Last week, this small ASX-listed company entered a binding agreement to buy the remaining assets of Hudson Australia from the company’s administrators. On the numbers alone, it's a unique deal, one without precedent in the local industry

The deal (broad…

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On Monday morning, HiTech Australia Group announced to the ASX its deal to acquire the distressed assets of Hudson Australia from the company’s administrators.

“HiTech Group Australia Limited has announced its acquisition of Hudson Global Resources Australia, aiming to create a leading national workforce solutions and professional services platform. The …

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Bill Pollock, the founder of Drake International, passed away peacefully last week at his home in Monaco, at the age of 97. Born Robert William Pollock in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1928, the youngest of nine children of Austrian and Polish immigrants, Pollock grew up during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

As a teen, he took a job mowing lawns, but when the…

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After launching the business in April 2022, three years of investment had failed to gain any …

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Less than 48 hours after the reconvened second creditors’ meeting voted to return the company’s control to the same people who called in the administrators ten weeks ago, LHA commissioner Steve Dargavel delivered a fatal blow to Hudson’s business in Victoria.

“Major recruitment agency has Victorian licence cancelled after directors found unfit to operate a labour hire company,” screamed the LHA’s media release.

The release listed the reasons for LHA forming the view that Hudson contravened the Labour Hire Licensing Act 2018 (Vic), as follows:

• the significant history of unlawful conduct by Hudson, including breaches of workplace, taxation, corporations and labour hire laws

• substantial unpaid debts to workers, the government and creditors, including over $8 million in unpaid superannuation and wages, and an ATO debt of over $20 million

• issues with compliance capacity, given Hudson is under external administration, is subject to active criminal proceedings from ASIC, has traded at a loss for several years, and has not demonstrated meaningful accountability or governance reform

• several transactions were identified by the company administrator as likely representing breaches of directors’ duties, including forgiveness of $11 million in debts owed by related companies

• failure to declare its CEO and other executives as decision-makers within the company, in contravention of the Act.

The cancellation takes effect on 10 July.

Hudson is the LHA’s first major scalp after stronger labour hire licensing laws took effect in Victoria on 1 June 2026, including a more stringent ‘fit and proper person’ test.

Dargavel’s prompt action after control of the company was returned to the existing executives indicated his eagerness to flex the LHA’s enhanced powers due to the increased legal compliance requirements, and financial viability‘ benchmarks that form part of the ‘fit and proper person’ assessment.

Dargavel did not mince his words in the LHA’s media release, offering a range of withering comments about the conduct of Hudson’s owners.

“We found it unacceptable – as I’m sure competent businesses would – for Hudson to continue to make a mockery of the legal obligations everyone else must comply with. Enough is enough.

“The administrator’s recommended way forward extinguishes claims against the company by workers and other creditors, likely reducing workers’ ability to recover what they’re owed.”

“While the company administrator says Hudson can trade its way out of this situation, based on the company’s history and the evidence provided, I’m not satisfied that’s the case.”

“Through its conduct, Hudson has badly let down its workforce, customers, creditors and the wider community. I have concluded greater harm would likely arise if Hudson continued to operate.”

The ATO has said Hudson currently owes $3.8 million in super, as of March and $21.5 million in taxes.

The AFR reported that Victoria generates $39 million in annual revenue for Hudson from on-hire assignments, or 15 per cent of its total contracting revenue, according to the WLP Restructuring’s report.

As of May, according to the AFR, Hudson provided 300 workers to Victoria, including critical roles across state departments and agencies such as state revenue, health, justice, corrections and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

The LHA said it had notified state government departments about the cancellation to provide an opportunity to make alternative arrangements for the continuity of Hudson’s on-hire employees.

In a report to the second creditors’ meeting on 24 June, the administrators summarised the reasons for the company’s failure as; declining revenue leading to ongoing operating losses, significant PAYG non-compliance and historical failure to correctly report and remit PAYG.

The ATO, which voted against the proposal to return the company’s control to the existing executives, alleges that Hudson’s forgiveness of $11 million in loans in the lead-up to the administration was also a significant contributing factor, including a $7 million loan to Hudson's holding company, Apache.

On the day of the reconvened second creditors’ meeting, the Fair Work Commission signed a three-year procurement contract with Hudson for staff worth $172,672, according to the AFR.

