The Truth About the Job Market Right Now - If You Know You Grow Podcast

Earlier this year Em sat down with Chantel Brayley on her podcast If You Know You Grow for a conversation about careers, hiring and what’s actually happening in the Australian job market.

You can listen right here, or on Apple Podcasts. The full transcript is underneath for the readers.

Here’s what we covered, and the bits worth stealing.

It’s neither a candidate’s market nor a client’s market

Every year in recruitment usually gets a label - candidate short or candidate rich. The last twelve months have been neither.

“Recruitment volume is up globally through the Western world. There’s a lot of movement. However, people are so discerning - both on the client side and the candidate side.”

The COVID-era days of crazy salary jumps and being promoted above your station are behind us. Brands are taking more time and assessing skills harder. Candidates won’t move without a genuine incentive, but they’re also nervous the grass isn’t greener. Everyone is being careful - which is exactly why hiring feels strange right now.

The roles have moved to the back of house

During the boom, the briefs were all front-of-house: customer acquisition, paid media, heads of marketing and ecommerce. When trade tightened, the focus flipped.

“Suddenly people want to look at finance, operations, product optimisation - and a big shift towards retention and CRM. How do we keep all these customers we’ve paid for? Because getting new ones is getting really expensive.”

The other mover: content. After years at the bottom of the salary barrel, content is - in Em’s words - “well and truly king in terms of salaries.”

Your best people will stay 2.5 years. Plan for it.

From this year’s Ecommerce Salary Guide: the average tenure across the entire Australian retail industry is 2.1 years. Break it down by role and it doesn’t get more comforting - your head of marketing and head of ecommerce will stay around 2.5 years, and CEOs around 3.4.

“It’s not a junior issue. This is an industry of people who are really hungry, really motivated - they want continual development and continual challenge. You may have a retention issue with your customers - you also have a retention issue with your employees.”

For job seekers: do the thing before you’re paid to do the thing

If you’re trying to break in - to content, social, anything visual - a portfolio puts you in front of nearly everyone.

“I can tell you 99% of the people you’re competing with have not submitted a portfolio. Shoot content in your spare time, put it in a folio. And don’t send an AI cover letter - actually write, so we know what your skill is.”

And once you know what you want, make yourself findable:

“Get razor sharp on what’s important to you in your next role - and then SEO the shit out of it. Make sure it’s all over your LinkedIn profile, your resume on Seek. There are people like us out here scouting all day, every day. Make it really easy to be found.”

On salary: the power is in the silence

The part of the episode we most want every woman in ecommerce to hear:

“Women will flex on their salary so much faster than men. The time to negotiate your salary is when somebody asks you ‘are you negotiable?’ - it is not before that. You’re going to say the number, and you’re just going to sit in that awkwardness for a hot second. Because it’s not awkward for the other person.”

Bring salary up early in a process, know your benchmark before you walk in, and don’t ramble off reasons to discount yourself. Nobody asked.

Why brands use us (the two-minute version)

When it makes sense to use a recruiter: very high-volume hiring, or niche roles that need genuine headhunting - where the time cost of doing it yourself pulls you away from running the business. What we bring is access to a 17,000+ candidate database across Australian ecommerce, honest benchmarking of the person in front of you against the rest of the market, and the questions an employer can’t ask.

“The only thing we measure is: did we fill the role, and did you have a really good time. There are no unnecessary candidates in your pipeline, because we’re not trying to oversell you anything - or anyone.”

If you’re hiring for your ecommerce team, start a conversation with us. And if you’re thinking about your next move, the 2026 Salary Guide is the place to start.

Thanks again to Chantel for having us - follow If You Know You Grow on Spotify for a weekly dose of marketing and mindset.

Full transcript

Lightly edited for readability. Recorded April 2026.

Chantel: Hey everyone, welcome back to another week. I'm really excited to have someone here who I've actually worked with previously. Joining me today is Em Haydon, the founder of Revere Recruitment. We used to work together back in the day at [check: "E-suite"] for maybe about six weeks - which was amazing because I got to meet someone incredible, but also very humbling, because I learned I am not made for the B2B marketing world. Welcome to If You Know You Grow. I'd love for you to introduce yourself - tell everybody a bit about you and what you do.

