Recruitment Down Under: The APSCo Australia Podcast
Welcome to Recruitment Down Under: The APSCo Australia Podcast. We’re the podcast for the Australian recruitment market, sharing anecdotes, interviews and ideas from the recruitment industry's best and brightest. Join us for regular episodes where our guests discuss the topics that affect you and your recruitment business.
Recruitment Down Under: The APSCo Australia Podcast
'No such thing as business as usual'. A discussion on the recruitment market with APSCo Global CEO, Ann Swain.
In this podcast episode, Lesley Horsburgh is joined by a very special guest on Recruitment Down Under - APSCo Global CEO Ann Swain, to discuss the European recruitment market and provide insights into how UK recruitment firms are responding within the current UK business environment.
Thank you for listening to Recruitment Down Under and now here’s our host Lesley Horsburgh.
In this podcast episode, lesley Horsburgh is joined by a very special guest, apsco Global CEO, anne Swain. Anne discusses the European recruitment market and provides insights into how UK recruitment firms are responding within the current business environment. Thank you for listening to Recruitment Down Under, and here's our host, lesley Horsburgh.
Speaker 2:Anne, how lovely to see you again. How are you?
Speaker 3:Good, actually a bit tired, as always been a funny sort of 18 months, but really good. Lesley, thank you, that's good to hear.
Speaker 2:It wasn't that long ago that we obviously saw each other. I had the gem of a trip in January to the UK, which I think was the coldest January I've experienced in. I don't know how long, but it was great to obviously see all the team there. But I'm curious now you're a little bit further in to the year, to the year um what 2025 is promising for APSCO UK and perhaps some of the um European members as well.
Speaker 3:In a broader sense, um, it's difficult to know. I mean, it would be great to tell you that we expect x, y and z and I think a lot of your members in Australia will have the same view that we certainly all know what the last 18 months, 20 months, has looked like, but not any of us know exactly what's going to be happening, and so we're keeping our fingers crossed, our eyes crossed and our toes crossed that it's going to be much better, and I believe that to be true, and certainly with the figures that we're seeing for the beginning of the year. But it's so early, isn't it? And the proverbial one swallow doesn't make a summer comment comes to mind, but we are predicting a much better year.
Speaker 3:However, there are some things outside of everybody's control, and if you've got a US yeah, one person in the us who can wake up in the morning, have the wrong breakfast and decide to side with one country over another in one war and then try and take over another country for another war, it just shows you that things can, can pivot that classic word can can pivot on a dollar, frankly.
Speaker 3:And so, consequently, we've got some ideas of how it's going to go. But we can't really plan exactly for all of that because you simply don't know. There's so many external factors, whether they be economic globally, whether they can be economic because of political changes, so local changes that can affect your local economy, or whether, whether they are technology oriented, which can affect different sectors and, in some ways, the whole world, with changes so, and even the demographic changes are affecting people, but a bit more slowly. They're a bit more um, something you can kind of put your hat on, really um, so it's a difficult time for predictions. Yeah, um, there you go. If you want me to give you some views of what most people are thinking about in Europe, I'll give you them. But it's interesting, isn't it? It'd be funny if, in three years time, someone plays this back to see whether I got it vaguely right or completely wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's all good. I mean, like you say, you know we're exactly the same here. I think everybody's that the theme for 2024 was unpredictability, and I think that's definitely how people are feeling, maybe with a bit of cautious optimism. This year certainly feels like that. But before you talk about, I guess, what's ahead, what did the end of 2024 really look like? How did the year close for the market over there?
Speaker 3:Poorly. So the year closed really poorly. I mean if we look at some of the figures, I mean if you look at, say, manpower in the UK quarter, four revenues dropped by more than 20% for them. If you look at Robert Half revenues for that last quarter, compared to the previous year, same quarter previous year, 6.1%. I mean even companies like S3 had a net fee decline of about 14 percent and so consequently, you can see that the market didn't do very well. I think the market didn't do very well last year, particularly for the bigger firms and um and did better for smaller, more agile firms or for firms that happen to be in the right sectors. So if you're a big multinational that is less sector-specific I mean in the old days we would call them generalist companies, nowadays you'd say multi-niche they would have some niches that were okay For S3, for instance, engineering was up 4%, but, as I said, net fee decline across the business 14%. Life sciences minus 22%. Tech minus 10%. Now we've not seen that happening.
