Episode 410 - Most job seekers focus on what they should do. In today’s episode, we dig into what they aren’t doing and why that’s costing them jobs

Renata Bernarde (01:04)
Nick, I’m delighted that you and I are having this chat. I think that ⁓ your company, Ambition, is such a great ⁓ Australian success story and it’s such a big milestone here for Ambition as well. So I have so many questions for you. You saw I sent you some, but I am delighted that you’re here.

And I work a lot with your team. I love working with the Melbourne team.

Nick Waterworth (01:35)
Okay, great. Kylie or who do you know down in Melbourne?

Renata Bernarde (01:39)
I know Kylie, but I definitely have worked more with watermark. ⁓

Nick Waterworth (01:44)
Okay,

Jacinta and Donna. Okay, great, great. ⁓ So just before we start, just so I’m, again, to be clear, the listeners are mainly job seekers. Well, they are job seekers.

Renata Bernarde (01:58)
They are job seekers. I know that once they get jobs, they usually carry on listening because the episodes are not necessarily about job hunting. They might be about leadership. They might be about the future of work. So they tend to be very loyal listeners. Many people tell me that they listen every week.

Nick Waterworth (02:18)
Okay,

and geographically, I think it was about half in the US?

Renata Bernarde (02:23)
Yes, half in the US. I would say that it’s probably about 40 % in the US, 40 % in Australia, and then the rest, it’s usually UK and Europe and some Asia.

Nick Waterworth (02:35)
Okay,

all right. Okay, that’s good. Good to understand.

Renata Bernarde (02:39)
Thank you. Thank you. All right. So we are very casual here ⁓ and we start usually most of my guests are like, have we started yet? And the idea is really for you and I to have a conversation because I’m super curious. And then for the listeners to be like a fly on the wall and just listening in and sort of absorbing as much information as possible. So.

I love the fact that ambition is such a great success story for Australia. And I love that you’re here with us because a lot of the listeners and my clients, which are a small percentage of our listeners, tell me it’s harder and harder to talk to recruiters these days. So I really want to ask you a lot of questions about that. But let’s start with you first, Nick. When did you realize recruitment was a career that you wanted to stick with?

Nick Waterworth (03:35)
So like probably a lot of people, I literally fell into recruitment. ⁓ So I left university with a very bad economics degree and really didn’t know what I wanted to do. Other than if I was going to do a ⁓ career job, it was going to be in London. So I was applying for a few roles and… ⁓

was being interviewed by this recruitment company. And I really honestly didn’t understand what it was, but they seem nice people. And a week or so later, they offered me a job. And so I thought, well, it’s in London. I still haven’t quite figured out what they do, but it’s in London. So I’ll go. So I started with this quite unusual small recruitment company in the Strand in London. And ⁓

So I literally fell into it and was so lucky that I fell into something that suits my personality. ⁓ You know, I like the fact that it’s got kind of black and white outcomes. You know, you’re successful on an assignment or you’re not. ⁓ And increasingly over time, I’ve liked the fact. So our sort of mission in our company is building better futures. And that’s genuine. So that’s not just a statement on a wall.

And I really like the fact that we’re a commercial entity. We’re a for-profit business, but it so happens we’re helping with individuals build their careers and people build their teams. So those two things, I suppose, collided. It suits my personality and this mission. ⁓ Really, really, ⁓ that tickles me, if you like. I really like that.

Renata Bernarde (05:21)
Nick, what is it about the UK and great recruiters? Because even the Australian recruiters that are great, they have spent some time in the UK working as recruiters or they started their careers there and then moved back. What’s in the waters in the UK that makes recruitment such an interesting career?

Nick Waterworth (05:43)
So it’s the third biggest recruitment market in the world following the US and Japan. So it’s a huge market and has been a pretty big market for 30 years, probably. ⁓ guess, secondly, the services sector in the UK ⁓ has been a big employer for a long, long time, whether that’s insurance or the law or in this case, recruitment. So I think for

young professionals. know, in recent times, there isn’t a big mining sector in the UK, manufacturing has been getting smaller. So there is this empathy with the services sector and recruitment is, you know, part of a part of that. So, so I guess those are those are a couple of things that come to mind that it is, it’s such a big industry, and people who are not born to be a doctor or

something like that, quite a few of them either deliberately or in my case by luck drift towards recruitment just because of the size of the sector and this acceptance of, I think the old term that I learned at university was invisibles, we’re not manufacturing something. So I think that’s probably why.

Renata Bernarde (06:59)
Yeah. And, and, you know, that was back in 1999 that you started Ambition, right? So it’s been 25 years. 26, you’re right. How does, how does 99 compares to 2025 in the recruitment industry?

Nick Waterworth (07:10)
26 years now.

