“Right now there's not a lot of ad response. Somebody is tapping people on the shoulder through LinkedIn and a lot of them take a week to respond sometimes.”

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past year, you know that tech recruiting in Australia is becoming more and more of a struggle.

In this episode of Strivin & Thrivin, we talk to Nicolle Hann-Dunbavin, who has over 20 years of experience in tech recruitment in Australia. She discusses how recruitment has changed over the years and the current challenges being faced by recruiters in the tech world.

Talent acquisition is not only struggling with fewer candidates, but many employers are asking for too much.

“They have a very, very long list of technical experience that they want these candidates to have. We'll go through several rounds of candidates before they realize we can't find someone with all of this experience.”

Nicolle explains how her role has evolved with technology. How turn around times have come down, but the role still centres around communication even if it has changed from phone calls to emails. Even after 20 years, she still has a smile on her face as she talks about the kick she gets out of finding someone their dream role.

Tune into this episode to hear more of Nicolle’s insights.

“Often there is that perception that you're making the transition to an internal role because you're not a great biller”

When Samantha Barnett made the transition from agency to in-house recruitment it was less common than it is today. However, even with the rise in recruiters switching roles, there is still the stigma that you are doing it because you are not a great biller.

In this episode of Strivin & Thrivin, Samantha shares her story of transitioning careers. She explains how she overcame the obstacles and doubts in her mind and came to the clear decision that internal recruitment was the right path for her.

Not only did she transition to internal recruiting, but with her success at her new company MYOB, she was asked to manage the recruitment team for the company. This meant expanding beyond her specialty of tech recruitment and moving from peer to manager.

“I had great relationships with people on the team, but it was awkward. There's no lying or trying to cover that. There were people in the team that I had been peers with for a couple of years and all of a sudden was sitting down with them, setting their goals with them, and they had to be more open with me.”

Tune in to this episode to learn how Samantha navigated the transitions. She shares stories about internal and external mentorship, her favourite podcasts, and finding inspiration in strange places

Trent’s career story is fascinating: In the space of a decade, he has been through more changes than most people experience in their whole career. Trent is currently the HR manager at MICROMINE. He joined the company several years ago just before mining in Australia took a huge downturn.

He was part of a HR team that was reduced from three to one and was the one that was asked to stick around. He then saw the company switch to a software company and helped take the family-owned business through selling. And Trent has been there for it all.

Trent shares his experience and talks about the mindset that has allowed him to successfully adapt and grow with the company.

“I always say yes. So I just go ahead and if someone says, "Okay, can you do this?," or, "Can we do this?" I always start with, "Yeah, I think we can," and then work out the details along the way.”

He also shares his struggles. From experiencing imposter syndrome, to working with two very different leaders.

“They were two very different leaders. Both like to inspire and motivate in their own way.”

Tune in to this episode to learn from Trent.

“Only asking your placement for feedback is like asking your husband or wife on your wedding night, whether they love you or not.”

From being chased down the street by a kid with a machete while doing door-to-door sales to the CEO and founder of Recruiter Insider. Tune into this episode of Strivin & Thrivin to hear from Justin Hiller about his career journey and what led him to build a business around reviewing recruitment agencies.

Justin Hiller found a gap in the market. He saw that the way recruitment agencies were reviewing themselves was far off the mark. You could have one happy placement but fifteen other unhappy candidates that were having a bad experience. If you were only asking the happy placement for their feedback, you’d be patting yourself on the back every time. Justin noticed this and that's how Recruiter Insider was born.

But the journey here wasn't easy or by any means conventional. From flipping burgers at Maccas, to finding investors in his passengers during his days as an Uber driver, to meeting members of his advisory board while competing on a reality TV show in the UK. This has not been a normal journey to success.

Tune in to this episode of Strivin & Thrivin to hear all the hilarious details. He also shares top bits of wisdom he has learnt along the way such as experience working at companies that showed him exactly what not to do – like the mismanagement of resources and having three people doing the same role where you only need one and then one person doing a different role, where you needed three.

“One thing that I found really helps is being data driven, giving people the understanding that you have from the data.”

Recruitment is a process in which data is regularly overlooked. The argument is often that no two people are the same, so we can’t break recruitment down into numbers. But is this view of data and recruitment too narrow?

In this episode of Strivin & Thrivin, we talk to Carlie Bowden from The Nudge Group about how her career transitioned from private recruitment to government recruitment to management and eventually landed her in her current role as Director of Product & Project Services.

There are two major takeaways from this episode: The importance of honesty and the value of data.

The former is part of Carlie's work strategy that has led her to success and helped her nail one of her biggest challenges in her management role – transitioning from peer to manager.

“Honesty was key, and if you're honest, no matter how brutally honest, they really can't say anything to you because you're just giving them the facts. They can't say that this is unfair.”

Together with honesty, Carlie believes her love for data has played an integral part in her career. She recalls that when she started using data to guide her and her team, she had team members coming to her asking for the sales reports and more data.

It's all about how you present and use the data. Don’t remind people where they are failing, look for patterns where they succeed and continue to emulate those behaviours.

“You find a trend and then they get excited because you didn't remind them that they needed to make a target this week. You reminded them of a time that was really happy and they were excited and it really energizes them and it motivates them more.”

To hear more insights from Carlie, including why finding the right environment is often more important than finding the right role, tune into this episode of Strivin & Thrivin.

Career transitions are never easy but Emma Dwyer has managed hers with grace. Starting in tech recruitment out of university, she is now a People and Culture Director for a recruitment agency in Sydney. The roles are much further apart than you might first think and the way she got there required a lot of motivation, learning, and a passion for people.