Speaker 3:But if you were in the healthcare sector you were flying and if you weren't flying that's down to you. Actually, if you were in the educational sector, you were doing well, if you were in the social worker sector. So a lot of those government in the UK government-oriented sectors, public sector stuff not at all bad sectors public sector stuff not at all bad, but the sectors that we're used to doing brilliantly really scaled back. So it affected the very big companies because they're across sectors generally. Or if you are a big company and very STEM oriented, then it affected you heavily. If you are a niche player and your niche was doing well, then you could do well. Now that's covered across europe and if we look particularly in germany, where obviously we have absco deutschland, we're seeing pretty much the same thing. The german economy was not doing very well. None of the European economies have looked particularly healthy and actually across the world you know, it's been a problem from an economic point of view for all of those things you know wars that have dragged on ever longer than we thought and energy prices really going up high, people having concerns, I I suppose, about big political changes that I would say that 2024 was a really bad year now for most businesses 23.
Speaker 3:The second half of it had been a difficult year generally, though, for startups. So after the boom of 22, we had a load of startups across the world. Actually people thinking, if it's this easy to make loads of money and I'm working for a big company, I might as well start up on my own and let the money roll in and have it all myself. And of course, then the market changed and a lot of those startups went. You know, they were set up in 23, some went down in 23, others went down at the beginning of 24.
Speaker 3:But we found that 24 has affected the big organizations and there have been a lot of redundancies across the world, actually in the recruitment sector. Now, in some ways that was clearing out people that perhaps were recruited and weren't good enough in 22 and 23,. When people thought the first quarter of 23, everyone thought here we go still. People were hoping that 22 and the first quarter of 23 was the new normal. Well, it simply wasn't. And funnily enough, I'm doing a talk in the UK for the UK Expo and my title is there's no such thing as business as usual, because there isn't. So not a good year for anybody, I would say, unless you're in certain sectors or small enough to be really agile and to be able to twist and turn. I'm trying to avoid saying pivot. I said it jokingly earlier on, but realistically it was about those who are agile enough.
Speaker 2:That generally isn't the very big companies so not great and I think I heard there was something figures being bandied around in the region of 30% of shrinkage in terms of the industry from redundancies. Did it really look that big?
Speaker 3:We don't know, nobody knows. The figure that was actually bandied around at one stage was a third to 33%. Then it's been quoted. People have hedged their bets and said 30%. If I said it was 22.3%, it would sound as though I'd done the research, but the reality is no one's done that research. But if you're looking at figures, you tend to get figures from the bigger companies, and the bigger companies have laid off a percentage of staff, without question, and a number of those big companies have lost money, which they're not used to doing. And therefore, what are you going to cut back? Well, marketing, training, in some instances, staff that perhaps were the wrong hires in the first place, and therefore it's the bigger companies now that have cut back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay. So I'm keen to sort of move to the current. You know the current climate and, like Australia, obviously you're under a Labour government now I picked up a few tidbits of information, obviously when I was talking to everybody in the UK, but how is that playing out? I've got a sense, but I'd like to hear from you how is the recruitment market responding to a Labour government and what is happening on the ground.
Speaker 3:Ok, so we're not very long into this Labour government, but what I would say is you know, we've had 14 years of a Conservative government that didn't want to get involved in business with regard to legislational change. They were trying to keep things pretty free and flexible. We've certainly seen a once-in-a-generational level of change in legislation that affects the recruitment sector actually and that's where they're going to is much more akin to what's anyway been happening in Australia. So we're certainly heading in that direction. And why would we be surprised? I would say that the rules around contractor taxes are becoming more strict.
Speaker 3:The new employment rights bill, um, will align our recruitment and employment legislation much more closely to australian legislation, and I would say that the recruitment market is, without question, worried about it. So that affects sentiment, even if we feel that the economy's gonna pick up at some stage. I mean, we had a budget not that long ago where national insurance so the cost of employing people, went up in two stints. Uh, minimum wage scenarios affect recruitment companies. You know the increase in national minimum wage at the low end, so less so UPSCO members actually. But the Employment Rights Bill means it's more difficult to employ people. The national insurance increase has meant it's substantially more expensive to employ people, and that means that everybody's worried about it. The rules in that will prevent zero hours contracts, which I think probably needed to be curved, but but not quite at the level. There'll be stronger rights for flexible working and day one protection against redundancy, whereas you've had a two-year period. And it doesn't obviously affect the contract market, but it's looking like it's going to, which is crazy, because if you want a flexible, agile workforce that you can, you know, have when you need them, well, that's being talked about being changed. It hasn't gone through parliament, it's at consultation stage at the minute, but it's moving forward and actually getting rid of people is is going to be substantially more difficult.