We could probably do a whole podcast on that. There’s any number of things I could pick on. One, I guess, is the huge range of technologies that are in play, ⁓ many of which, but not all of which, are very useful. ⁓ What that does do for people, for example, working in our company,

is it means that information is coming at them in volume and from a stack of different sources. Going back to me, drifting into this little recruitment company on the Strand, ⁓ there were two ways that candidates could contact us. They could bring us or they could post something in snail mail. That was it. ⁓ You know, you’ve now got such an array of

technologies. I guess that’s one of the big differences. And because of that technology, things have got much faster. The pace of things is pretty full on. And if you’re not in the pace, you’re not in the game. So guess those are a couple of things that come to mind.

Renata Bernarde (08:47)
Yeah, I had a business in 1999, Nick, and I sold it because I freaked out about the internet. I said, that’s it. Nobody will need my services anymore. It was a travel business. I had a travel agency. I employed about five people at the time, anything between five and seven, depending on the season. And I got scared of technology. And the funny thing is

The travel agency is still there. I sold it to my employees and they’re still running it. And now we are in that similar situation where we’re so scared of AI. Is it going to take our jobs? Will they still need people like me? And it has also changed a lot the recruitment ⁓ environment as well. How is ambition adjusting to that change?

Nick Waterworth (09:43)
So let me touch on a couple of things. mean, first of all, when we started Ambition back in 99, know, the internet really was still pretty much in its infancy. ⁓ But there was a member of phrase that was being banded around, which was disintermediation. And a lot of ⁓ publications such as ⁓

⁓ fast people and, and so on, talked about the death knell of the brokers because of this disintermediation. But then quite quickly, there was another phrase, which was, well, we talked about the death knell of the brokers, but something happened on the way to the funeral. And what happened on the way to the funeral was people realized they want service. Now this is going back. This is not talking about AI. I will in a moment, but, but that’s what

happened is that ⁓ the Internet 1.0 could do lots of things, but it wasn’t great at providing service. So that’s the first thing. The second thing, if I might specifically in travel, because this was a bit of a moment for me. So this is going back to 2015. And it’s a travel story. I travel a lot internationally.

So I like to think I know a bit about travel and how to get around and flights and hotels and so on. Slightly perversely, was at a conference in Hamilton Island in Australia and the conference finished on a Sunday and I needed to get to Hong Kong that evening. So that will be right. Left is the last minute, but I’ll check out the flights. And I couldn’t figure it out.

I’m online, I’m trying this and I’m trying that, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get there by Sunday evening. So I phoned my travel agent 10, 11 years ago, 10 years ago, a guy called Mark who I still use and explained the problem, said, I don’t think I can do it. You know, what’s the next best alternative? Click, click. He said, it’s easy. You go from Hamilton Island to Cairns and there’s a flight from Cairns, Hong Kong. It was easy because that’s his expertise.

Despite my experience in traveling, I couldn’t figure that out. In two minutes, we’re sorted, we’re booked, and I’m in Hong Kong as I needed to be. That’s the trusted advisor. That’s the expertise that causes something to happen on the way to the funeral. ⁓ So that’s a sort of long answer, the first part of your question. ⁓ So.

Maybe you should have sold your travel agent. Maybe you shouldn’t. But it’s great to hear they’re still going. think that’s, and you know, run and owned by the staff. That’s a pretty cool story. ⁓ As far as AI goes, ⁓ like virtually any recruitment company, like most companies, ⁓ we’re heavily involved with AI. ⁓ We absolutely haven’t found ⁓

all the answers by any means. ⁓ But a couple of points. One is that ⁓ across the whole organization, every member of staff, we’ve got 260, 270 staff, ⁓ every member of staff is charged with helping us along the AI journey. And I’ve kind of implored people and besieged people and we’ve done lots of training to

get people to understand that this is a journey we have to go on and What I’ve said and mean is that this will not result in us employing fewer people It will change every single job in the company but our plan is to make the jobs more interesting more stimulating more brainpower and to take the less brainpower more boring bits and automate ⁓ Those have those done by AI. So at the moment that’s that’s

our mission. A couple of other points on AI. One is our CIO is based in Hong Kong. ⁓ He’s Australian professional who’s based in our Hong Kong office. ⁓ Over the last two years, we’ve in any degree of seriousness, we’ve probably trialed 15 or 20 different AI tools. The bulk of them have been either delivering not what’s on the package,

So it says on the package, we can do X and actually get into it. And it’s not very good at doing X or alternatively it can do X, but it says it can do X for Y dollars. Actually it’s two times Y dollars. Sometimes you might say, that’s okay. But often you think that’s just, that’s too much money. And so there’s a lot of, self promotion by the vendors. Understandably, that’s what I would do in that shoes, but

In reality, quite a lot of the tools are not yet either what’s on the package or actually commercially viable. So we’re finding that. Having said that, the second point is that we have just gone live on a new CRM around the world. And the reason we’ve moved is because the new platform is much more AI friendly.