Em: My name is Em Haydon. This is about my 20th year in recruitment - for the most part in retail, digital and ecommerce. Aside from that, I'm a mum and a gym junkie. We see each other at the gym at 5:15 most mornings and have a quick chat.

And in Chantel's defence - recruitment marketing is probably one of the most boring roles you can have from a marketing perspective. The lead time to see any kind of result is wildly different to selling a consumer product. That's in no way a reflection on you.

Chantel: No one wanted to like or engage with anything! You don't want someone to like the work you've done in case their employer thinks they're leaving. And from brand side you get spoiled - when you're on the business side you have to pay for everything you get. It wasn't for me, but it was a great experience, and we became friends. We drank mushroom tea together - not psychedelic mushrooms.

Em: I can confirm Chantel hated it. Adaptogenic mushrooms.

Chantel: You're a bit on the woo-woo side of things, which a lot of this audience is. I feel like mindset and woo-woo go a little bit together.

Em: I think it's okay to be openly woo-woo now. There's been a consciousness shift where that's normalised in the workplace, as opposed to something you were almost embarrassed to bring to light. My personal view is if you're ignoring the energetic force that surrounds us all, you're missing a trick. There's a secret weapon out there to be utilised.

Chantel: And it's such an uphill battle when you're doing something that's not aligned - it's so much harder. Whereas if you surrender a little bit, everything's easier. But anyway - we're here to talk about careers, finding a job, finding team members. The people listening want to succeed in their careers, and there are also a lot of business founders who really struggle with the hiring side. No one knows it better than you, because that's what you do five days a week. So - what does a recruiter actually do? What does your week look like?

Em: There are two sides to it. If somebody was looking at recruitment as a career, I often liken it to real estate - you're going to have a buyer and a seller, and you're managing both parties all the time.

On the client side, where it makes sense to use a recruiter is probably two spots. If you have really high-volume roles - if you're hiring hundreds of call centre attendants, for heaven's sake outsource that. Or if the role is very, very niche and requires headhunting - that's extremely time-intensive, and if you want to put the time in, absolutely go and do it, but there's an opportunity cost on your time that takes you away from your core business.

On the candidate side, the value is if you have a particular niche or skill set. When a recruiter reaches out to you, they'll be thinking not just about this particular role, but about understanding you holistically - looking to put you forward for as many aligned opportunities as humanly possible, and ideally building a relationship throughout the lifetime of your career, so they can play a part in helping you move from A to B.

Chantel: I don't know if I ever told you this, but around 2012 I really thought my goal was to be a recruiter for digital people. They were partying all the time, it looked really fun. I remember being in an interview and they said it's champagne and razor blades - the highs are high and the lows are low. But I learned really quickly that if I'm looking for a role, I always want to go with a recruiter as a candidate - because you get paid when I get a job. What better incentive for someone to help me find a job? Your business doesn't get paid unless someone actually gets a role.

Em: And just on that - if you're a candidate working with a recruiter, there is no fee for you. The brand is paying to find you. So you pay nothing - you almost get a white-glove service of being expedited into your dream role.

Any agent worth their salt will be looking not at how they fill the role, but how they fill it with a match that's going to be aligned long-term. And the only way to truly know that is a really detailed client brief - getting under the hood of their business and the personalities in the team, and knowing how much this person aligns to the values and drivers of the people in front of them. Ultimately, if you don't work out in the role, that's bad for our brand.

Chantel: You can see it. I'll watch you pick up a new client, do the first role - and then seven, nine months later you've got a whole other slew of roles for them, because you were so successful at finding that one person they needed. Finding the one right person completely unlocks so many doors for growth.

Em: The difference is probably that we don't measure traditional recruitment KPIs. Typically in recruitment you're measured on absolutely everything - how many clients you've called, who you're cold-calling, how many resumes went forward. Every single thing is measured so stakeholders have visibility over their pipeline - and it's actually not in the interest of the customer at all. The only things we measure are: A, did we fill the role, and B, did you have a really good time. Because there are no unnecessary candidates in your pipeline and we're not trying to oversell you anything - or anyone - it makes it easy for brands to come back.

Chantel: That makes such a big difference. Our industry is so small - you could churn and burn through candidates, or you could provide really great experiences and help brands grow holistically. There are people I remember being the person that unlocked that first door for, and then you see their trajectory on LinkedIn, and five years down the line you know - hey, you'd be perfect for this now.

