Through personalised advocacy and deep client insight, MAYDAY transformed a single admin brief into a career-changing placement.

Client Overview

A fast-growing financial services organisation based on the Gold Coast engaged MAYDAY to support their expansion during a critical period of operational growth. Initially seeking three administrators to strengthen their team, the client needed reliable, capable talent who could adapt quickly and thrive in a high-performance environment.

The Challenge

Alongside the client’s growth hire requirements, MAYDAY met an experienced expatriate banking professional who had recently relocated to Australia. Despite an exceptional track record in the UK, she had faced repeated rejections - hundreds of applications and no meaningful traction.

Unable to break into the Australian market and needing income to support her family, she had begun a traffic controller course simply to secure work.

The hiring challenge became twofold:

1. Finding an opportunity where her experience would be recognised, not dismissed as “overqualified.”
2. Helping the client look beyond the job title to see the leadership value this candidate could bring.

Our Approach

We initially placed her in a junior administration role to give her the industry foothold she deserved. Upon acceptance and starting, the client mentioned they were struggling to fill a more senior team leader position — a role we felt was far better aligned to her capability.

Our strategy included:

• Human-first engagement: Kelly Masson and Beth Jones invested 45 minutes in a deep conversation to understand her background, career goals, strengths and barriers she was facing in the local market.
• Insight-led opportunity identification: By drawing on their understanding of the client’s culture and capability gaps, they recognised she was far more suited to the team leader position than the entry-level role she was initially hired for.
• Strategic advocacy: They presented her case directly to the client, positioning her international experience as a strength and addressing concerns around overqualification. Their confidence in her potential played a crucial role in shifting the hiring manager’s perspective.
• End-to-end support: From interview coaching to confidence building, MAYDAY ensured she felt prepared, supported and empowered throughout the process.
  

The Impact

• 4 roles successfully filled, including 3 Super Admin positions + 1 team leader role
• All roles were shortlisted within the week
• The candidate stepped into a role that fully leveraged her leadership experience and set her up for long-term success in Australia
• The client gained an exceptional leader they would have otherwise overlooked - strengthening their team with the capability they didn’t expect to access.

This outcome reinforced the irreplaceable value of human-centric recruitment - the ability to listen deeply, recognise potential, advocate with conviction and influence decisions that a CV or algorithm alone could never achieve.



It’s about opening doors, seeing beyond titles and changing the trajectory of someone’s career and someone’s business, for the better

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