The Victorian LHA’s decisive action and damning commentary will put pressure on the other jurisdictions that require providers of on-hire staff to hold a labour hire licence to review Hudson’s fitness to hold such a licence.

Of those jurisdictions, the ACT and Queensland are of primary concern to Hudson, as they represent by far the company’s two largest contractor markets.

Regardless of how quickly those respective LHAs act, or if they act at all, the Victorian LHA may have delivered a fatal blow to the lingering hopes that Hudson could trade its way back to health.

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I heard about Jane McNeill many months before I met her.

I joined Accountancy Personnel (or ‘AP’ as it was then known, before it became Hays) in London in February 1989, when the undisputed fee king of AP was Jonathan Farn. Farn was the manager of the largest AP office, which was referred to throughout the company as 'Moorgate' (as it was located at 63-6…

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Michael Jones, MRCSA was the popular winner of the 2026 RCSA (Aus) Recruitment Professional of the Year, announced at the Rec Gala at the Melbourne Town Hall on 21 May 2026.

For the first time in the history of this award category, the winner was a person who operates predominantly as an industry vendor.

Michael started his recruitment career 19 years ago…

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Photo credit: RCSA  At the recent Rec Gala (Australia) held at the iconic Melbourne Town Hall, RCSA President Natasha Olsson-Seeto congratulated Charles Cameron on his ten-year anniversary as RCSA CEO (photo, above) and thanked him for his service and commitment to the association.

I followed up with a request for my fifth interview with Charles. Charles…

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This time, the patsy is Bill Barker, whose Sensory Overload podcast (“Spotify’s 2025 Breakout Podcast of the Year”) promises, “ From the kind of real-life dilemmas you only confess at 2 A.M. to a stranger… to guest interviews that flip your worldview upside down. Your host, Bill Barker, takes you inside the conversations you didn’t know you needed and won’t forget once you hear them.”

Podcast episode titles such as Fleeing Mykonos, Super yachts and why you have to be single in Europe and "my bf sent me his ex's sex tape"- am i overreacting? And Mitch Eliot: Breakups, Sexuality and Figuring yourself out give you a flavour of what you can expect from investing any of your waking hours with an episode of Sensory Overload.

The episode LUKE HEMMINGS | Fraud Allegations | Early Life Struggles | Public allegations dropped earlier this week.

Sadly, for Barker’s reputation, he commits two of the greatest sins in content production – he gives a platform to a person who has red flags flying from every mast and, maybe worst of all, his guest is boring.

Hemmings’ desperation to launder his name (well, it’s not really his name, it’s just the name he is using for the moment) is exposed right at the top of the interview when Barker tells the audience Hemmings “reached out” to him and thanks him for “flying down” for the interview.

Barker clearly had never heard of him, and, based on the questions he asks Hemmings, undertakes very little research before the interview.

Hemmings makes sure the sympathy card is played early on when he relates a sob story about his mother having no money because his father “basically drained all the accounts”. He goes on to allude to his father’s world “…of the red light district of Sydney, drugs, alcohol, violence” which led to “…a lot of childhood trauma that wasn't dealt with appropriately.”

If any of this is remotely true (unlikely) then there is plenty for a psychologist to analyse in discovering the foundation of Hemming’s life as a person who simply uses people for what he can drain from them, then he moves on without a single ounce of care or concern for the consequences.

Barker attempts to unpack some of the allegations about Hemmings, which seem to be mainly drawn from one of my recent blog posts but he’s no match for his guest, who skates past him effortlessly, with such gems as “ (the) issue that happened in Canberra, but that was kind of left behind….. as the director I had to make a decision that was best for all stakeholders. And that was to place the business into voluntary administration.”

No details. No explanation. No apology.

Barker then asks Hemmings about the allegations of fraud, referencing my blog post about the raid on the Whitefox offices on the Gold Coast in July 2024.

Hemmings responds, “That kind of played out in court, still playing out, but we've gotten it to a stage now where we've reached mediation. So it's going through mediation stage. A matter that's again still before the courts, a process that I respect….. I can say wholeheartedly that with the legal team that I've got engaged and where it's at, the matter certainly progressed and I'm optimistic that a resolution will be reached.”