So - LinkedIn talks about this a lot, and I've got my own feelings. Is there a talent drought at the moment?

Em: Such a good question. Every year, except for the last twelve months, you could define the year as either candidate-rich or candidate-short. It's either been a client's market or a candidate's market. The last twelve months have been neither.

Recruitment volume is up globally through the Western world. There's a lot of movement, a lot happening. However, people are so discerning - on both the client side and the candidate side. Compare it to COVID times: you had a ridiculous influx of roles, everybody was candidate-short, you ended up with really crazy jumps on salary, and people being promoted above their station into roles they maybe wouldn't otherwise have had. Now we essentially have to live with that. Roles that were easier to do when the market was really good and everybody was spending their cash - now you have to be more savvy. Things are harder to trade. It's more competitive.

Chantel: It hasn't been the easiest twelve months for businesses, so the return on investment they want from an employee is different. During COVID, as long as your checkout wasn't broken you were probably making money.

Em: Exactly. Businesses are really discerning now - they have to go through the awkward process of really assessing the skill in their team, and they have the luxury of taking a bit more time because there's not such a crazy compete for talent. And on the candidate side, the cost of living has changed. You have people who maybe aren't in their ideal role, but they're a little bit scared in case the grass isn't greener. They know they're not going to get the crazy jump they previously did - but they also won't jump without some kind of incentive. So both sides are so much more careful than in previous years.

Chantel: There was a trend on TikTok - so who knows if it's substantiated - where a millennial would choose the job with a $100K higher salary, an hour's commute and five days in office, and Gen Z would ignore that offer, because "what's in it for me" is different. It's crazy to think something like work from home could actually change the salary and market.

Em: We have this wild phenomenon now - a generational shift in what people want. God bless all these new graduates coming through knowing their worth. Where it's a little bit jaw-dropping for the rest of us: chances are your hiring manager had it written into policy that you were at work half an hour early unpaid, stayed half an hour late unpaid, and were there years and years before you even thought about putting your hand up for a promotion. So whilst we applaud you, we're also a little bit - oh my god, back in my day...

Chantel: It's such a give and take. I almost feel like there are archetypes for each type of role now. Creatives may willingly be in an office five days a week - actually you probably don't want that, they're extroverts, you'll get less done. A really great performance marketer may not be an extrovert at all and may struggle with the mental load. All these little considerations didn't exist back in the day.

Em: It's the how you work, not just what you do, anymore. There's a way of being where we've all had this luxury of being able to decide and choose - which is so divine, but from an organisational perspective probably a little bit confusing to roll out.

Chantel: Are you seeing any titles or skill sets trending at the moment?

Em: We saw a really big shift. During the growth of COVID, a lot of the roles we did were very forward-facing - customer acquisition, paid media, head of marketing, head of digital, head of ecom. When trade got really tough, the focus switched really quickly to back of house. Suddenly people want to look at finance, operations, procedures, product design and optimisation pathways. And a big shift towards retention marketing and CRM - how do we keep all these customers we've paid for, because getting new ones is getting really expensive.

Chantel: It's so interesting. Operations is actually a hard place for me from a referral standpoint - they're back of house, I don't have many operations people on LinkedIn, they're not out there talking. Whereas marketers are really good at literally marketing themselves.

So I want to shift to salaries - because as women, talking about pay is so uncomfortable. I'm big on educating my team members: this is how you ask for a raise, this is what you're worth in market. I've downloaded your salary guide an embarrassing number of times - every brand I work with has it - because you need data to inform a decision, and I've never known Glassdoor to be accurate. Before we get into it: where can they find the salary guide?

Em: Head to revererecruitment.com.au.

Chantel: Download the salary guide - it needs to be your confidence data-check for the week. So what have salaries done in the last twelve months?

Em: We haven't seen the huge incremental jumps of previous years, but we do still see jumps. From a front-end perspective, the areas that have had the most attention are content, creative and social media. Content is now well and truly king in terms of salaries.

Chantel: Which is wild, because a couple of years ago you could be a very average ecom manager and make a killing. Content got no love for a really long time - content creators and graphic designers were stuck just above minimum wage for a lot of years.

Em: Stunning, isn't it.

Chantel: Do you feel the more data-driven or performance roles have stagnated?

