Jon Michel considers the impact that international talent made on the Australian market in 2024 and how it might evolve into 2025

Once the dust had settled after closing the books on a busy and productive 2024, one thing that stood out like the proverbial sore thumb was the amount of overseas talent that we had successfully introduced into the Australian market.

This consisted of a combination of those returning to Australia from stints overseas, those that were coming here to work for the first time but had already secured Australian working rights as well as a couple of exceptional situations where candidates did need to be sponsored by their new employer - an additional but ultimately not impossible hurdle to deal with. JMES ourselves contributed to the last category with the welcome import of Lucy Stiff from London, for example.

Interestingly, none of these were the typical opportunistic pick-ups by clients, but instead were hired for live mandates where they were up against the local pool of available talent.

So having retrospectively stumbled on this phenomenon, let’s apply some post discovery rigour and review the data:

• Of the total roles filled by JMES in 2024, 25% of placements came from this overseas talent pool

• This 25% consisted of 55% senior level hires (CIO/MD/ED) & 45% mid-level hires (Associate/VP)

• Hiring was split across 60% male & 40% female.

The further split across sectors is also interesting, with 65% of placements ending up in private markets, 15% in public markets, 10% in advisory and 10% in debt banking. These figures might reflect both market activity as well as the choice of JMES focus – but at the same time we do tend to pivot or get called in to where current hiring activity is most active.

Overall observations:

This trend in no way represents a ‘thumbs down’ by our clients to the local talent pool when overseas options are presented as an alternative. Rather, it is more a reflection of the challenges involved in hiring top talent in a fully employed market such as ours. This is especially true where any half savvy employer knows good talent is hard to replace and will do their best to retain their best people accordingly.

This said, there can be several positives associated with an international talent pool including the benefits of having worked on complex deals in larger, busier markets relating to cutting edge themes that might be slightly ahead of our own. Those with international experience may also be seen to have built a degree of independence, resilience and worldliness having travelled and worked in other countries.

Another factor contributing to these statistics may be the quality of offshore talent that JMES sees as a firm versus some of our competitors. As the longest standing firm (25+ years) in our market, we would have met some of these candidates before they went offshore, or at least be known to them as the firm to call when considering a return. We often also find that newly arrived candidates are referred to JMES as the firm to approach for opportunities and insight into the Australian market.

So let’s see what 2025 brings both in terms of general hiring (anticipated to be at least as buoyant if not busier than last year) and whether or not the overseas X factor continues to play a part in helping us close our mandates.

Please reach out if you have any views or personal relevant experience you would like to share.

Likewise, if you happen to be a potential client and keen to tap into this X factor talent pool that we fortuitously seem to have access to we would also love to hear from you.

Contact Jon or and the JMES team here.