Hemmings does not take the opportunity to deny the allegations or to provide any context for them.

He does, however, take the opportunity to moan about my journalistic practises, complaining to Barker that I haven’t “… even contacted (him) for comment.”

Thankfully for Hemmings financial position, none of the Gold Coast Bulletin’s coverage or my coverage about his various misadventures has impacted his business, as he tells Barker, “… the Gold Coast marketplace has been pretty receptive to the position. They understand. And I think you know, from looking at it from a consumer point of view, that it's framed me positively as the director and not just the business. I think that's kind of worked in my favour.”

Later, he confirms that he has “retained a majority of clients” losing “.. maybe one or two.”

Maybe I should send him an invoice for the helpful publicity?

Although he does a complete pivot towards the end of the interview by suggesting he believes he has “a very strong case” against me and (the Walkley and Clarion Award-winning journalist business editor of the Gold Coast Bulletin), Kathleen Skene.”

So, which is it, Luke - the publicity has worked in your favour, or it hasn’t? Make up your mind.

Towards the end of the interview, Barker asks, “Is there anybody you feel in business that you might owe an apology to or that practised in a way that might not be in the positive favour of others?”

Predictably, Hemmings obfuscates with a word salad response, offering not a hint of an apology to anyone for anything he has done.

“A hundred per cent. I think you know that's probably a lot with what happens essentially with the liquidation. Business(es)… going (in)to liquidation every day. It's not an easy thing to do. There's obviously victims on all sides of the table, the business, creditors, staff, all that kind of stuff…”

When asked about the current legal process, Hemmings suggests it could “…potentially could be another two years.”

Meanwhile, Luke pontificates, “….but at the end of the day, I think there is a hell of a lot of lessons learned and a great deal of mistakes made. I own that.”

No. You don’t, Luke. You have never truly owned up to any mistake.

You haven’t apologised to a single person because you never reflect; never think about the impact your actions have on others, you only think about yourself.

The Whitefox Recruitment summary of the podcast episode (“For Luke, the conversation was not about presenting a polished version of success. It was about speaking openly, honestly and directly”) confirms that the unstoppable narcissism of Luke Hemmings continues.

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Stephenson’s LinkedIn profile has disappeared, along with the Leo Jackson company page and the company page of his consulting business Ephrams. His tell-all podcast has remained dormant since the fourth episode three months ago. I understand all four Leo Jackson employees were suddenly let go last week.

The Leo Jackson and Ephrams websites remain live as of Thursday, 21 May 2026.

Sources suggest these recent events may relate to a new Director Penalty Notice connected to Stephenson’s role in the February 2025 collapse of his previous venture, Collar Group, although that remains unconfirmed.

Former Collar employees, still owed money following the business's collapse, confirmed last week that they have not heard anything official from the liquidators since a third dividend payment was made to priority creditors in late December 2025.

I understand the liquidators are currently analysing several director-related transactions that occurred shortly before the company collapsed on 28 February 2025.

The liquidators continue to review the sequence of events that led up to the company’s collapse to determine whether breaches of director duties occurred in respect of insolvent trading.

Separately, an ATO assessment has increased the company’s debt in respect of additional superannuation owed to former Collar employees.

There is no deadline or timeframe for the finalisation of the liquidators’ investigation and a subsequent report to Collar Group creditors.

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Here’s a brief timeline of significant events in the life of Hudson Global Resources (Aust) Pty Limited.

1999: Morgan and Banks shareholders agree to a merger with TMP Worldwide

2003: TMP Worldwide is split into the monster.com job board business and the staffing business, Hudson Highland (later renamed Hudson Australia).

2018: Hudson Global sells Hudson Asia Pacific to Apache Group, which comprised members of the local management team led by CEO Mark Steyn for $6 million. Apache Group also acquires the business’s short-term debt in Asia Pacific ($6.3m) and continues to trade under the name Hudson Australia (no common ownership with the global company Hudson Talent Solutions).

November 2019: Hudson signs a deal with talent platform Expert360, predicting the alliance will significantly reduce the time it takes Hudson to match candidates to roles. The AFR reports that the deal is forecast to add $500 million in annual work to Expert360's platform.