Em: I think they had their better years of incremental jumps previously. You're still not going to get a performance marketing manager for cheap - and if you do, they're not going to be very good. Where it's actually getting harder is the junior end. There's a really strong expectation from graduates about what they're willing to spend their time on, and it's genuinely hard now to get somebody at the salaries we used to when they're first starting their career.

Chantel: There's that disconnect between Instagram and reality - someone in an interview for their first job asking how much content they'll be doing versus strategising. This is your first job! You've got to be hands-on the tools.

Em: I actually think it would be a real USP for people joining the workforce now to just work your guts off like it's the nineties. That would be a real differentiator - and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. If you've got a hiring manager who had to slog their guts out in the nineties, you'd get really high personal resonance. It would go a long way in pushing you forward.

Chantel: With team members I think about: is it a will issue or a skill issue? If it's a skill issue, I'll do anything to correct it - that's investing back in somebody. But I can't change your will, your drive, your motivation or your values - that's ingrained in who you are. And there's give and take in any job. There'll be a twelve-hour work day, there'll be days I ask you to steam clothing - but there'll also be days you get paid to go to a concert or be on a really cool photo shoot.

Em: And particularly locally - years ago we didn't have the volume of really inspiring brands we have in this part of the world now. Queensland, you're spoiled for choice - so many cool brands at so many different levels. For years there were literally about three - if you wanted to work online, you were working at one of those three.

Chantel: I sometimes think starting with a company that's healthy enough to have a budget to invest, but isn't so big that you get siloed, is a really cool place to jump off your career. Do you have opinions on that?

Em: A thousand percent. And if you're struggling to get that first break, regardless of the brand's size - I can tell you it would be so easy to differentiate yourself by doing a couple of really small things. Say you wanted to kick off in content or social or something visually creative: 99% of the people you're competing with have not submitted a portfolio with their application. All you'd need to do is shoot content in your spare time and put it in a folio - we just want a visual sense of who you are. Same for written content - collect the pieces you write and showcase them. And don't send an AI cover letter. Actually write, so we know what your skill is. Do the thing before you're paid to do the thing - otherwise we have no evidence of your motivation and drive.

Chantel: You can get 300, 400 applicants - the earlier the role, the more applicants. It's too easy to apply for a job now. It would be so easy to differentiate, because most people don't do it. I also think being open to cutting your teeth in maybe not your aesthetic dream job is important - everybody wants to work for [check: "CSB"] and [check: "Dissh"], and those are great companies, but that 300-to-one ratio might be 1500-to-one for those brands.

Shifting from the candidate side to the brand side - for the founders listening, how do you cut through the stress of hiring? What's different about what you offer a brand?

Em: Okay - if I was going to pitch to a brand right now, some of the stats we might roll out: our database in Australia is about 16,000 in the retail industry [note: 17,000+ as of Sep 2026]. We know everyone. What we offer is access to people you don't ordinarily have direct access to, and we can benchmark them against everybody else in the industry - is what you think their skill set is actually their skill set?

When a candidate has decided they'll accept that tap on the shoulder, an external party can ask the questions the employer can't ask. We get really good insight into people's motivations and drivers, and we can tell you honestly whether they align to yours - and vice versa.

And sometimes clients come through with a brief that's a little bit of everything, or not fully formed - and want to know how it translates in market. What does it cost? Does it exist? Is this a unicorn? We can honestly say: what you're recruiting for is four different people - so what's going to move the needle most in your business, where are your pain points truly? It's the ability to get in, genuinely understand somebody's business and say: this is the person you need, and here is why. I'm happy to back myself on that.

Chantel: And you actually know everybody. Sometimes knowing why something didn't pan out, a little more honestly and transparently, is a great thing. There are people who haven't worked out at places who I'd still wholeheartedly recommend, because I know the nuances of why - the role wasn't right, or the culture wasn't a fit. People forget how much culture decides whether someone succeeds in an environment.

Em: We've had that recently - having to say, look, this wasn't the right role for this person, but I think you'll find they've had 100% attrition in six months. I'm not sure it's a personal issue. There's probably broader market data suggesting bigger things going on.

Chantel: People are pickier now - I expect people to be comfortable leaving, or saying three months in that it isn't right. And the "they need to have lasted two years" thing - two years in ecom, given the last six years, is actually a wild time.