Speaker 3:It always felt pretty difficult. As an employer of staff myself, it felt more difficult than it should be. But boy oh boy, if you can't get rid of a contractor when you've got them on a flexible basis, that flexible agile thing disappears. But we've got a history of flexibility within our employment market. So we're starting off from a better place than most countries and and this is a government that's talking about growth, but so far no one's seeing any growth quite the contrary and we're not sure that the decisions they've made so far will provide growth, but often growth comes from external, bigger ticket economic factors rather than just what the government do. We just need hope and we're in full communication about making sure that this government and the choices they're making doesn't curb any potential growth.
Speaker 3:Yeah look, they need to get taxes from somewhere because people want better public services, and you've got a whole British population that are used to an NHS. They want great public services and you've got a whole British population that are used to an NHS. They want great public services, like you might get in the Nordic countries, but they want to pay tax, like you do in America, where there aren't public services in the way that we expect. So you've got to pay for Nordic level public services in the way that the Nordic countries do, but they want lots, but you're paying none.
Speaker 3:So I get that taxes need to come some from somewhere, but focusing on employers means they're not going to employ so many people. So it's it's complex and, without question for the recruitment market, not an ideal situation, and it's not because we've not been lobbying them for years actually, so that we get, when a change was ever going to happen, that we have a government that understands business and don't see employers as the enemy but as part of the solution from a growth perspective rather than the problem. And I feel disappointed as to where we are. The signs so far it's still early days, I get. They need to raise money. They promised they wouldn't raise taxes on workers. They shouldn't have made that promise. I don't think Right.
Speaker 2:Right, interesting. It's going to be very interesting to see what plays out. And you're right, it does feel kind of counterintuitive, doesn't it? That they're making it increasingly harder for employers and businesses in general and yet they're promising growth. And you know, the two do not do not connect, do they? So yeah, it'll be interesting, and it's exactly what everybody feels here. I mean, we're we're three months out from an election here, so it's going to be very interesting.
Speaker 3:We might be on a different side of the fence to you in another few months and, of course, there's an election in germany, just coming up with a likely change, and so so, consequently, that different places left um, but actually let you know, let's see what, what happens.
Speaker 2:A lot of infrastructure vacancies will come up because it's a government, as you would expect, with a labour government, that are doing some big infrastructure projects across the piece yeah, and that I was just about to ask you actually about, I guess, what members are saying, but also, are there any particular sectors that are feeling more optimistic or looking like, you know, growth is on the cards, perhaps a little bit earlier than others? What are members saying at the moment?
Speaker 3:Members are saying they haven't got the focused idea. Please tell us what is going to happen. What we are seeing, though, is that we are seeing a pickup already a tiny pickup, but nonetheless a pickup. We are seeing members that are feeling a bit more optimistic, and if I were to hang my hat on a time frame, I would look at the first quarter of a bit of um. We're seeing the shoots of that turnaround and, again quite sector specific, but I do think that the more classic sectors that have always done well IT IT was always my manner realistically will see a bigger change, because they're coming from a low point that no one's ever seen.
Speaker 3:So a lot of the big projects that were completed in 22 because nothing happened in, you know, sort of lockdown timeframe, and a load of money was spent things are now starting to pick up on spending money, because there's been a couple of years without that spend, and so I think that's coming back, and you cannot, as an end user client, not spend money from a technology point of view, because you get left behind very quickly, and, of course, the big ticket stuff, of course, is artificial intelligence, security oriented scenarios, a big ticket. There's still a big push from an automation point of view. I think a lot of people talking about artificial intelligence really mean automation. Actually they're, you know, they're mixing the two and it's not quite right um, but we're seeing people having to spend to keep in touch with what's going on. That's the end user clients. But that means they'll be recruiting um from companies you know in the recruitment market and is that um in perm or contract?
Speaker 2:you know what the the kind of split looks like at the moment um, contract is picking up.