January 2020: Hudson establishes flexhive by Hudson, a talent platform that provides a range of pre-screened talent, including remote workers based in the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia.

June 2020: Aggregate data for the Federal Government’s Recruitment and Related Services panel is published, covering the six financial years 2013-14 to 2018-19. By contract value, Hudson is in 3^rd place with contracts valued at $63.3 million, a long way behind the number one provider, Hays Australia ($486.6 million)

September 2020: Hudson self-reports underpayments to on-hire workers to the FWO, after an internal review found that it had applied the wrong awards to some workers and incorrectly failed to apply any award to others. A subsequent review covering most on-hire employees found Hudson had failed to pay the required minimum pay rates, casual loading, overtime, public holiday penalty rates, shift work penalties ,and allowances. It had also failed to provide required meal breaks and minimum shift engagements.

December 2021: Hudson commits to rectifying underpayments as part of an Enforceable Undertaking (EU) signed with the Fair Work Ombudsman. Hudson admits that 5,325 current and former on-hire employees were underpaid $3.46 million in wages and $345,617 in superannuation between 2014 and 2020. Hudson is required to back-pay all known underpayments and superannuation, plus accumulated interest of $754,663.35, by January 2022. Hudson is also required to make a $172,000 contrition payment to the Commonwealth’s Consolidated Revenue Fund. As part of the EU, Hudson commits to establishing a specialist on-hire support team to approve award coverage and pay rates for each new on-hire placement.

2021: Hudson enters into an invoice finance facility with Scottish Pacific Business Finance Pty Ltd (ScotPac). Under the facility, ScotPac agrees to advance up to 85% of Hudson’s receivables in exchange for fees, charges and rights of assignment.

21 May 2022: The Federal Labor Party wins government after nine years in opposition.

December 2022: Hudson’s annual disclosed Federal Government billings peak at $159 million from 1,188 contracts, an almost trebling of billings since 2018.

May 2023: The Department of Finance’s Audit of Employment within the Australian Public Service is released. The audit’s examination of the 2021-22 financial year concludes that roughly 54,000 full time-equivalent roles are occupied by external workers, on top of the 144,000 staff directly employed in the APS. At the launch of the audit, public service minister Katy Gallagher commits the government to replacing on-hire workers with permanent public servants.

September 2024: Group CEO Mark Steyn moves to the role of Non-Executive Chairman, replaced by Dean Davidson, who is elevated from a divisional CEO role. Martin Hayden, a member of the original management buyout team (then COO), departs Hudson after the closure of Flexhive by Hudson, having served as its CEO since October 2021.

2025: ASIC issues charges against Hudson Australia for failure to lodge financial accounts for the 2022, 2023 and 2024 financial years.

2025: The Queensland government’s disclosed annual spend with Hudson drops 73% from its 2023 peak of $100 million to $27 million in 2025.

December 2025: Hudson’s annual disclosed Federal Government billings drop 38% from their 2022 peak to $95 million from 516 contracts in 2025.

30 March 2026: The ATO issues a Notice to ScotPac, requiring them to remit 20% of all drawdowns to the ATO.

22 April 2026: Hudson Global Resources (Aust) Pty Limited enters voluntary administration appointing WLP Restructuring to manage the process, aimed at restructuring and recapitalising to address legacy financial issues. The Administrators state they will continue to trade the Company on a business-as-usual basis, with no interruption to operations, employment or customer contracts, as the restructuring process is initiated. Hudson holds approximately $950,000 in cash and owes ScotPac the equivalent of four weeks of receivables. ScotPac declines any further drawdowns while Hudson remains in voluntary administration.

30 April 2026: The Federal Government disclosed billings of $24 million across 171 contracts with Hudson for the first four months of 2026.

^April 2026: The administrators negotiate a new funding agreement with ScotPac. The administrators draw down on the new funding agreement and ScotPac remits approximately $804,000 to the ATO in compliance with the ATO Notice. The administrators write to the Commissioner requesting that the ATO Notice be withdrawn on the basis that Hudson was in voluntary administration. The Commissioner declines to withdraw the ATO Notice.

