Andrew Banks Quotes

101 Andrew Banks Quotes

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[In November 2004.] The secret to long-term recruitment success is in finding people who fit culturally with an organisation. It's about how people like to be managed and rewarded and their motivations; what gets them out of bed in the morning and what drives them beyond the working environment.
Andrew Banks

[In November 2004.] Ultimately the aim is to make the margin between who a person really is and who they have to be at work as narrow as possible.
Andrew Banks

[In November 2004.] Take time to consider and research the types of people who make the organisation successful. Making' assumptions about this is not enough.
Andrew Banks

[In November 2004.] Be scientific. Conduct a survey or interview current employees. Drill down, identity the strengths of the successful people in particular roles and seek to replicate these.
Andrew Banks

[In November 2004.] I've seen many scenarios where the right person was found but has left within the first few months. We all know how strange it feels to walk into a new company. Competent people with the right fit and skills still need to be helped through a process.
Andrew Banks

[In November 2004 on the importance of inductions.] More than introductions, it's about accelerating relationships.
Andrew Banks

[In July 2008.] In our experience economies still need the right skills and the right talent no matter what side of the economic cycle they are on.
Andrew Banks

[In July 2008.] Smart employers understand the need to recruit, retain and manage key staff with the skills needed to continue to grow their business. This means that although the emphasis on certain job types might change there is no change in the need to recruit the right people.
Andrew Banks

[In July 2008.] In many ways we believe the recruitment environment is a true litmus measure of economic performance - not from a 'how many jobs are in the newspaper' perspective - but more from what are the skills and attributes being sought.
Andrew Banks

[In December 2010.] Asia is really on fire.
Andrew Banks



[In December 2010.] Organisations have to be discerning, because there is a limited labour pool around the world. There are qualified people in any market.
Andrew Banks

[In December 2010.] You can’t have people in jobs where they’re not value adding jobs.
Andrew Banks

[In December 2010.] Knowledge workers want to learn and grow the whole time.
Andrew Banks

[In December 2010.] Good enough isn’t good enough anymore – it’s got to be great. And that’s what the selection processes have to reflect.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011 on being a 10 bob immigrant to Australia from England at the age of 21.] The story of a typical immigrant. I was in London doing a degree I didn’t like, I had an actors equity card. I’d met a few Australians, they seemed to be as mad as I was and they showed me a few photos of blue skies which I’d never seen before growing up in London. So I thought why not, and they paid me to come!
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011 on when he immigrated originally to Australia and the needed qualifications for entry.] I could chew gum, walk in a straight line, 10 pounds and off I came.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011 on him getting involved with his first restaurant.] What do you do when you’re only earning 60 bucks a week as an actor? You get involved in other things. Hence the restaurant. That was in Woolloomooloo.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011 on originally being able to easily borrow money on a two credit cards when it was difficult later to borrow seven hundred pounds in England five years later when he was employed and moving to Norway.] That was the amazing thing about Australia… In Australia at the time I borrowed five thousand dollars on two credit cards and they didn’t even know who I was really. The good news is that we sold the restaurant about 18 months later for about twenty-five thousand dollars – my partner and I.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] My mother was born in Vienna and grew up in Poland, my father the ‘Banks’ which is pretty good because ‘Morgan and Threkorovich’ wouldn’t have had a good ring to it.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] I’ve got five brothers most of them are blonde haired and blue eyed and I’m the throw back. So there was a lot of discussion about ‘The milkman’ when I was around but when I look at my relatives on my mothers side I can see the connection.
Andrew Banks