Speaker 3:Contract always comes first when there's been recessionary worries or the market dipped and that's because there's that level of flexibility if you're predicting wrongly. And so contract definitely picking up and that temp-oriented market before perm, but it's getting there. In certain markets perm has been doing well anyway, as I said, healthcare particularly, and that's not just nhs in the uk, that's across private sector healthcare which has grown because the nhs in the uk has been so heavily burdened. More people are buying private healthcare so that sector's grown.
Speaker 2:But if we look across Europe you can see certain markets are coming back early on yeah yeah okay, um, I'm guessing this will be probably closely aligned to um, to what's happening here, but um, members, I think here are still very much focused on. You know cost saving, efficiencies, offshoring. You know how they, how they can use automation and AI to sort of scale without the cost. Do you have a sort of sense of what the top priorities for firms in the UK are at the moment?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I do. Actually, I think there's still a big focus on keeping an eye on costs, but I think a lot of the cost-saving measures have happened already. So last year there was a huge focus on that. What we're getting back from members is their focus is there's still certainly a focus from an outsourcing point of view should they be setting their back office up in the Philippines, the philippines? Actually, india's still up there, south africa is getting looked at, but the philippines big growth. From that point of view, I think the people that are already offshoring certain things are looking at offshoring more, um, if it's worked well for them. The ones that haven't done it are definitely interested and actually we're looking at running a delegation to the Philippines, to Manila, later on in the year for APSCO members around the world actually to look at how to do that properly, so you don't mess it up. So I think that efficiency and cost savings it's still there, but a lot of the work has already been done.
Speaker 3:The big focus in the uk is how can I sell and get more, how can I sell to get more business right, because I think a lot of the UK businesses and in some ways Germany actually as well, is the same flavor, and in Singapore, and, of course, I fly only tomorrow morning out to Kuala Lumpur to open up SCO in Malaysia, and all of the focus we know is on how can I get more business, and that's an interesting scenario, and so, consequently, we're looking at measures of getting more business for our members, to help them. I think the second priority is how can I structure my business to be a business that, when the market is coming back, is structured well enough to ride a high tide, rather than having cut so much that we can't capture the business as it comes through the window, as it were, and so, consequently, there's quite a big focus from an organization and infrastructure scenario. With regard to systems. People have definitely been looking at that. What I would say is, my view is there's more talk about artificial intelligence within the business than there is money being spent on it.
Speaker 3:Right, because I'm not sure that the majority of the market and the majority of the market are SMEs, let's face it know how to spend their money or don't want to spend any money on anything at the moment, and I think when they do have some money, they're not sure about how to spend it rather than going with a flow of hoping. So the talk about artificial intelligence with the SME market, as I said, I think really it's more about automation than it is about artificial intelligence, but there are ways to augment a growing market with a spend, but they just don't know what to do. So it's about educating themselves. As business leaders, I think on what should I spend money on when I get some which will ultimately make us more efficient and save us money and be more successful? So the focus is about success winning business, making sure we're not spending too much money on infrastructure, but having the infrastructure that can support a growing business. That's what I would say.
Speaker 2:And what about hiring? I mean, obviously we talked earlier about, you know, the redundancies, but is hiring completely off the table? Are there other companies that are looking to sort of put that back on the agenda again?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think hiring is quite low figure-wise at the minute. But let me tell you, if you are a good consultant, you can leave a company that's not doing well and you will always be hired if you can bill money and be good. So there's never a time when a really good, talented person will not be able to move to a company. But I would say that our members, at this moment in time, are not looking to expand their consultancy force at the minute what does salaries look like in you know sort of recruitment consultants at the moment, because they've rocketed much less?
Speaker 3:so I started yeah, I mean I started in recruitment in the 80s and I could certainly say in the past couple of years I was in IT recruitment.
Speaker 3:As I've mentioned, in the past couple of years the average earnings of a recruitment consultant in the IT sector was just over 50% of what I used to earn in the 80s. Wow, yeah, I wasn't bad, you know, I was fairly good. But the reality is there's been a difference, and part of that is because there's less money in recruitment and a lot more organisation, compliance change and a lot more back office required to do the job than there were in the days when I started, which was a new market. Contracting was a brand new market in those days really and so it was just easy. Now it's more complex and you need to have more infrastructure to be a recruitment company. So I get and of course the competition is huge, so I get that people earn less. I would say I don't have the exact figures, but the vast vast majority of APSCO members in the UK did not give salary increases this year for any of their staff.