4 May 2026: Awardedtenders website publishes article stating AusTender records show $925.7 million in federal billings to Hudson since 2015 across 100 agencies with 461 contracts worth $132.5m remaining active — concentrated on the Department of Finance's People Panel and the DTA's Digital Marketplace. The most valuable current customer is the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, with $20 million worth of current contracts. At the state and territory level, the Queensland government is reported to have the largest visible Hudson disclosure, with the consolidated feed recording approximately $279 million in disclosed contract value across 2,582 notices since 1995.

5 May 2026: The first creditors' meeting is held. The administrators outline the company’s debts to the tune of nearly $48 million, comprised of $12.5m to secured creditors (majority to ScotPac), $5.2m super ($4m Jan - April 2026, $1.2m 1 - 22 April), $2.3m other employee entitlements and $27.6m to 19 unsecured creditors (including approximately $19 m to the ATO). The administrators advise a draft deed of company arrangement (DOCA) has been put forward by a consortium of management and directors of Hudson to recapitalise the business

8 May 2026: Deadline for indicative offers to be submitted to TIP Group, corporate advisers to the administrators

11 May 2026: The AFR reports sources as stating Hudson “has been unprofitable for some time.” In response, the administrators issue a statement: “We will be assessing the Company’s historical financial information and causes for its current financial position as part of our ongoing investigations, the details of which will be confirmed and disclosed to creditors in our 439A report ahead of the second meeting of creditors.”

18 May 2026: Deadline for binding conditional offers to be submitted to TIP Group.

The hard-to-escape conclusion from events over the past eight years of Hudson’s most recent ownership is that five key factors have led Hudson to their current state:

• a rapid decline in Federal Government work after the election of Labor Government in 2022,

• an even larger drop-off in state and territory government work over the same period,

• unprofitable new ventures

• poor financial management

• unfavourable economic conditions

#20 May 2026: The NSW Supreme Court rules on an urgent application (under Section 440B - Restriction of third-party rights, and Section 447A - General Power of the Court) by the Administrators to restrain operation of the ATO's Notice of 30 March 2026. The Court rules in favour of the Administrators concluding that the Notice effectively redirected funds to the ATO and deprived the Administrators of cash flow that would otherwise be used to preserve the business and maximise return to creditors. The Court accepted that the Notice should be stayed for the limited purposes of advancing the voluntary administration. Given its impact on the ATO’s enforcement powers, the decision may be subject to future appeal. The administrators are unsuccessful in clawing back payments made by ScotPac to the ATO after the date of voluntary administration.

*27 May 2026: The second creditors' meeting is adjourned after a proposed DOCA is withdrawn before the meeting and no other proposals or offers are tabled for consideration. The Administrators advise that they expect to release a supplementary report outlining the details to be voted on when the second meeting reconvenes. If no DOCA(s) or offers deemed by the Administrators to be worthy of creditors' consideration materialise, the company will be liquidated.

**24 June 2026: The second creditors' meeting reconvenes. Three proposals are presented to the meeting. The administrators recommend an internal management buyout led by Hudson executives, including its CEO and CFO, over rival offers from ASX-listed HiTech Group and WorkPac.  More than 450 Hudson employees voted for the internal option, which establishes a $16.2 million creditors' trust in exchange for extinguishing all claims against the directors.

**26 June 2026: Victoria’s Labour Hire Authority (LHA) cancels Hudson’s labour hire licence. The cancellation effectively bans the company from operating in the state, with the LHA having formed the view that Hudson contravened the Labour Hire Licensing Act 2018 (Vic), noting: the significant history of unlawful conduct by Hudson, including breaches of workplace, taxation, corporations and labour hire laws; substantial unpaid debts to workers, the government and creditors, including over $8 million in unpaid superannuation and wages, and an ATO debt of over $20 million; issues with compliance capacity, given Hudson is under external administration, is subject to active criminal proceedings from ASIC, has traded at a loss for several years, and has not demonstrated meaningful accountability or governance reform; several transactions were identified by the company administrator as likely representing breaches of directors’ duties, including forgiveness of $11 million in debts owed by related companies and failure to declare its CEO and other executives as decision-makers within the company, in contravention of the Act. The licence cancellation takes effect on 10 July 2026.

It looks to be a very, very tough road back from here.

