Do you know who’s the cock of the walk and who are the feather dusters? These 10 certainly do, the finest recruiters across Australia’s creative, marketing and media industries.
And truthfully, there’s rarely been a more important for the industry’s recruiters. There’s a whirlwind of senior talent moves as agencies get squished together, structures get ‘harmonised’ and the need to cut through with smart thinking becomes even more pressing. These are the people who know the girl or guy who fits the bill for everyone in the land.
Now, to be clear, it’s not the easiest list to construct 10 from. The industry, understandably, is opaque due to the sensitivities around roles, particularly senior ones. So we’ve had to lean heavily on our friends and our handy nominations form to get this list into ship-shape order.
We’d also like to give a quick nod to the team at No Sunday Blues—Steph Graham, Charlotte Flood and Mikhaila Warburton—they’ve only just stepped out on their own this year but we’re expecting big things from them.
But onto the ten:
10. Justin Randles, director, Mercury Talent
Justin Randles’ Mercury Talent specialises in recruiting staff in Sydney and Melbourne’s media industries. It covers the top broadcasters, publishers, out of home and retail media, social platforms and adtech across content, sales, product, marketing and senior management specialisms.
That Randles can spot a leader shouldn’t be surprising. After all, he spent 30 years working in the industry with senior roles at Fairfax, Lighthouse and Australian Traveller Media. He also regularly releases information to the market on the mood in the media jobs market, finding this year industry employment in Melbourne was up 1 per cent while Sydney was down 2 per cent for the quarter year-on-year.
9. Belinda Lodge, founder and CEO, iPopulate
Belinda Lodge founded iPopulate in 2009 after stints at executive search firm Morgan Consulting and recruitment business Aquent. Now, she’s applying a very personal touch to her recruitment tactics, with fun images of animals to make LinkedIn posts stand out on the increasingly homogenised platform.
Lodge recruits for roles across her native Melbourne and Sydney. She also serves as deputy chair of the Industry Advisory Board at RMIT and iPopulate sponsors YoungBlood’s the Speed Dating Mentorship Program run in conjunction with the Ad Council. One trusted advisory described Lodge to us as a “trusted confidant” who finds “bloody good people”.
8. Dene Gambotto, founder and managing director, iknowho
Dene Gambotto leads a team of four recruiters at iknowho, following stints in agencies in Sydney and London. She founded iknowho in 2008 and regularly places brand manager and heads of marketing roles upwards for businesses around the country.
iknowho regularly surveys and sweeps the market for insights on the recruitment trends and salary scoops, too. At a time like the present, that information is worth its weight in gold.
7. Anna O’Dea, founder, Agency Iceberg
Melbourne-based Anna O’Dea is one of the most important recruiters in the city (and into Sydney, too). At Agency Iceberg, she drives placements for account manager roles and upwards, as well as creative and content producers.
Agency Iceberg regularly dispenses invaluable resources to the industry on remuneration packages and the cultural packages of different employers. O’Dea herself is a trusted voice in the industry and has judged many of B&T’s awards shows. She’s also recently become a mother.
6. Damian Tynan, partner, Omera
Damian Tynan is a partner at sprawling executive search firm Omera. After spending more than 15 years as a client-side marketer with the likes of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, Tynan joined Hourigan International in 2007. In 2015, he departed Hourigan to join Omera, specialising in the consumer and retail sectors a focus on Customer, Marketing, Digital, and Corporate Affairs.
He’s credited with playing a “significant” role in establishing Omera Partners’ respected reputation and came very highly recommended to B&T.
5. Nick Williams, founder and CEO, Williams International
Nick Williams has been running his eponymous executive search firm for more than 20 years after spending eight years with Leo Burnett. Nowadays, Williams is one of the most trusted advisors and recruiters in the industry with a litany of glowing testimonials from some seriously important people including Nick Garrett and Lilian Sor.
In the last year, Williams has placed senior staffers at Innocean and Havas/Host among others, continues to judge a range of industry awards including the Effies.
4. Esther Clerehan, founder and CEO, CLEREHAN
Esther Clerehan is a living legend and has been working in the creative industries for more than three decades. In 1993, she founded her eponymous recruitment firm and has made some of the most important moves happen, including placing then-26-year-old David Droga at Saatchis Asia as its regional ECD and Wieden+Kennedy’s first international creative hires.
She’s been involved in AWARD School since the early nineties, too, and will always be the first recruiter in the world invited to judge at Cannes Lions.
At last year’s B&T Women in Media Awards, Clerehan was given the Lifetime Achievement award and delivered a rousing speech to the attendees. By her own admission, Clerehan is not as active in recruiting as she once was—though she has hardly downed tools, either—still placing very senior roles and mentoring many of the country’s leading creatives.
3. Michael Kean, global CEO, FBI Talent
Michael Kean is the global CEO and owner of FBI Talent. He leads a team of three in Australia, focused on the creative and design sectors, with two recruiters in the US, too. Kean has been deeply involved within the creative industries for a long time, having co-founded the YoungGuns Awards back in 2000 and worked at Leo Burnett Sydney, among others.
In 2011, Kean (along with colleague Stephen Fenn) took the reigns at FBI after its founder Patsy Peacock stepped away from day-to-day operations.
Kean and the team are regularly placing all manner of roles—including some very senior ones—around the country and across a range of agencies and beyond. But there’s more to FBI and Kean than simply finding big wigs for big jobs. He’s a passionate advocate for improving the pathways for young talent in the industry and drove FBI to launch, LAUNCH, a free-to-enter initiative for student and emerging creative teams in Sydney and Melbourne to showcase their talent and potentially land $10,000 in prize money and full-time jobs at a partner agency.
2. Karen Taylor, CEO, Hourigan International
Karen Taylor has been working in executive search for more than two decades in Sydney and London. Now as the CEO of Hourigan International, she leads a team around the world to place some of the most important roles within the industry.
When she’s not placing senior talent in executive roles—including luring incoming Westpac CMO Michelle Klein back to Australia from Silicon Valley—she’s hiring them to work in her own shop having appointed former HiPages CMO Stuart Tucker as a partner in the firm and Harriet Belsey from The Talent Business in London last year.
1. Lea Walker, founder, Mrs Walker
When it comes to creative recruiters, no one is more important or impactful at the moment than Lea Walker.
She received a number of very strong recommendations to be this year’s number one (including from some others on this list) for her work in the broader industry as well as at Bear Meets Eagle on Fire (BMEOF) of late.
In the last 12 months alone, she’s placed two of the most senior creative leaders in the country, as well as a raft of other CEO and CSO roles. We also understand she brought together the team that won the McDonald’s pitch for Wieden+Kennedy and she’s crucial to Telstra bespoke agency +61.
Her work with BMEOF has been integral to its success, where she has hired a crack team leading to it becoming Australia’s hottest (and one of the world’s) hot shops.
Described as “so much more than a recruiter” our trusted advisors told us she helps build culture in the agency landscape, supports agencies to thrive and the people in them.
She also serves on the AWARD board, judges the AICP Awards and mentors others with the Assisterhood.
And that’s why Walker is the Best of the Best.