Speaker 3:The vast vast majority did not give salary, you know, even an inflationary increase. They didn't do it because they can't afford to so salaries have stagnated. Um, they really have stagnated in the past couple of years.
Speaker 2:If you're in a great market, you can make money from bonuses or commission-oriented staff, but base salaries have, without question, stagnated okay, um, I guess the the sort of final thing that I wanted to ask you was obviously appsco uk has a large um professional development team and you do lots of training over there. Um, and I know you touched on, obviously you know, acquiring new business and that obviously comes down to bd um, but is there anything else like what? What is, what's the appetite for professional development and training at the moment within the market and where are they spending the money and what?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the appetite is huge, but the reality is people are just waiting to see a bit of a difference before they're spending loads of money. What they have been spending money on, though, in the last 18 months and it's continuing is leadership development. So we've seen our chartered management institute programs continue to be running, because teams that have some cash still cash is king always want to make sure that their leadership team can drive things forward quickly, and they need to be there ready to go, and so, consequently, there's been a push on that, there's been a surprise and, without question, business development, and what I would say is on B bd, the way you win business now and moving forward is completely different from what it was two years ago, completely changed. So, even if your staff were good at bd then but actually a lot of staff saying 22 were resourcing because requirements were to a penny, there was skill shortages in most sectors, and so it was all about resources, who then perhaps haven't been trained to sell. But even now, because the sales cycle looks so different, the salespeople, the BD people that you did have, don't necessarily have the skill sets currently to sell business in the new market. So, business development, without question the third thing that actually is um being delivered quite a lot and it's a big deal, particularly in the UK, but Germany is pushing forward and in certain other countries and it's different in different countries around the world.
Speaker 3:But this diversity, equality and inclusion piece, where we have kind of formal courses on making sure that our members know what they need to do and how they need to work and then how they can augment their end user clients in their push to be appropriately behaved, what we're finding is a lot of the big companies out there, the global businesses, really are asking questions and you need to have the answer in order to be considered to win business from them, and they're asking sometimes questions for advice and assistance and so, consequently, um, creating understanding, that creation of inclusivity, means you can sell or definitely add value-added services to the big corporates but make a big difference in medium-sized or smaller businesses that are your clients, that don't have big departments to do that. It also helps with understanding as you grow your own business, for heaven's sake, but the reality is it's become a must-have when you're dealing with some businesses and, uh, really could do with when your, when your end user client base, are looking for assistance. So that's grown, uh, quite in quite a big way.
Speaker 3:It's very different in each country. I mean singapore, um, there is an interest in certain areas, but boy oh boy, that looks different from what we're doing in the uk or indeed in germany. It just looks different. Um, I do think that the bigger end user clients are having to be very careful with not messing up and some of them you want to think all of them have a real desire for change, but not necessarily an infrastructure that makes that change that the CEO wants in a global business. Down to a team that are given requirements to recruitment companies or big projects to recruitment companies, there's often a mismatch of expectations and communication as that comes down. So if I were going to pick three, those are the three areas for sure. Leadership, probably, yeah, leadership and BD as the big thing, but the ED&I is part of both of those actually, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:Um that leadership piece, are you talking about people that are moving into leadership? Are you talking about leadership across the board? What is there any particular sort of focus?
Speaker 3:Um, I would say a mix, and that's not because I'm hedging my bets, it's because the reality is, um, there's been a number of people that have moved into leadership whilst there hasn't been enough money to buy training for them. So there's a catch-up play happening that we would be training them if we could afford to. Oops, now we need to, uh, and there. So there's some people that have been a while in leadership roles but haven't had the training.
Speaker 3:Leadership has become more complicated as you've got a more diverse group of people that you're employing, so that's changed, and so there's some topping up of leadership skills at a more senior level, and, with a lot of people coming out of the recruitment market, there are gaps for new leaders that are being promoted, and so, consequently, there's training, which is why, probably, that that's grown so much. There's training across the piece. What I would say from an apsCO point of view is, when we look at our order book for development, it looks great, but a lot of it is being pushed to the second quarter or third, fourth quarters of the year to be delivered and therefore to be paid for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I'm certainly less in the training sense, but from a client sense. A lot of our members are saying that sales process or, you know, the hiring process, is really protracted at the moment. Clients are being very cautious.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, having to be cautious, more difficult to get rid of the wrong person, yeah, yeah. So you know, know, those background check things have never been more important and are happening, having well-trained recruitment consultants that can not only win the business but actually provide a good service to the customer, because it's going to be more difficult to get rid of people. I think end-user clients are much more careful. I think they would quite like a relationship. I think there's still that, like you know, I spoke at some end-user client thing and you know I was asked a question and I said, and darling darn, that's how you would rely on your recruitment partner. And you know, the person who asked the question was like, well, I wouldn't trust a recruitment company to deliver on that. And you think, think, oh but, you should.