*updated 29 May, 2026

#updated 5 June 2026 (shout out to Sean Walters's post)

^updated 16 June 2026

** updated 29 June 2026

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The role of managing director for specialist recruitment in Australia has been made redundant as part of a major restructure of the Hays ANZ business, which was announced yesterday in an email to all Hays ANZ employees by Asia Pacific CEO Matthew Dickason (pictured, right).

As a result, Jane McNeill, the incumbent and long-time Hays executive in the UK and Australia, will leave the company at the end of the financial year, and four other senior executives will also depart over the next seven weeks.

McNeill’s role has been split along regional lines, with four new ANZ managing directors being appointed.

Incumbent regional director for Western Australia, Claire Forsyth, will have responsibility for WA and South Australia.

Simon Bristow is given responsibility for the Northern Territory, in addition to his existing Queensland role.

Sydney-based Andrew Hanson, currently the managing director for corporate and professional in ANZ, will lead the New South Wales, ACT and federal government divisions.

David Trollope, having relocated from the Netherlands three years ago to run Hays New Zealand, will relocate again, from Auckland to Melbourne, having been handed responsibility for Victoria and Tasmania in addition to his existing NZ responsibilities.

The restructuring and new appointments have created a domino effect: other senior Hays executives, now with a narrower remit or left with a diminished career path, have accepted redundancy packages or chosen to leave.

Melbourne-based senior regional director Sue Drew, departs after more than three decades with the company.

Also finishing at the end of the current financial year, along with Drew and McNeill, is incumbent New South Wales state director David Cawley.

The managing director for technology and technical workforce solutions Adam Shapley and director of the mining specialism, nationally, Ged Welsh have both chosen more immediate exits. Welsh finishes tomorrow and Shapley leaves next Friday.

The other direct reports of Dickason’s who have an Asia Pacific remit, Shane Little (MD, Enterprise Solutions, APAC), Lisa Morris (Chief Customer Officer, APAC), and Marc Burrage (MD, Asia), remain within the new structure, with the same reporting line.

The elevation of Dickason to the APAC MD role in early 2023 was at a time when the turnover of  senior executive leaders at Hays globally, including notable local executives, Melbourne-based ANZ managing director Nick Deligiannis and Sydney-based global customer experience director, Jacky Carter, was uncharacteristically high.

Dickason has sought to re-size the ANZ business in the face of an ongoing slump in sales and profit, most significantly overseeing a dramatic reduction in fee-earner headcount.

In its most recent half-year results Hays ANZ reported 645 fee-earners as of 31 December 2025, representing a 42% decline from 1110 consultants employed as of 31 December 2022.

The imminent departures of McNeill, Drew, Shapley, Cawley and, Welsh, represent a combined 145 years of Hays experience walking out the door over the next seven weeks, which will undoubtedly be felt across the local business in a variety of ways.

However, a declining business means fewer opportunities for the talent coming through the ranks unless there is movement in the upper layers of leadership.

If that movement is not voluntary, then it’s up to the person at the top to make the tough calls.

Otherwise there is a risk of the next generation of talent, seeing the log jam of people ahead of them, departing for greener pastures.

Whether Dickason has made the right calls will be seen in the trajectory of the Hays ANZ business in the next three years.

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A curious run of global executive departures at Hays

For sure.

But you’re here now, so you may as well keep reading.

The problem with working for Greg Savage is that you think it’s normal to have a boss who wants you to be better, drives you to be better, and will help you be better….if you are prepared to put in the work.

There is no such thing as a perfect boss, and Greg’s two books detail the mistakes he has made and what he has learned from them.

I didn’t like everything Greg did, agree with everything he did, or necessarily always agree with the way that he did what he did, but I respected the hell out of his right to make those decisions and execute them his way.

Greg had earned, and continued to earn, my respect over the nine years we worked at the same company, either as my boss’s boss or as the person I reported to.

Most employees have a default position of respect for their new boss. Then that boss either justifies that respect or loses that respect.

Without knowing it, many bosses lose the respect of their direct reports. The loss of respect is unlikely to be immediate (although I was bad enough to accomplish that in the early days of my leadership).

The four most common ways bosses lose the respect of their team are the following:

• Make promises they don’t keep – mostly these promises are ‘small’, such as a response to a request, a promise to meet, a promise to create an introduction etc. If your boss can’t consistently keep ‘small’ promises, how could you trust them to keep big ones?