Em: I've got a crazy stat on that for you. The average tenure for the entire retail industry in Australia is 2.1 years. It would be easy to assume that's dragged down by store-based roles and early-career graduates - so one of the things we did in this year's salary guide was break it down by role. Your head of marketing is likely to stay in your business 2.5 years. Your head of ecommerce, 2.5 years. Your CEO - from memory, 3.4 years. It's not a junior issue. This is an industry of people who are really hungry and really motivated - they want continual development and continual challenge. You may have a retention issue with your customers - you also have a retention issue with your employees, at every level of your organisation.

Chantel: And why wouldn't you, as an individual, chase an opportunity that better serves you? Somebody once told me I was "really hopping around a lot" - I'd done three and a half years at one place and three and a half at the next.

Em: You are well tenured!

Chantel: Isn't it a good thing, on both sides, that if you're not in it, you call it? It's a relationship - what's the point of being in a relationship you're not in?

Em: Absolutely. Go get fulfilled elsewhere. And it is like exiting a relationship - good, bad or indifferent, there's always some kind of grieving process on the other side.

Chantel: What's one piece of advice for somebody looking for a role right now?

Em: Probably two things. One - get razor sharp on what's important to you in your next role. You don't need to know the exact JD; there are JDs out there you've never seen. Just be really particular about what matters most to you. Two - take that criteria and SEO the shit out of it. Make sure it's all over your LinkedIn profile. If you've saved your resume to Seek, put it there. You want to be found for the things you want to be found for - there are people like us out here scouting on LinkedIn all day, every day. Make it really easy to be found.

Chantel: Because it's easy for recruiters to be lazy too - LinkedIn and Seek shoot out an algorithm of pre-shortlisted people, and someone sends one template message to as many people as possible. I've been approached for head of operations roles - why would you ask me?

Em: The results are hilarious. I have a head of ecommerce role at the moment, and all the profiles LinkedIn thinks are best suited are heads of finance and heads of operations. It's easy to be lazy on both sides. The machines haven't done the learning yet.

Chantel: And if someone knows they want their next role but doesn't know what it is - can they reach out to you at a candidate level?

Em: Absolutely.

Chantel: I'll tag Em on Instagram and LinkedIn and include everything in the show notes. I've definitely slid into recruiters' DMs to get a placement I wanted - it literally put me at the top of the candidate pile. You know the best brands, and you sometimes know about things that haven't even hit market.

Em: Sometimes you just need somebody in the middle to say - can I just put you two together? Let's do a blind date.

Chantel: Last question, back to salary. How does somebody make their boundaries around salary crystal clear - and when should they bring it up?

Em: Bring up salary as early as possible - nothing will annoy a brand more than getting to the end of a process and then asking for an increase. Be really transparent up front.

Two things on this. If you're super early in your career - yes, have an idea in your head, but darling, you're going to need to flex on it. You don't have the skills yet. We're happy to do a trade - skills for cash.

On the flip side, if you're tenured in this industry: salary is difficult for lots of people to talk about, but it is especially difficult for women. I can 100% tell you women will flex on their salary so much faster than men. So if you're a woman listening - the time to negotiate your salary is when somebody asks you, "are you negotiable?" It is not before that. You're not going to say "look, I was after 130, but I'm happy to flex if it's work from home" and start rambling off a list of reasons to discount yourself. Nobody asked, darling. The power is in the silence. You're going to say the number, and you're going to sit in that awkwardness for a hot second - because it's not awkward for the other person. If they come back with "we don't have that in budget, can we talk?" - that's the time. Not before.

Chantel: And if you're educated - if you're using the salary guide - you can go in with confidence. The reason I use it so much with my team is I can show someone: here's the salary band, here's where you sit in it, here's what we improve to bring you into the next level. I empower them with those details. I want women to not be uncomfortable about money whatsoever.

Em: And if you're one of those really rare people who's been super loyal to a brand - A, I applaud you, but B, you've probably missed every opportunity for a pay rise that the jumpy people have gotten, because it's so much easier to ask a new employer than to go to your boss and say "I think I'm underpaid." So pull out the salary guide every once in a while and double-check where you're benchmarked - compared to the new employees joining your business, or to the open market. The cost to replace you is so much more than giving you a pay bump - and if you're a great employee, adding value every single day, you're actually hard to replace. Have confidence in that.

Chantel: Thank you so much for coming today - I had such a great conversation.

Em: Me too. I loved it. Thank you so much for having me.