Ross bucks the recruitment market trend

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 05 August 2008 17:00

IT People - Recruitment

Ms Moon, who was until four months ago CEO of IT peak industry body the Australian Information Industries Association, is no stranger to IT and says she relishes the opportunity to work for an Australian publicly listed recruiter.

"Prior to Ross Julia Ross, I had only worked for American multinationals," she says.

"There's a real attraction to work for a listed Australian company. It provides an opportunity to see a direct impact of what I do potentially on the earnings per share - some really hard line commercial measures."

According to Ms Moon, recruiters - especially IT recruiters with large contractor bases - have been put under pressure because of rising interest rates.

"There's no doubt the recruitment industry, because they pay temps and contractors before they get the money in from the clients, carry not just organisational debt but also financial debt," says Ms Moon.

"So good management around the terms and conditions that you hold with your clients and ensuring that your debt collection is first rate is really important because - let's face it - over the last 12 months the cost of money has gone up considerably with both interest rate and bank fee rises.

"Most organisations will be travelling quite well. It's just the extra burden that the cost of money increases places on them in running their day to day business."

However, the upside of having a large contractor base in the IT industry as well as other recruitment areas is that there is less risk than with businesses relying primarily on permanent placements.

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