• Failure to recognise, and act on, incompetent, poorly behaved or uncommitted team members – how can any boss expect to build a culture to be proud of if they appear oblivious to those not pulling their weight? Those pulling their weight notice and are resentful of that obliviousness or indifference, whether they say so or not.

• Avoidance of hard decisions – being a leader means making timely decisions about scarce resources such as time, money, and people, with (in many cases) incomplete information. It’s natural, and almost always an error, for a leader to defer a difficult decision because "I need more time". Rarely does more time provide greater clarity or change the decision that needs to be made.

• Lack of care – if you don’t care about people and standards, then please don’t think you can lead. The people who report to you notice your lack of care, and they will soon stop caring as well. Why should they care when somebody who is paid more doesn’t seem to?

Greg, overwhelmingly, kept his promises, acted on incompetent, poorly behaved, or uncommitted team members, made hard decisions, and cared about people and standards.

Having a boss who can tick those four boxes creates an employee’s expectation of a future boss that, in my experience, is very hard to find.

A subsequent boss of mine was so far from the standard that I was used to with Greg that I started down a path to self-employment that was fulfilled nearly three years later.

The problem with working for Greg Savage was that I found it impossible to work for a leader who fails to keep their promises, ignores incompetent, poorly behaved or uncommitted team members, avoids hard decisions and doesn’t care about people and standards.

I decided that ‘problem’ was a good reason for becoming self-employed.

I suspect it’s also why many agency recruiters seem to be choosing self-employment over remaining an employee.

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As I outlined last year when I dissected Ephram Stephenson’s attempt to explain the collapse of the Collar Group, Stephenson attempted, in a podcast interview, to accept responsibility for Collar’s cashflow crisis and ultimate collapse, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Stephenson just wanted to keep looking to the future, rather than being confronted with the reality of how his behaviour as sole director and CEO, caused so much financial and emotional damage to hundreds of people.

Whether Stephenson has genuinely reflected on his behaviour and learned anything about personal responsibility will be revealed in the not-too-distant future as he attempts to build his new business, Leo Jackson.

The latest recruitment agency owner to fail the hall-of-mirrors test of personal responsibility is Luke Hemmings.

Yesterday, Hemmings took to LinkedIn, in a typical display of victimhood that has been the man’s hallmark, to announce a ‘day of closure’.

In his tedious and narcissistic post, Hemmings whined long and hard about the “….serious allegations, sustained finger-pointing and intense scrutiny” surrounding the collapse of his Canberra recruitment agency, Coceptive (which morphed into Whitefox Recruitment).

Hemmings bemoaned the “…repeated attempts to paint the worst possible version of my involvement before the full process had run its course, and the weight of living under that level of scrutiny from 2021 through to 2026 is difficult to properly put into words.”

Playing the heavy-the-head-that-wears-the-crown line, Hemmings lamented, “Directors are often required to make difficult decisions in real time, under pressure, and in circumstances where there is no easy path. In that case, I exercised my discretion as a director, and as someone involved in the management of the company, in what I believed were the best interests of the firm and all stakeholders connected to it.”

Showing a puddle-like depth of maturity and Trump-like willingness to reflect on his own behavior, Hemmings just wants to move on (and hopes we will too).

“With the formal administration process now having come to an end, I consider that chapter closed.

My current businesses are separate entities, operating separately, and they are not embroiled in that historical matter. They should not be conflated with events arising from a different company, in a different jurisdiction, during a different chapter of my life.

My attention remains firmly on the present, on the businesses I lead today, and on continuing to move forward with clarity, discipline and purpose.”

How self-indulgent.

How predictable.

No willingness to admit any responsibility

No apology.

No reflection on lessons learned.

Just onwards toward a slightly different version of the same failures Hemmings has presided over time and time again.

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Although I didn’t know what degree I would enrol in or what career that degree might lead to, I knew one thing very clearly – a university degree provided me with a big advantage in the job market (photo right: a smug University of Tasmania economics student after his 1988 graduation ceremony)

My father had put himself through six years of night school to earn his accounting qualification because he knew his early-career clerical jobs were not taking him anywhere he wanted to go. His hard-won jump up the career ladder, courtesy of tertiary education, had rubbed off on me.

