mindset to understand what are the steps you are going to take, to then move on. I attended a motivational session with Chris Helder and what really resonated with me was the philosophy of 10 seconds of guilt then move on. Everyone makes mistakes but you don’t need to dwell on them forever, allow yourself the 10 seconds of guilt then move on! And I think that also comes down to your mindset as well, which is rising above all the issues and challenges that you have. We all have those and its about putting those next steps into place about how can I move on? What useful believe that I can have that will then get me out of this situation? What’s the first step that I must take to turn this into a positive?

This week Shaun speaks to Greg Savage - world renowned recruiter, author, speaker and entrepreneur with over 40 years’ experience in the recruitment industry. Greg has scaled 4 highly successful businesses, is a regular on the international speaking circuit and soon to be author of his first book 'The Savage Truth'.

Topics discussed in this podcast:

 

·       What it takes to be a successful recruiter in 2019

·       Winning the hearts and minds of a team to achieve great things

·       The effect of AI on the future of the Recruitment Industry

·       The importance of reputation in recruitment and business

Can you give us the 3-minute summary of your recruitment CV?

I started in January in 1980, I worked in executive search in Australia for a few years, went to London worked for accountancy personnel which is the company that became Hays, this was before the internet, so it was all old school recruiting in it’s truest sense. I then came back to Australia with the same company and when hays bought that company, myself and 2 other guys jumped off and started our own business which was called Recruitment Solutions. It was a long journey but it was a lot of fun and a lot of success and we grew that business from the three of us in a room to 250 people across Australia and New Zealand and enlisting on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1998 which was the 3rd recruitment com ever to list. That was a lot of fun, I stayed on the board for some time after that, but that’s a different story. 

What in your view does it take to become a successful recruiter in 2019?

It’s the million-dollar question, and I think that a great recruiter going forward will be an expert in the use of the best technology and they will harness that technology and they will extract the value of it, but it will synchronise with highly sophisticated human influencing skills. That’s the marriage of art and science that makes a great recruiter in my opinion. And so its wrong for people to say that automation will do recruiting, its equally as wrong to say that its all human and its all the old school its neither its not binary. It’s a mix and tied in with that is the ability to build brand – and really I’d say it like this a great recruiter has to provide clients with something they cant find themselves, our competition isn’t other agencies, it isn’t LinkedIn or Seek – all of those things are chipping away and playing their part the real crux of value is to bring to clients what they cant find themselves and that is of course unique candidates. You need to act as an agent for great talent and represent them in the marketplace.

What are your tips for clients when engaging with agencies? 

The recruitment industry in its current model is dysfunctional, and its partly because recruiters have allowed it to be that way, but partially because clients drive it that way through contingent multi-listed job orders. So our biggest tip for clients is work with less recruiters, expect more from them but provide them more commitment. That is the key, you should give your jobs to a great recruiter exclusively and then expect the best from them. Provide them with all the information they need give them transparency, bring them into the tent. You need to partner with them not interact with them in a transactional context. The decisions making by clients on how to use recruiters is totally dysfunctional and harmful to all parties, this includes the candidate. My big tip is high expectations of your recruiter but give them high commitment.

What are your tips for creating and sustaining a high-performance culture?

Creating a high-performance culture starts at the very beginning, you’ve got to hire the right sort of people. If you hire mediocre people then you only get mediocre results, drive and motivation. You can put lipstick on a pig but its still a pig! The second thing is clarity around goals, great clarity about what good looks like, transparency around measurement and the scorecard, and reward high performance exponentially. You want to over-reward high performance, you want to be generous with what you share. We want a business where high expectations are seen as a job perk, good people want to work where expectations are high and striving from other people in the team is consistent. The final part is accountability and consequences, a high-performance environment has accountability, if you play for the greatest rugby team in the world, then you get dropped if you underperform. And there’s huge consequences, financially, moral everything else. It’s the same in business, I’m not saying people are going to get fired for making a mistake – its not as blunt as that, but we have expectations for culture, behaviour & performance. They are clear, they are communicated they are agreed with, and then if they are not met then there is a consequence. I’m not talking about a hire and fire environment or a punitive environment, I’m talking about a collaborative team environment. But if you want to play on the best team, then you have to perform to that teams’ expectations. Create an environment where feedback is cultural not personal.

In this Industry update, Shaun speaks with Stefanie Maras; Corporate Services Division Manager at Stellar Recruitment and discusses the current state of the market as well as the expected trends we will see over the next 12 months

Topics covered:

· Overview of Corporate Services division

· The state of temp to perm placements across the board

· How employers are leveraging the entire Corporate Services division in their recruiting processes

· Recommendations for employers in the current hot candidate market

· Market predictions over the next 12 months

In this episode, Shaun speaks with Michael McNab; founding Managing Director of McNab Construction and discusses the history and story of the business and unpacks the unique McNab culture and approach to success in the SE Queensland construction industry.

Topics covered:

· Overview of McNab Construction

· The McNab Story – from beginnings to running a company with a $290 million turnover

· The McNab culture, and how it is instilled in both employees and customers

· Work ethic and what attracts and retains the best employees

In this Industry update, Shaun speaks with Tim Waddell; General Manager at Form Building & Developments in New Zealand and discusses the story behind what built the company and the brilliant opportunities available now in the New Zealand construction market.

Topics covered:

• Overview of Form as a business 

• Origins including the stories of the founders 

• How they grew to an $160 million dollar business in 11 years

• Culture and what it takes to be a member for the Form team

• Current opportunities in the New Zealand market

Why do clients choose to partner with Form? Delivery is a big part of it. In the Bay of Plenty there are many large industrial kiwi fruit projects where they must be completed by a date, likewise in Auckland with school projects and other time sensitive jobs. We have that relationship with clients and consultants that we do deliver. They like the element that we can self-perform part of the works with our own tradesman, and we are not reliant on subcontractors in the heated Auckland market. We are also easy to deal with, we are not a large contract company, and we like engaging with people instead of firing of letters left right and centre.

Tell us about the good family feel and flat structural culture within the business? How important is culture in your eyes and how would you define the Form culture? Its very important and one of the key things throughout the business that we have all worked very hard on. I would define the culture as inclusive first and foremost, we are not a hierarchical or faceless business. The people who own the business are active in the business and happy to interact with everyone. I would describe the culture as professional, friendly and team orientated. We are big on our project teams, we refer to our key players in the team as the tripod, project manager, site manager and quantity surveyor. In any project they have the complete support of every facet of the business. I’m keen to understand what you look for in people who you work with and people that work for you? You are always looking for fit and fit with others in the business, we like straight-up people, people who want to put in a good days work, but want to focus on the task at hand and fit in with the team. People who are available to work unsupervised and generally nice friendly people. We are very hands on and personal and so people who like that sort of environment we generally look for as well.

Listen to the (6 minute) audio update below where Justin Campbell covers his take on the current market dynamics.

During this update he covers:

Current rates of pay 

The importance of investing in front line leaders to attract and retain key talent

The importance of career paths and running a fluent and efficient recruitment process

How we are assisting our clients to create new talent pools

Other dynamics that we are seeing today that we witnessed in the last boom

His prediction on market conditions in the coming months

As the recruitment leader of Stellar’s Western Australian team, Justin has built a strong team of recruiters while further strengthening the business’s partnerships. Many Perth based businesses and industry talent choose to do business with Justin not only because of his local industry market knowledge but also his honesty and commitment to achieve results. Justin has been working within the mining market for now 5 years and is frequently onsite and in front of both clients and candidates so if you have any additional questions please feel free to reach out to him or one of his team.