[In May 2011 on being the youngest in his family for 10 years.] I was the youngest for ten years, and then Philip came along. He’s a priest in the high Church of England, married with two kids.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011 on still being with the same lady he found when he was 21 years of age.] I’d found the woman of my life – ‘Andrea’ and she’s still around. I was settled emotionally but I was very frustrated from a career point of view. I knew there was a journey out there with my name on it and I didn’t quite know what it was. I think I was frustrated at the time and I was always looking for something, I thought it was business orientated, but I didn’t know, I hadn’t done a business degree and as I said I’d dropped out of a two year biology degree. I’d lost the focus. I was looking, I was a young man in a hurry looking for something.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] The bio says what do you do when you know you realize you’re not going to make it in Hollywood? And you’ve sort of made a bit of money out of the restaurant, maybe but the restaurant business was 19 hour days. I learnt a lot. That’s probably the hardest I’ve ever worked, everything else seemed easy after that.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] Human resources, personnel was the right way to go. I’d worked her in Sydney for about nine months for an oil company. A French oil company. I got the job as the personnel officer because I could speak French. My French isn’t bad. Though how weird is that? And then there was the North sea oil boom and there was a lot of jobs going in London at the time and Andrea [his wife] being a typical Aussie said ‘Hey we can work in your country – let’s go. It would be fun.’ So we did. Two years in England and then three years in Norway. Working in the oil industry or the construction industry and that’s where I cut my teeth as a HR director.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011 looking back, in around 1980.] It was time to come home, we had two kids, and we felt we wanted to establish roots in Australia.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] The idea of working in hr in a small to medium sized company just didn’t attract, and I saw this ad for a recruiting job and I said ‘Let’s give it a go. I’ve done a bit of recruiting in my time let’s see how I go.’ So off I went…
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] I’m much more patient than I used to be.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] It’s not until you do it that you realize that not everybody thinks the way you do and not everybody has the different strengths or weaknesses that you have.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] Around your mid-thirties and your first hundred people that you realize that your job is to find the secret in others. To put a team of people around you who are striving to be the best that they can be. That’s what everybody wants to do.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] I don’t think we should tip-toe through life towards death that would be rather disappointing. I’d rather scream straight into it.
Andrew Banks



[In May 2011.] There was eight of us when we started Morgan and Banks… We’d built up quite a good business.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011 on going into business with Geoff Morgan] It seemed sensible to go into business with a really good competitor.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] I believe the universe is more than a one terminal universe. A lot of entrepreneurs very proudly say I don’t have any partners, which is sad a bit, because for me it’s trying to send me a message that they own all the shares and therefore they’re wealthier than they otherwise would have been but I’m not sure I would have been very wealthy on my own. I think I do better bouncing off other people and being part of a team. I like that and part of what makes sense. So Geoff and I have been very good for each other. He was the only competitor that I really couldn’t get clients off. So I really respected him for that.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.]’96 we discovered the internet. Which was ironically two years before ‘Seek’ came along. We had a website called ‘the job hound’. And that was sitting on top of a bricks and mortar business which was then 17% of the market. So we were huge and we had all of our ad’s on and our clients ad’s on. So we were the number 1 job site in Australia in 1996. Which was ironic – which was also why TMP showed interest in us by the way by ‘99.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] The business had grown to about $800 million in revenue and we had 2,000 people. We had 26 offices, we were already in Hong Kong, Singapore – we had started to branch across into Asia. But we knew something had to give. If we really wanted to go to the next level it was probably teaming up with a global business
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011 (Monster Board was monster.com).] TMP approached us because they were our advertising agency here… and so we were a $25-30 million account. And they bought a business called ‘Monster board’. Small it was only $500,000 a year in revenue but it was the beginning of classified advertising online.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] We started talking, the chairman came down here and the chairman said ‘What about a merger?’
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011 back on the announcement of the merger between Morgan and Banks market capitalisation of $350 million with TMP (market capitalisation of $500 million) when a little while before the announcement he had to have his appendix taken out and was rushed to the hospital where a part of his intestine has been chopped out. When his doctor forty minutes before the conference call with the analysts asked him whether he had farted.] If the plumbing works you should be able to pass wind, it’s very important. And so at that point he leaves the room and I just thought it was ironic that here I was at this great moment of my life together with Geoff where we were about to announce the biggest merger of our life in my business career and I was really a bit more preoccupied with whether I should fart or not.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011.] I often used to joke I’m sort of living in my own little dream.
Andrew Banks

[In May 2011 looking back on hearing on the TV that the TMP shares after the merger had just gone to.] $160 dollars. When we did the merger it was about $29. We’ve got a multiple of 79. And I said to my wife ‘I think the world’s gone a little crazy. And I think I’m going to collar our stocks.’… A collar it’s a kind of insurance protection around… and so I went into the office that day and put a two year collar on with a well known investment bank to just secure the position. And of course little did I know with hindsight that four days later I think March the 12th – not four days later was the peak of the internet boom. And then from then on the stock of everybody’s business sort of tailored off and I think by the time my collar matured it was $16 the stock.
Andrew Banks



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