Twenty-seven years. One pair of hands.
I've recruited at every tier of the Australian technology sector, and in 2011 I chose to do it alone, on purpose. This page is why, and what that has produced.
John Hillard
Director, J2 RecruitmentI've recruited at every tier of the Australian technology sector, and in 2011 I chose to do it alone, on purpose. This page is why, and what that has produced.
Before J2, I recruited for the global multinationals: Cisco, Lucent, Fujitsu, HP, KPMG, Deloitte and Optus. Then for the boutique fast-growth pioneers: Allocate Software, Nimbus Cloud, Smart WFM, Bepoz and Oolio, Tribal Group. Government agencies and most things in between.
I founded J2 Recruitment in 2011. The decision to run it as a sole-operator boutique was deliberate. I'd rather work closely and deeply with a small number of clients than broadly and at volume with many. The person who takes your call is the person who does the work, and the person who presents your shortlist is the person who spoke with fifty others to select it.
The simplest way I can put what I do: I am an information and relationship conduit. Market intelligence, opportunity and talent flow through me in both directions, from the market to clients, from clients to candidates, from one sector to the next. The value is in the quality of that flow, not the size of the operation.
Most of the briefs I'm handed come with a translation problem attached. A company has a genuine story, a real differentiator and a leader worth following, and none of it survives the journey into a job description. The engineers it needs to attract read a black-and-white list of requirements and move on. The board, meanwhile, hears the engineering leadership describe the problem in terms it can't act on.
What I've learned to do over 27 years is recognise the audience in front of me and adjust the register without losing the substance. Technical to commercial. Operational to strategic. Plain talk to boardroom, and sales language to engineering language. The same company, described in a way each listener can actually hear. I can speak Meerkat, and translate to Dolphin.
It sounds like a joke, and it is, a little. But it's also the reason a candidate who would have dismissed a client on paper ends up sitting across from its CEO, and the reason that CEO understands what they're buying before the offer goes out.
A workforce management software business, over a decade. I found nine in ten of the people who delivered what was then the largest rostering system deployment in the Southern Hemisphere, inside a state health system.
A defence and national security services company that started with nobody. Eighty-plus contract and permanent placements across systems engineering, project management, software, GIS and technical disciplines took it past a hundred security-cleared people.
Embedded software, QA, systems engineering and operations for a global consumer electronics group, including the people who built the second-largest test lab in that organisation worldwide.
Clients are named on this page only with their say-so. Until then, the numbers stand on their own. Beyond these three: sustained partnerships with scaling businesses in cloud, workforce management, EdTech and hospitality technology.
Black Dog InstituteI'm a long-standing supporter of the Black Dog Institute, a not-for-profit research, clinical and community organisation with specialist expertise in depression and bipolar disorder. blackdoginstitute.org.au
Autism Spectrum AustraliaI also support Aspect, Australia's leading service provider for people on the autism spectrum. autismspectrum.org.au
Australian Industry & Defence NetworkI'm an active member of AIDN NSW, the peak industry association for Australian SMEs doing defence-related business. It is one of the channels I use to bring visibility to defence-aligned clients. aidn.org.au
RCSA corporate memberJ2 is a corporate member of the Recruitment, Consulting and Staffing Association, the professional body for the recruitment sector in Australia and New Zealand. I hold myself to the RCSA Code for Professional Conduct in every engagement. rcsa.com.au
If you have a hire a generalist will fail to solve, I'd rather talk it through than read a submission. Email first and I'll call you back the same day I can.