I don’t think we would have moved otherwise. ⁓ The previous platform wasn’t perfect, but was OK. ⁓ But it was not proving very flexible from an AI plug-in point of view. And this new platform, we’re early days, ⁓ is going to be much more flexible, much more user-friendly. So we’re all in. ⁓

with a bit of degree of skepticism that at the moment, not all the products can do necessarily what they say, but some do and they will continue to improve pretty fast. we’re very much in. ⁓ Maybe I should be scared, but I’m not. I am a glass half full person, that’s for sure. I’m great believer in human ingenuity.

I mentioned earlier, I came out with a very bad economic history degree. One of the things I studied was the Luddites and spinning jenneys and how some people were displaced. within a very short period, many, many more people were employed in the UK in the textile industry than had ever been employed before the advent of technology. maybe there will be a period of displacement.

I think some of the doomsayers are probably talking that up maybe too much. ⁓ Everything’s going to change, that’s for sure. ⁓ But I’m not necessarily sure that all of it will be bad. I don’t think it will be. Yeah.

Renata Bernarde (17:19)
I really like the example you’ve given about the use of technology and new ways of working. I think in the history in the UK, there’s lots of examples of that. ⁓ One that I last year spoke about when I was addressing a boardroom of ⁓ chief HR offices in Melbourne, and we were talking about hybrid work environments. And I was explaining to them ⁓

a management theory called social technology theory. And one of the examples ⁓ that I learned, business cases that I learned at university about it was from the mining sector back in the 30s when they were replacing shovels with large ⁓ machinery that would then

do the excavation. And that was so disruptive that it reduced the productivity of the mines because it broke down the social fabric of the mines. even though it’s slower to just dig things up from the ground, it was actually a very social thing to do. And all of a sudden workers weren’t happy that they weren’t able to talk to each other anymore. So the productivity

took a deep dive and then it went up again when people finally got around the fact that that’s how minds were going to work from that point onwards. And I think that that’s what hybrid work had done as well. You know, like, ⁓ we’re not, you know, seeing our teams anymore. How can we manage people when we’re not seeing them? ⁓ But I don’t think that there is any way around the new ways of working. How are you finding?

your clients, the employers are adjusting to these sort of new ways of working now with the advent of hybrid work and people wanting to work more flexibly. Is that something that’s difficult to negotiate when the time comes to, you know, give offers to the best candidates?

Nick Waterworth (19:23)
Definitely, can be difficult for sure because we’re in an environment where some employers, some small number of employers are totally remote. Plenty have embraced hybrid. But the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got some that are getting pretty insistent on maybe even five days a week in the office. So before I talk about what I think about that,

in terms of the reality for job seekers and making matches, that’s certainly causing some ⁓ friction ⁓ and some situations where this job, in theory, is perfect for this candidate, except that the job is insistent on four days a week in the office and the candidate’s very unsure about that. So that’s

can cause some marriages to break apart because of the difference between what the employer believes they need and what the employee is willing to offer. So it’s another challenge, that’s for sure. And interestingly, in our organization, what we’re finding is that the most skillful recruiters

address these issues head on early in the process. So they get very few surprises at the end when it comes out that we need you in the office four days a week. Everybody already knows that and they’ve qualified and so on. Some of the perhaps less experienced people maybe steer away from that and then they get a surprise at the end which is probably not good for them, not good for their clients and can be disappointing for the candidate. So it’s

It’s another factor that pre-COVID was a tiny factor. Now it’s an everyday ⁓ part of the fabric, part of the landscape for sure.

Renata Bernarde (21:34)
Nick, I’ve only been coaching full time since the pandemic. So I started in 2020 ⁓ and I have seen the market fluctuate a lot in terms of supply demand of candidates and jobs. Right. Where do you think we are right now in September 2025 in that supply demand ratio?

Nick Waterworth (21:57)
It’s impossible to give one answer because if you’re in New York working in legal marketing, it’s a very different world to if you’re working in Kuala Lumpur in supply chain. So nevertheless, I’ll try and give an answer. So we’re in an unusual environment in that most of the developed world has pretty much full employment.

⁓ So if you want work, you’ve got work. ⁓ That’s certainly the case here in Australia, ⁓ et cetera. ⁓ Nevertheless, ⁓ candidates are quite nervous, ⁓ whether they’re worried about inflation, ⁓ the geopolitical situation. They’re not.

At the moment, they’re not cavalier about their careers. In 2022, everybody was cavalier about their careers. Everyone wanted a new job. And if you wanted a job, you went and got one because you were invincible. And every employer was hiring. ⁓ We’re now, ⁓ you know, we’re not technically anyway in a recessionary environment, but the headspace of candidates is very different. ⁓

So we’ve all heard 100 stories about, you know, an ambition recruitment consultant posting a job or an internal talent acquisition specialist posting a job and receiving 500 responses. We’ve all heard, you know, a thousand of those stories. The fact is that maybe you’ve got 500 responses when you have a proper look. There are actually only three candidates who look properly interesting.

