After studying politics in the UK, Ursula Phillips fell in love with and married an Australian, before shifting gears and moving down-under permanently. During a brief stint as program manager at Lion Nathan Australia, proud managers of household beverage names including Tooheys, James Squire and Little Creatures, Ursula wanted to start a new chapter in her senior career.

“That’s when I met Tom. A friend introduced me to Tom because he’d placed her previously, and she thought he could help me find a new role.”

After meeting with Tom over a coffee, Ursula was confident that Tom had a genuine desire to help find and secure her dream role. That’s when the perfect position came up at Digital Business (division of NTT Ltd, formerly Oakton). From there, Tom got the ball rolling and helped get her foot in the door with an interview – which she passed with flying colours.

“At the time, I didn’t have a lot of tenure – I had less than two years of experience. But Oakton trusted Tom and his judgement, and they interviewed me because he recommended me as someone worth talking to.”

Ursula spent three years at Oakton, and in that time, she got to know a number of colleagues who had also been placed in the company by Tom. From there, the impossible happened and Ursula took a major step forward in her career, becoming the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at PepsiCo.

As part of her new role, Ursula was responsible for securing new talent for PepsiCo’s IT division. Based on Tom’s strong background in IT talent management, Ursula engaged him as their recruiter Tom oversaw the whole recruitment process for PepsiCo’s IT division. By drawing from over 16 years of experience in the Australian IT landscape, both as a techie and talent acquisition expert, Tom knew what kind of specialist IT skills each recruit needed for their roles. As a result, Tom was able to quickly and easily fill each role, and he made sure that each recruitwas happy and satisfied with their position – while making sure PepsiCo were achieving their goals too.

Best of all? It was all thanks to the positive word-of-mouth, spread by those who had secured their own dream roles thanks to Tom’s diligent efforts.

“I always send people to Tom when they’re looking for jobs, because he’s the sort of recruiter who stays in touch with people like me over the long term. This means he knows when a CIO or a company is developing a new role or there’s an interesting project in the works.”