Meet 'Tosh', Managing Director at Solve.

We recently caught up with Tosh to find out a bit more about his role and experience as one of the founding members of Solve by Talent.

How did you get started in recruitment?

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Well, I first fell into recruitment during my summers at university, before falling into it again after moving to Australia. After years in the agency the company I joined deployed me on-site at Yahoo, and this is what got me into outsourcing and RPO. The difference I found between agency recruitment and onsite was the ability to influence and own the hiring process end to end. Immediately, I found that I enjoyed the experience element, the opportunity to optimise processes, and use tools to improve hiring outcomes. However, as I started my career on the agency side, I never lost the consulting element and now running an RPO business and Solutions for the last 5 years has offered the perfect balance between consulting and execution. What I find the most exciting is coming across problems and finding ways to solve them. We’ve developed a consultative and bespoke approach to helping customers grow, and over the years we’ve branched out to speak to customers about any of their talent and workforce problems and finding solutions for them.

What inspired you to start Solve?

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We first launched Solve (originally Talent Solutions) seeing the growth opportunities for technology & digital specialist RPO and contingent recruitment services. The Australian tech start-up and scale-up market was in clear need of a more partner-led approach but we knew that Enterprise was also a market for specialised services, as they have previously relied on generalist, rather than specialist suppliers. At its heart, Solve is driven by a wish to be both different and better than that we’ve seen in this market. Solve’s purpose is to build innovative integrity-driven solutions that empower businesses to attract and develop exceptional talent, fostering growth, collaboration and lasting impact.

What is your favourite people problem that you've been able to solve for our clients?

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Solving problems always feels great, especially when we can help a business that's been struggling to make timely, high-quality hires. My favourite moments tend to be when we can surprise a client with insights that take them down a different path to the one they were expecting, helping them improve on the outcomes they were initially looking for. A great early example of this is when we started measuring candidate and hiring manager feedback for our client, which extended all the way to the end of the probation period. By continuous measuring of this feedback, we uncovered that the issues did not lie within the hiring process, but the onboarding and induction - processes our client was managing by themselves! We were able to partner and support them on improving these processes, resulting in a boost of overall engagement and retention.

What sets Solve apart from other RPOs?

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Solve's unique differentiator is the way we have consistently attracted and retained deep subject matter experts within our team and the benefits that then offers our clients. The team's specialist expertise and their longevity is unsurpassed and this definitely defies the trend elsewhere in our industry. Having a team of experts ensures that when we say our services are both bespoke and highly specialised for tech, digital and media sectors, we truly mean it and can evidence it. We listen, consult, design and deliver flexible and tailored solutions that address customer challenges at their core. Adding to this is the fact we are tech agnostic and combine constant scouring of the external market with development of our own in-house platforms. Knowing technology can be a differentiator and that our clients often range from having old, poorly maintained or calibrated tools, to possibly having no tools we ensure we capture and bring all the key data and insights to every project whether short term or long term. These insights inform our actions, and which drive the efficiencies and outcomes we promise our clients.

What makes you most proud about Solve?

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It all comes down to the people - the Solve team, and the clients and candidates we get to interact with every day! Watching our team grow, whether they’ve been with us for years to those who have now gone on to develop their careers in different ways is incredible. I’ve seen candidates’ careers progress over the years through interactions with us- candidates I hired back in 2012 are now CEO's or regional VP’s, watching these journeys unfold has been great.

One of the best parts is receiving feedback from clients that we’ve solved their toughest challenges – some of which they were unaware they even had! Hearing from leaders about how we’ve transformed their hiring experience and increased productivity, offering more revenue and better mental health. A good example of this is Seven Network: when we first launched as Talent Solutions, they initially engaged with us as a 6-month project. However, we ended the partnership having delivered exceptional results and building great relationships. Fast forward 5 years, Seven found themselves with a need to outsource all of their RPO recruitment to one provider and we've reengaged our partnership only this time to manage their entire Talent Acquisition function.