⁓ and so that becomes from a big pool, it’s actually not really a big pool, it becomes quite a small pool, and when you get into it of those three candidates it may well be that on further investigation two gets spooked, it’s not quite what I expected and you know what I think I’ll stay put. So quite quickly you can be down to one person. So ⁓ if you looked at some raw data from some of the job boards in terms of numbers of acquis…

applications. That will tell you that it’s a candidate rich environment.

It depends whether you want people who are employable or not. If you want people that are employable, it’s in many areas, it’s hard to find the best candidates because most of the best, not all, most of the best candidates are in jobs and are a bit cautious. So that’s a long-winded answer to say where we’re at is it’s complex. We’re neither in boom times or recession times.

⁓ And there are, you know, white collar workers who can’t find work, unfortunately, particularly, ⁓ maybe people over 50. Again, that’s a whole nother topic. ⁓ But nevertheless, ⁓ securing the best legal marketing person in New York, supply chain person in KL or cyber security person in Melbourne.

is a challenge, it’s not a walk in the park.

Renata Bernarde (25:30)
Nick, I’d love to talk about the over 50s because I’m over 50 and many of my clients are over 50. I recently spoke to two headhunters from the US, their expertise is ⁓ hospitals and pharma and med tech. And they were saying, look, 20, 30 years ago, we wouldn’t dare bring a candidate over 50.

for a CEO position, now it’s so common and so popular to extend your career and have those ambitions at 60 and above. How are employers accepting more mature experienced professionals and what do you need to do to extend the lifespan of your career?

Nick Waterworth (26:27)
Again, I wish there was one answer, but let me give you a couple of thought bubbles. one of the happenings in our world ⁓ is we have become very active in senior level interim management assignments. So here I’m talking about ⁓ marketing directors, some CEOs,

a lot of CFOs, Chief People Officers, so C-suite ⁓ assignments. And this has become, so we’ve been active in this for 15 years. The last six or so, ⁓ it’s really become very popular with employers. And employers don’t want a 30-year-old to do that work. What they want,

is somebody who’s seen a number of cycles, who’s kind of seen it all before. ⁓ And in many cases, what they want, and I heard this phrase from one of our interims a few years ago, what they’re looking for is somebody who’s got no past with their organization and no future. So they’re a hired gun to do this transformation, integrate this acquisition, whatever it might be.

and they haven’t been there before, so they can’t say, well, around here, this is the way we do that, because they don’t know. And in probably 80 % of the cases, they’re not looking for a permanent job, so they’ve got no future with the organization. So in this interim world, even if 30-year-olds were available, which mostly they’re not, they’re not going to be the pick for the employers. They want that lack of hair.

or grey hair to do those assignments. So that’s one positive story. And actually as a final snippet on interim, ⁓ around a quarter of our interim assignments, our interim executives on assignment get converted into a permanent role. So I think the point about that is these are serious people. These are not people who can’t find work. These are very good executives.

who in say around 25 % of cases get asked to join permanently by the employer. So that’s, guess, one positive story. A negative story would be kind of at the other end of the spectrum. for a, let’s use some dollar terms here in Australia, know, a $150,000 sort of mid-level technology job,

know, if you were a candidate and you were really happy and keen to do that mid-level cyber job or whatever type of role it is and you’re 52, sadly you will be confronted with ageism. ⁓ I don’t get it. ⁓ Let me refine that comment slightly. In many cases I don’t get that. In some cases I understand the employer is looking to bring somebody in

who in 10 years time could be their next CIO. They’re looking for that real, the chance of longevity and uplift through the organization. But in many cases, that really doesn’t matter. And somebody who’s experienced and has figured out they don’t want to be a CIO or a chief executive. They want to do interesting work and be valuable. That’s their thing. But they get knocked back because the employer is in this mindset of

we’ve got to have a 28 year old for that role. So that’s the bad and slightly confusing news. And that’s not just Australia. That happens in plenty of places. yeah, so as I say, there’s sort of some positive bits and certainly some negative bits in that demographic.

Renata Bernarde (30:42)
I’d love to hear more from you about what your clients and employers have changed recently in the way that they think about hiring and the sort of trends that you’re seeing and how they are. You know the patterns, that come from seeing clients time and time again and the sort of things that they are asking. What’s coming across to you and your team as patterns?

from the client side.