The round of campus interviews conducted midway through each academic year at the University of Tasmania by the big accounting firms, global oil companies, ASX top 50 companies, and assorted multinationals seemed to produce offers for almost every graduate with top-end-of-town career aspirations.

I didn’t know any unemployed graduates, and any graduate who joined an employer below their expectations seemed to have little doubt that they could, in the next year or three, work their way into a better job or an accelerated career path with a more desirable employer.

In the twentieth century and much of the current century, a degree was an unambiguous signal to employers that you possessed intelligence, drive, and resilience.

Last month, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a study, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, using employment data from up to November 2025, that analysed unemployment and underemployment rates along with early-career and mid-career earnings for 73 different college majors.

The study noted:

• Unemployment among recent college graduates stands at 5.6%, substantially lower than the 7.8% rate experienced by young workers without a college degree, but higher than the 3.1% rate for college-educated workers ages 22 to 65 and the 4.2% rate for adults overall.

• Computer engineering and computer science appear to be facing new hiring headwinds, supporting the notion that the AI revolution is disrupting the job market.

• High employment rates appear to involve a trade-off with relatively low salaries. Several of the highest-employment majors, like some of those in education, were among the lowest fields when it came to early-career wages

• Overall, 42% of recent college graduates were classified as underemployed, the highest level since 2020 (the study defined underemployment as “the share of graduates working in jobs that typically do not require a college degree).

​The most recent data was more confronting for graduates in the United States: As of February 2026, the national unemployment rate for recent college graduates aged 20-24 was 7.3%, almost two-thirds higher than the national unemployment rate of all workers (4.4%).

Since the 1980s, American college graduates have enjoyed an unemployment rate that was half that of workers with only a high school diploma. In the past five years, that differential has shrunk to only two-thirds.

The trend of major U.S. employers removing a degree as a prerequisite for many jobs previously reserved for graduates has accelerated.

IBM has eliminated degree requirements for 50% of its U.S. ​positions, Delta Airlines has also removed degree requirements as a precondition for hiring pilots and other positions, ​Google dropped degree requirements for many technical roles in 2021, having found no correlation between academic credentials and job performance, and last September, Walmart announced plans to remove diploma mandates from hundreds of corporate jobs.

Only 18% of US job postings still list degree requirements, down from over 50% just three years ago.

The reasons would appear to be the recognition that a degree doesn’t predict job performance, the knowledge acquired during a three or four-year degree has a rapidly diminishing shelf life, and that micro courses, such as Google Career Certificates, provide more affordable, accessible and credible further education options for jobseekers across all socioeconomic backgrounds, helping broaden the diversity of talent.

The pessimism about future prospects for graduates, in the U.S. at least, isn’t hard to find.

Last June, The Economist published a piece Why Today’s Graduates are Screwed, concluding that ​the traditional "university wage premium," which measures how much more graduates earn, has been shrinking in the US, Britain, and Canada, and that job satisfaction among graduates has also been falling sharply

In Australia, the (less recent) data is slightly less grim: In 2024, among young adults aged 25-34, 1.7% of those with tertiary attainment were unemployed, 7.2% of those who lack an upper secondary qualification and for those with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary attainment, the unemployment rate was 4%.

Industry vendor Adzuna reported that ​last month, the number of advertised graduate jobs in the UK fell below 10,000 for the first time since they began tracking this metric in April 2016. Universities in the U.K awarded 555,835 undergraduate qualifications in the 2023/24 academic year, a record high.

The trends in both data sets point to the inevitable conclusion that the number of frustrated and angry debt-laden students without the jobs they expected to be offered upon graduating will continue to rise rapidly.

More consequentially, all of these trends are apparent, as we are only just beginning to see how advances in AI are affecting companies’ entry-level hiring volumes.

The Federal Government said the quiet bit out loud this week when Dr. Andrew Leigh, a former professor of economics at ANU and current Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury, posited that a university degree might become less valuable for securing a job in the age of artificial intelligence.

​If the acquisition of an expensive, time-consuming tertiary education does not reliably yield a premium in the job market, then demand for such traditional education will slump.

The data may vary across countries, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that a crisis is looming in the not-too-distant future.

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