For a lot of people, a room full of recruiters would be your worst nightmare! On Thursday 28 April, 2016, in the Ivy Ballroom in Sydney, Recruitment International hosted their Australian awards, bringing together nearly 300 recruitment consultants from around Australia. A black tie evening, I am sure everyone was pretty surprised on just how well everyone scrubbed up! I know the people2people team looked particularly smart! After a very satisfying meal and several lagers, the room was ready to celebrate the presentation of the awards.

The people2people team had been disappointed at previous events and had lowered their expectations considerably. So at 9.45pm when the nominations were read out for the Sovereign Private Growth Company of the Year award, the people2people team of course, clapped politely when their name was read out….. then the winner was announced. people2people!

We were stunned. No one more so than myself. After the yelps of surprise had died down, I headed up to the lectern to accept our award from Paul Masters. I must admit that as an ex accountant, I was pretty chuffed to receive an award which is judged on financial performance, which in this case involved the financial performance of people2people over the past three years. Struck dumb, I embarrassingly admitted I was totally unprepared to say anything and that I had probably (and exaggeratingly) had 17 beers before mumbling a few lines about being proud of the award.

To try and right the ship, I thought I would take some time to record what I should have said.

One of my favourite memories from the evening, will be the fact that a room full of competitive recruiters couldn’t help competing on the number of beers they had had, before accepting their award. So I started at 17 and I think that at the end of the night we were at 30! So a BIG thank you to Recruitment International, their sponsors and to the people2people team for making the evening so rewarding, on many different levels.