Nick Waterworth (31:13)
I suppose the most prevalent thing is a desire to hire people who can deal with ambiguity ⁓ and people who don’t get stressed about the fact that tomorrow will be different from today. And we can’t tell you what tomorrow will look like. The employer speaking to the prospective employee, you know, this is your job today. Tomorrow, it’ll almost certainly be different and we don’t know what it’ll be.

That’s happening a lot. ⁓ Quite a lot of individuals like that, but plenty don’t. Plenty like routine and predictability. ⁓ And there is still work for those people. I suspect in two years or five years, there’ll probably be less of that.

predictable, not probably, there will be less of that predictable routine work. ⁓ But yeah, that’s one of the, ⁓ in every country we operate in sort of all the different areas is this capacity to deal with change, unpredictability and not just change, pace of change. That’s probably the most obvious thing that we’re seeing.

Renata Bernarde (32:39)
Maybe this is a question for somebody from your team, like Kylie. should interview her one day, but I’m wondering how that is translated into the job ads. Do you know how do you translate that into and how do you find people? Is it something that you would have to have a conversation with them to find out and ask some behavior questions? I just don’t see that coming across in job ads, Nick.

Nick Waterworth (33:11)
The reason I smile, when I, ⁓ all those years ago, 45 years ago, started out in recruitment, one of things that I was taught is when you’re writing a job ad, really all that matters is the job title, the location, the salary, and how to apply. In between, you could write, this is the worst job that exists in Melbourne, and you’ll still get the same applicants. Obviously, that’s tongue in cheek comment, but.

⁓ I’m not convinced that the job that is the point at which you do the screening. ⁓ It’s the point at which you do the attracting, but the screening happens later on. So you could write as much as you like. What I’m saying is you could write on this point we’re discussing, you could write much as you want about ambiguity. And the people who don’t like ambiguity will still apply. And probably they should.

because you never know, you know, go for an interview and see what happens. ⁓ So, yeah, so I don’t think the job ad does that bit of the process. That magic happens a step or two later on.

Renata Bernarde (34:27)
Yes, yes, I agree. And I don’t think that that is a problem that I have seen in Abition or Watermark. Those are the sort of job ads that I look when I’m working with clients here in Australia. But there are some job ads, especially in the US, that are so vague, know, product management jobs, project management jobs. And

the person meets all the criteria, applies and never hears back and that happens time and time again and the candidates feel very unsure about their ability of ⁓ getting into a new position. And you mentioned before those hundreds of applications that translate to the top 10 and I think that sometimes the job ad is not helping candidates.

identify if they are an ideal candidate for that role or not. So the work that I do with them is like go and check out this company, see who they have hired recently, you you can use LinkedIn for that, see the background of these individuals and do you think you fit that similar background ⁓ because the job ad is so vague. What do you make of that Nick? How can you help ⁓ candidates better understand their chances?

Nick Waterworth (35:49)
That’s a great question. ⁓ I think it’s pretty hard at that early stage to make it clear what people’s chances are. But what you touched on is the very reason that in Ambition’s case, in the middle level appointments, why we spend a lot of money and put a lot of effort into maintaining databases, because

We want that to be the source of many of our placements, not simply the job ad. And then in Watermark’s case, the senior executive level, we pretty rarely advertise because we want to understand what the client is looking for. And then we’ll go and look for that because it is hard to express and hard to tickle the right fish through a job ad, but we can go and find them. So

Job ads is one small part of the process. I totally understand that it can be a very frustrating part of the process for candidates. ⁓ It can also be for recruiters because you’ve specified in your ad that you must have X technical skill. 500 applications come in and four have got X. I’m not criticizing the people for applying.

But so there are problems with job ads for both applicants and agency recruiters and indeed in-house talent acquisition people. Job ads are tricky, beasts in many ways.

Renata Bernarde (37:36)
Yes, yes, I agree. And there are no barriers of entry for people to apply. That’s why you get so many applications and that’s why so many of them aren’t.

Nick Waterworth (37:46)
And the barriers have gone down because, you know, if you set things up, you as an individual candidate set things up the right way, you can apply for a thousand jobs a week. And if you’re looking for work, that’s probably what you’ll do. ⁓ The chances of it working, well, who knows, but you can certainly do that. ⁓ And so for, again, for recruiters in that process, that’s something of a nightmare.

⁓ So yeah, it’s a job ads are very, very difficult thing. I always think.

Renata Bernarde (38:25)
I agree. ⁓ And one of the things that I’m noticing, and this is anecdotal, so I want you to challenge me if I’m wrong, but most of my clients are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, they’re experienced, they’re not necessarily C-Suite, but they have a lot of baggage and they’re applying for jobs that require a lot of expertise. And what’s happening, Nick, is that the recruitment process to them, ⁓

seems like an obstacle course. There’s so many touch points. There’s the call from the recruiter, then a meeting with the recruiter, then an interview, then an assessment center, then a presentation. And it just goes on and on and on. I was with a client ⁓ who is in Sydney ⁓ and she was saying, look, I’ve applied for something in January and I only heard back in May.

after going through three interviews and an assessment center, instead of a call, I got an email saying I wasn’t going to be progressing. And she felt really upset about that because after investing so much time, including a face-to-face meeting and two Zoom meetings, she thought that she deserved at least to get some feedback as to why she wasn’t going forward. And that’s the reality that many of my clients

and I assume also my listeners are facing.

