Recruitment professional Michael Walters launched the Mergent Group agency midway through the pandemic. As COVID spread, the private sector was forced to institute widespread lay-offs and stand-downs; investors were skittish and workers confused and angry. There was a growing need for professional recruitment expertise, particularly in regional Australia.
Walters says he had the relevant skills and experience in the mining and resources market, and he enjoyed dealing with industries in the regions. As the pandemic continued to bite, he decided to launch a recruitment agency in South Australia, using his own funds to get established.
Starting in 2022, at a time of fear, uncertainty and nationwide upheaval, the Mergent Group grew at speed. Walters says he was kept busy balancing a surge of incoming resources sector work with finding the new hires his firm needed to manage the growing list of clients.
“It’s very challenging for a start-up business to go through that kind of growth,” he says.
“What breeds our success is customer service in the process of recruitment,” he says. “It just needs the fundamentals, and if you understand those fundamentals, you’ll do it well. It’s all about securing the interest of the client and building and maintaining trust throughout the lifespan of the business.”
Mergent has joined forces with private sector industries, particularly in regional Australia. Rather than presenting a candidate to several companies, the agency has a “client-centric” policy and works to find the right candidate for the position a specific client company needs to fill, Walters says.
“We’re only dealing with half a dozen to a dozen clients,” he says. “We’re not doing one placement here, one there. We’re fully integrated recruitment partners.”
Now the resources sector is cooling, the agency has worked on diversifying across other often-related industries, such as commercial construction, he says, building a buffer against future slumps.
With a staff of eight, including a consultant in Roxby Downs and another in Perth, the agency is considering strategies for international recruitment. Walters believes recruiting from abroad will prove fundamental in closing Australia’s resources market employment gaps. In the future, he expects Mergent will open offices in Sydney, Brisbane and London.
Labour shortages across the board in Australia’s private sector have highlighted the need for recruitment expertise, Walters says, adding he expects the big labour drain of the future to be centred on transformational energy projects – which account for a substantial slice of major new projects across the nation.
“There’s a huge demand for recruitment services,” he says. He and a colleague recently ran two days of business development and it brought in more roles than the agency had ever had.
‘We backed ouselves’
Another fast-growing professional services company, based in Sydney, has specialised in project management. From the beginning, Alan McIvor and his partner Rowan Tetu decided their new and fast-growing professional services company, Glisk, would “pull together” – working with their clients to get things done.
“We’ll work with a client to make sure things get done, no matter what it is,” McIvor says. “Do you need to move boxes around? We’ll move boxes around.”
The associates met in 2009, both working in project management for a professional services firm, and in 2022 they decided to launch their own company, employing three or four consultants “before they even had a sniff of work”, McIvor says.
He used his savings and Tetu remortgaged his house to fund the firm – loans that have been repaid in full.
“We backed ourselves,” he adds. “If you’ve got a great team, if you’ve got a great product, then people will come. And luckily, that has happened.”
With a CAGR of 965.86 per cent and FY2024 revenue of $3,537,694, Glisk now employs 15 consultants, and the Sydney HQ has been joined by an office in Melbourne.
The leading AFR Fast Starter in the Professional Services category has been consulted by major firms such as Macquarie Bank, Suntory and IAG, as well as the NSW department of education and a range of smaller businesses.
“First and foremost, we’re management consultants,” McIvor says, adding that Glisk specialises in project execution: project and program management, business analysis, and change management.
“We’ve been in consulting for a long time,” he says, “we felt the time was right to work for ourselves and bring something better to the Australian market.”