In this week's episode of Strivin & Thrivin, Emma talks about how she landed her role in People and Culture, finding the balance between being a mum and her career, joining a startup, and how continued coaching is helping her thrive in her new role.

“It's still a huge learning curve for me constantly. I know when I first moved into the role, the multiple facets of HR people and culture, so to speak, weren't as addressed by myself as they are now.”

Listen to this episode of Strivin & Thrivin to learn more from Emma about navigating a career transition and extra tips about how coaching has helped her thrive in her new role.

“It took a long time for me to stop trying to get the person the job by prepping them too much for their internal interviews and things like that, and letting them get the job off their own back.”

Internal recruitment can seem a world away from agency work. If you are thinking about making the switch but wondering if it's the right transition for you, tune in to this episode of Strivin & Thrivin, as Olga shares her career story.

Olga explains she went from the top of the sales board at recruitment agencies (and loving it!) to building communities and growing the number of consultants at Novon, her current role, from 15 to 50 in less than a year. Discover what she learned along the way and what she loves about internal recruitment.

Listen to this week's episode of Strivin & Thrivin to learn more about internal recruitment secrets and the reason Olga loves her job so much (it might even bring a tear to your eye).

“Work on the things that you are exceptional at to become completely dominant at them. Why waste time focusing on becoming mediocre? Which is essentially working on your weaknesses.”

This week on Strivin & Thrivin I sat down with Steve Grace, Founder of The Nudge Group and recruitment expert. The Nudge Group offers a holistic People Partner Model for early stage and established businesses going through rapid growth.

Steve has been in recruitment most of his life (except one brief and unsuccessful attempt at a pro tennis career). Not only is he a recruitment expert, but his experience in both starting his own business and investing in the business of others gives him unique insights into what both candidates and clients are looking for from the recruitment experience.

Steve explains how he, like many, stumbled into a recruitment job and it ended up becoming his career.

“I wandered into a recruitment company called Computer People and said, "Can you get me a job? I like computers." And they said, "No. But how about you come and work for us? You've got no skills in terms of computers, so we can't find you a job there. But how about you come work for us?" And I was like, "Sure."

Following a short stint at an unsuitable role In London, Steve decided to move to Australia as a means to excuse the short-held position to future employees- as good a reason as I’ve ever heard for relocating. The term “all's well that ends well” springs to mind as Steve never moved back.

This was only the beginning of his story. There were a lot of twists and turns, from joining a startup called Junk Food that aimed to put cereal in every office in the city, to a Chinese tourism business.  Steve’s experience is varied and valuable and inevitably gave him the foundations to take the plunge and become the sole founder of his own successful recruitment group, The Nudge Group.

Tune into this episode of Strivin & Thrivin to hear Steve’s biggest learnings.

“People don't want to be sold to, you've really got to set yourself apart, build a brand and back yourself. But also just deliver and in order to deliver, you need to be resourceful and change up your messaging, be authentic and just be yourself and try to make a difference.”

This week on Strivin & Thrivin we chat to Secure Code Warrior’s Global Head of Talent, Nathan Reese. When it comes to scaling your team fast and gearing for growth, Nathan’s your guy… His track record includes helping Domain.com hire over 150 engineers in 18 months and growing head count at Ansarada from 100 to over 220 people too. Same same at Secure Code Warrior: where Nathan helped the team scale from 90-odd people to over 200 in 12 months.

A big part of the beauty of Nathan’s career, though, is the journey itself.  He didn’t start his career in recruitment, actually.  Instead, he started in sales, then moved into the agency side of recruitment. From there, he moved into internal talent acquisition and today he even owns a swag shop - this is probably why he has such an interest in personal brand…

“I would say the biggest thing for recruiters is branding. When you have that brand and that authentic-ness to help your recruitment teams deliver, people are going to come back to you. So I think your branding is very, very important, and in order to have a successful brand, you obviously need to deliver. And in order to deliver, you need to be resourceful, you need to have tenacity, you need to be constantly pounding the pavement.”

To hear more about Nathan’s career, key learnings and how he went from a sales person to some with a swag store as his side hustle (while helping businesses scale rapidly too), listen to this latest episode of Strivin & Thrivin.

On the podcast this week Laura and Tim catch up with Jo McCatty, Founder of Protoscience, a global career coaching business specialising in STEM and Life Science. Jo is also part-time Head of Talent for Invisible Partners and hosts her own podcast in her spare time.

Like many postgraduates, Jo went travelling after university and settled in London with the intention of pursuing her science degree to a career in pharmaceuticals. When presented with an opportunity Jo didn’t hesitate to take it up and hasn’t looked back since.

“It seems, I found people more interesting!” she says.

Though, while her career moved away from the sciences, she’s remained an advocate for it and woven it back into her career today. In this episode, we take a trip down memory lane to reflect on her career in recruitment and how the industry has served her over the years. Having worked in all corners of recruitment, Jo’s insight is broad and invaluable and we gauge how she believes success in this field comes with passion.

“You have to love the idea of helping someone find their next opportunity.”

Talking us through the key differentials between internal, agency and executive recruitment, we segway into Jo’s experience as a career coaches and the impact they can have on career success.

Jo is someone who champions career coaching having eased herself into it over the years, working it in around her full-time job before seeing an opportunity to make more of it, particularly in the STEM fields. Jo sees coaching as “a side passion project that becomes something that you want to do more of,” and has used her podcast to give voices to those within the STEM community and highlight opportunities and prospects for those pursuing careers in these fields.

“Good coaches, they meet you where you are and they give you what you need without you knowing what that is”

This week’s podcast is great for anyone considering a coach, mentor or STEM career. Jo shares fascinating insight into how she juggles parenthood, a startup, a podcast and a part-time job and it’s an inspiring listen!

Listen to the latest Strivin & Thrivin episode now!