Nick Waterworth (39:56)
Yeah, and she did deserve some feedback, but at least she got an email. ⁓ know, ghosting is obviously a pretty popular phrase in recruitment at the moment, ⁓ mostly applying to candidates who vanish into Scotch mist. ⁓ But it can also definitely apply to hiring managers and recruiters. ⁓ So I’m not saying it’s perfect. It’s not perfect, but at least she heard something.

you know, at least she could cross it off her list and she knew that she’s disappointed. But OK, that’s one I don’t have to expend any more brain power on. I mean, it does my head in a bit because it’s so easy. Of course, you should give feedback. By the phone or, you know, as much as you can, but to get back to everybody is not hard because you can automate those things and. ⁓

I think that’s just common courtesy to allow people to know that there is still hope or there’s not. It’s not that much work. can use technology to make those actions very, very easy. So I feel for applicants, big star, I really do.

Renata Bernarde (41:19)
What’s keeping your team awake at night these days? What are the key concerns that they’re having in 2025 when it comes to recruitment and selection of candidates?

Nick Waterworth (41:33)
⁓ Again, a number, I suppose the big, again, it’s different from area to area, but first of all, let’s talk about Australia. ⁓

For our people, probably their concern is that employers, as a generalization, employers are hiring, but they’re hiring slowly. The cadence of the hiring is not very fast. And then on the other end of the scales, as we discussed, candidates are looking, but many people who are in roles are looking

cautiously. so, you know, time, lack of time, lack of pace, reduces the chances of a successful outcome. So that’s, that’s top of their mind. So again, as we touched on earlier, go back to 2022. The best year for the recruitment industry ever. And we’ll never see it again.

It was the perfect summer. Money was free post-COVID. Everybody felt invincible. We’ll never see it again. As I said, we’re not quite the opposite, but many of those factors that created that best year ever are very different now. So that’s probably one of the obvious things. And then I suppose another factor is

time management. ⁓ And that’s quite challenging because they’re working within their own team and they’ve got some responsibilities within their team. ⁓ They’ve got their candidates who are pre-existing. They’ve got their new candidates who are calling them, applying to job ads, connecting by email because we were in contact three years ago and I’m now looking again. So they’ve got this kind of

almost tsunami of ⁓ data coming up at them from the candidate side. And then they’ve got the client employers ⁓ who, know, the mindset of employers are as I discussed. So I think that’s, you know, that’s a factor. But then if you look at, and a couple of times I’ve touched on the US, so we have an office in New York and

It’s very niche. in the U S our clients, a hundred percent of our clients are law firms. And the only roles we work on are marketing and business development roles. So it’s super niche, albeit because it’s New York, biggest legal market in the world. It’s quite a big niche, but it’s, it’s very niche. We’re super expert in that field in London and New York. And so.

At the moment, we have sufficient client demand, but finding the best niche candidates is the challenge. So if you to ask that question to our recruiters and our leader in New York, what’s top of your mind, what’s keeping you awake at night, it isn’t, I wish you had more clients. It is, I wish we had more spot on candidates who’ve got that legal background and know about

business development or marketing. So again, there are different concerns in different places, depending on the nature of the market that people are operating in.

Renata Bernarde (45:23)
Nick, this is your chance to provide feedback to job seekers so that they can improve their game when working with your teams around the world. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions or even mistakes that job seekers are doing that makes it harder for recruiters to help them?

Nick Waterworth (45:49)
So to get the ball rolling, let me pick one small thing and one thing that I think is really quite important. Small thing is, so you’re talking to your recruitment consultant and they’ve said, we’ve got XYZ role with Microsoft. Would you be interested? Yes, I’d be interested. You have a conversation. Yes, I’d like you to put my details forward on your shortlist. Forty hours later, you hear back from the consultant, they say, good news.

Microsoft wants to interview you. I can offer you 10 a.m. tomorrow, ⁓ 11 a.m. on Monday or 9 a.m. on Tuesday. There’s only one correct answer. 10 a.m. tomorrow. You always, always, always go first. You might be the best candidate and they could offer you the job on the spot. And the person who picked last thinking I’ll have the chance to wow them might not even get a shot.