Speaker 3:I know it was a bit of a shocker to think really, and you know it was a weird one, but I think there's still that dilemma with those relationships and when enduser clients want more service in a time frame that doesn't allow you to give them the service, when they want to give things out to a broader base of recruitment companies, so is it worth giving them all that service and to spend as little as they can possibly get away with? That mismatch of expectation of what service can be look you know can look like is difficult for recruitment companies, but we need to win over those end user clients, and I think a lot of that is with information. A lot of that is showing expertise in niche areas, so that I think the and I have strong views about this that the new selling to end users is more about facilitating buying and then servicing the hell out of things with the services that your end user needs and wants. Often that's data or analysis of data, and how much should I pay somebody? What's the average one of these people earning, or what are my competitors doing?
Speaker 3:I think, then, is to be much more of that in order to build the relationships which is true consultancy, isn't it? It's true consultancy. I think, however, what we need to ensure is that we charge for true consultancy. I think, however, what we need to ensure is that we charge for true consultancy I don't know whether we've been very good, that's about selling it.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, and showing rather than telling. Yeah, yeah, remember in schools, showing and telling, but I think it's showing rather than telling. It's different. And to be, but I think it's showing rather than telling. It's different. To be honest, quite intriguing, but it's different. And quite yeah, quite a big change whilst we weren't looking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like we've grown up. We've become quite sophisticated. We need to be more sophisticated, I think.
Speaker 3:I think the client base have become. I think they were becoming more sophisticated. I think they've stepped back a bit, actually, and they haven't grown. But all of us research and look at reviews when we buy anything, whether it's a hotel we're going to, whether it's a product we're trying to buy, we research it Will. End user clients do that too. They didn't used to.
Speaker 3:But information isn't necessarily power anymore. It's freely available. Information is kind of called Google, isn't it? And so, consequently, or TripAdvisor or whatever't it, and so, consequently, or trip advisor or whatever else it may be, or glass door, and so, consequently, um, we need to make sure that enabling a buying process is because all of the right information is there and it's about our business, our expertise, because what you read is you know what you actually believe, rather than in what I, a recruiting consultant, is going to tell you. Yeah, so it's different. And I think end-user clients have gone through a stage of sophistication, but I think they've stepped back, and they've stepped back in thinking that the price of everything is key rather than the value they want. A lot for nothing and in stupid time frames, it would be my view. But we can educate without being rude. We can educate. Part of that is Absco's job to do that, and we're up for it. Let's say that across all Abscos, we're up for it. Let's say that across all upscores.
Speaker 2:We're up for it, absolutely. Um, I'm going to leave it there because I know you've got a really busy schedule today. Um, for any of our members listening to this, you're going to be in australia later in the year, aren't you? You're going to come back and join I?
Speaker 3:am looking forward to it. I'm going to be at the amsco australia awards for excellence. They're always the most amazingly good event. I think you let non-members come to that, actually.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I encourage everyone to get involved. So, yes, good night.
Speaker 3:So I would encourage people as well to do that, but I absolutely will be there and I believe you and I are going to be doing some meetings to talk about what's going on, what people can do and, in essence, how to make this year a real success story for everyone, because, let me tell you, we deserve it.
Speaker 2:we do absolutely, and that's a brilliant way to end our conversation. I think, um, any members will be really eager to to maybe sit down and have a lunch with you when you're over and you know you'll be maybe, you know, at the tail end of the year and hopefully a much better year, so you can tell us how it's all unfolded and we can see see what your predictions were like from today. But, um, I just want to thank you again, and always lovely to see you.
Speaker 3:Thanks for your time and we will catch up when you Pleasure Always a pleasure and looking forward to coming down under again. Love it.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to Recruitment Down Under brought to you by APSCO. Join us next time. If it's happening in recruitment in Australia, we'll be talking about it, Thank you.