So go first, set the bar high. I mean, I just think that’s, as we might say here in Australia, that’s a no-brainer. Possibly a slightly small thing, but maybe something that people don’t think about. Perhaps more importantly, so you go for the interview with Microsoft and the interview goes really well. Turns out you meet

the person from talent acquisition and you meet your potential line manager and it’s all pretty good. You know that there is one particular skill that they talked about via the recruitment consultant you briefed on that you’re maybe only five out of 10 on. And for some reason in that interview, that skill hasn’t come up. So you’ve got two options. You go,

and you move on and leave the interview. What you do at the end of the interview is you bring it up. We don’t do elephants in the room here in interview situations. You want this job. When your potential line manager speaks to their boss, I’ve got this candidate, Nick, who seems quite possible, and the boss says, well, how do they score on this skill?

And the limer is well, five out of 10. Probably you’re gone. Whereas you’ve in all likelihood, you’ve got a great plan to deal with the fact that you’re only five out of 10 at the moment, because this skill is really of interest to you. You’ve done a bit of studying in any way, and you’re very happy to commit to more study. And by the way, in your previous role, your boss dealt a lot with that. So I might not have been directly responsible for it, but I saw a lot of this type of work.

And it really interested me. there may be other candidates that you meet who might be stronger, but there will be nobody who’s more enthusiastic than me about this particular point.

Which is the better answer.

Renata Bernarde (48:58)
I love that. Nick, you have just given away two of my career coaching tips that sit behind my client firewall.

Nick Waterworth (49:12)
And

you didn’t even brief me on them, Renata.

Renata Bernarde (49:15)
no, no, you don’t know this, but this thing about going first has always been my biggest advice. It’s such an unconscious bias that I know ⁓ plays really well with candidates that are smart and choose the right time. And controlling, I use the same words inside my course, my online course that I have for my clients. You know, the elephant in the room, you have to address the elephant in the room.

When you are inside the boardroom or inside the Zoom meeting, that’s the only time you have control over the situation. It would be a disservice to you if you don’t address everything that needs to be addressed, because once you walk out, that’s it.

Nick Waterworth (50:00)
So you might imagine that you are, let’s just say you’re in New York and you’re one of our legal business development professionals. And you’re not applying for a job, but you’re doing a pitch and your area of responsibility is healthcare. So you’re dealing with the law firms activity in the healthcare sector. And you go with a partner on this pitch for this potential new client. And you know they’re interested in

this aspect and your firm scores okay on that, but they do score and it doesn’t come up in the pitch meeting. You’re telling me you leave the pitch meeting without bringing it up? Well, if you’re one of our employees, I sincerely hope that never comes up. You bring it up, you explain how you deal with it, you explain how perhaps their perception might be a bit less than the actual abilities that your firm has got.

So if you’re a professional doing a pitch, you deal with it. And yet somehow, if you were a candidate going for an interview, a lot of people go, thank goodness that didn’t come up. I mean, it’s, yeah, you’ve just got to deal with that elephant and get on the front foot with it. I know as an employer, know, if I interviewing people to join us and there’s an aspect, ⁓

Renata Bernarde (51:18)
I agree.

Nick Waterworth (51:27)
that we might be interested in. First of all, I’d just be impressed that somebody brings it up. That’s good. Shows they’re not afraid. It shows they’re happy to tackle issues. That’s a pretty good start. And then if they’ve got a good answer, well, maybe that puts them ahead of somebody who’s got that skill because they’ve shown so much passion and ⁓ inclination to learn and lack of fear. Those are great traits.

Renata Bernarde (51:56)
Yeah, that’s awesome. Awesome advice. Nick, ⁓ it’s almost time for us to go. But before we do, I’m so curious now because I had no idea about that New York niche expertise as part of your group. Can you go through each of your businesses and explain what they do? I think that it would be a good thing for us to do for the listeners.

Nick Waterworth (52:23)
Quite a long story, but let me try and talk about a couple that are perhaps more interesting. So in London, our London office is about 40 people. Our clients are 100 % professional services. So about 60 % of the clients are law firms, about 30 % are accounting firms, and the balance are corporate finance houses or consultancies.

Renata Bernarde (52:52)
Okay.

Nick Waterworth (52:53)
Prior to the Brexit vote, we had quite a chunk of financial services clients. When Brexit happened, I thought, I wasn’t thinking that financial services are all leaving London. I didn’t think that. But what I did think was, do we have the chance to be the best in financial services in London? No. Let’s use this as an excuse to get out of that because

Renata Bernarde (53:01)
They’re gone.

Nick Waterworth (53:21)
We’re really good in professional services. And if we only do that, we could maybe be the best. And I’m so pleased that we took that decision. Whether we’re the best yet, I don’t know, but we’re up there. And we’re very expert. And so that’s London. And it’s because of that expertise in legal that we started getting inquiries from UK law firms that were clients of ours in London to help us in New York.

And we said, no, well, we can’t help. We’re not in New York. We don’t have any candidates. But they kept asking. And so Nikki, who’s our managing director over there, spoke to me and said, you know, I think we should say yes, that we’ll try. But we explained to them that we’re not in New York. At the moment, we really don’t have many candidates. But if you’re happy for us to try, we’ll try. So they start, yes, we’d like you to try. So we tried. And it began to work. Then in January last year,

we started getting US law firms come to us in London. So we were trying to do it from London. We started a small team on New York in our London office. Then we started getting US firms come to us. We’ve heard about ambition in the legal marketing space. Can you help us in New York? And that was the moment that Nikki then called me again and said, we’ve got to get an office going and get some people on the ground. so, so yes, so we’re now in New York, only law firms.

only legal marketing and BD and the clients are loving it because we’re brave enough to be niche. ⁓ Let me talk about another example. So here in Australia, we have ⁓ Watermark Search, which was a firm that we acquired 20 years ago this year. Watermark isn’t in some ways as niche as maybe

the US London is, but it sits in a very clear part of the market. we were talking about their interim management side. So about 50 % of their business is executive search. All of those are retained search appointments. So they’re research-led, client-led, retained search appointments. If BHP or Qantas were looking for a new chief executive, is that us?

No, it’s not. If a top 300 company in Australia were looking for a chief executive or a CFO, is that us? You bet it is. If ⁓ BHP were looking for a $200,000 person, is that watermark? No, it’s not. So we’ve got a very clear position in the market. We know what we are. The market knows what we are. And ⁓ that

organization is prospering, it’s growing year on year, even in this sort of climate. So again, a high degree of clarity internally and externally. ⁓ maybe perhaps the last example I might give, in Hong Kong, we have a brand called Amtech. ⁓ Amtech is a project services business that

⁓ predominantly runs software testing teams. So we employ technical leads that we put on site with a hospital or a bank or an insurance company, luxury brands company, and then we staff up the testing team with contractors. They normally go for a year or 18 months. We take on some risk through our Statement of Works contract. But again,

Nine out of 10 of our projects are software testing. Almost at the moment anyway, almost all of our testers for our Hong Kong clients, which is the biggest area, almost all of our testers are in Hong Kong, which the clients love. And we’re not being all things to all people. So we’ve done one or two other things. We’ve done some stuff in KYC, know your clients and so on. But the thing we stand for is software testing. So for

me as the CEO, that’s one of the things that gets me excited is can we stand for something in this operation? Do we stand a chance of being the best at it? If we can’t, well, why are we bothering? I mean, seriously, let’s do things where we can be really special because that’s fun. That helps us do what I talked about right in the beginning, building better futures. That is important to us.

And if we’re really good, then we can do that well. So as hopefully you can tell, that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. That’s what gets me excited with a of range of businesses and range of potential is, ⁓ yeah, we could go into nursing recruitment, but we don’t know anything about it. And there are plenty of players that are super expert in that area. So we’ll never do that. But that’s…

That’s our answer, I guess, is to work in niches where we can be very, very good.

Renata Bernarde (58:45)
Nick, I really, really appreciate the explanation. Thank you so much. And ⁓ I don’t know if you remember this or you knew this, but just before the pandemic, I worked with Donna and Jacinta in the Melbourne office and I was supposed to be there for six months. I only did a three month since because the pandemic started and we had a big sort of lockdown, especially in Melbourne at that time. And I left the organization. It was

supposed to be a short-term project anyway, but I loved, loved, loved working with that team, not only because they are just so great at working with each other and bouncing back from each other together with the team in Sydney as well, but how they interact with their colleagues from the ambition team. So they sit together, the watermark and the ambition team.

And I remember sitting there in the office and listening to the ambition team calling candidates and how awesome they were with the candidates, both when they were, you know, doing the short list, but also when they were letting them know that they weren’t going to move forward. So I learned so much from just observing how they were interacting. And so you have an amazing team. Congratulations.

Nick Waterworth (1:00:06)
We do, but perhaps the last thing we just touched on there is talking to candidates and trying to help candidates. So when we started at Ambition and we were looking to raise a bit of money from outside to help us grow the organization and we put out prospectus, the first person who returned the prospectus to put in

bit of money was the first Canada I ever placed in Australia. And that is really truly not about me. But it is about building better futures. If you help people and help can be as small as simply returning their phone call that hard, just return their phone call. If you can get them a job, well, that’s cream on the cake. People remember that. And so I was

delighted when that happened with this shareholder. I’m delighted to hear that you saw it happening with Watermark and Ambition in Melbourne. I like to think it’s alive and well across our network. It’s just a big thing we believe in. So I’m pleased that you saw that and pleased you still remember it.

Renata Bernarde (1:01:24)
Awesome. Nick, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s been a treat talking to you.

Nick Waterworth (1:01:29)
Pleasure. Pleasure.