In 2012, Samantha and Norbert Miklos launched Cornerstone Medical Recruitment to provide personalised recruitment services to health professionals across Australia, specifically nurses, doctors, allied health professionals and medical admin staff.

Their vision was to help candidates and clients achieve their career goals, live happier lives, and deliver the highest quality health care services to their patients.

Samantha and Norbert now lead a team of 45 highly skilled consultants in Brisbane, Melbourne and across several remote locations across Australia.

Cornerstone has experienced significant growth since inception, averaging a yearly operational expansion of 20%-30%, which has only increased due to the health demands of COVID-19.

To navigate and sustain this growth, Samantha and Norbert engaged Executive Performance Partners (EPP) in May 2021.

Watch Samantha’s full interview here: Cornerstone Medical Recruitment: Samantha Miklos

Our Scorecard for Success

The partnership was set up to provide an external perspective, plan strategic business changes and provide internal guidance and executive support.

Samantha and Norbert wanted to be kept accountable to their clear goals detailed in their Scorecard for Success, which included:

• Enhance their performance as leaders
• Step away from day-to-day tasks and take the time to implement big picture, strategic changes to business operations
• Effectively manage and lead a dispersed team
• Create a stronger organisational identity with staff profiling to understand who they are and how they work
• Create new habits in their daily lives that allow for clear headspace and provide more time for futureproofing activities.

Samantha and Norbert approached their scorecard for success with a broad perspective, looking beyond today’s opportunities to enhance the functionality of their expanding business.

A key goal of their engagement with Executive Performance Partners was to ensure they were operating in a functional capacity as decision-makers and staying accountable for key business development outcomes.

This was achieved through short-term goal setting, where weekly meetings were set to check in and measure the success of key objectives.

For Samantha, having a coach with executive experience in the recruitment sector and specialist knowledge about the market made the partnership virtually seamless to integrate into the business.

This foundation of knowledge provided Samantha with a sounding board to discuss business decisions with her coach that were specific to the fast-paced recruitment industry.

Within less than six months, Samantha noted that some earlier strategies had already started to filter down into the broader team, enhancing brand identity and performance.

Running parallel to their executive coaching, Executive Performance Partners provided reactive support to various branches of the Cornerstone team to mitigate day-to-day challenges and harness opportunities as they arose.

A strong sense of trust was built with the internal Cornerstone team leaders as the coaches were readily available to talk through the right approach and find solutions to any immediate needs.

When asked about the key partnership benefits and achievements, Samantha lists the following:

• “Provided great guidance in decision-making and keeping us focused on the big picture”
• “Helped us profile our team to create a better understanding of who we are and how we work”
• “Having an external party provide some direction kept us both somewhat grounded and genuinely held us to account which was invaluable.”
• “Helped me from a personal standpoint in prioritising top end strategy and creating time for tactical thinking.”

Samantha says:

“The support they provided me personally and professionally has really changed the way we operate and I’m actually enjoying working at the top end of the business.

“They made a comment that ‘I’m not teaching you anything you don’t know’ and I don’t agree with that, I learnt a lot about leadership that I wasn’t aware of.

“Gaining awareness and broader perspective is my biggest takeaway from this partnership. They ask those questions that sometimes you don’t ask yourself which gave us direction on where we wanted to go and how to get there.

“It’s that accountability that I really appreciate the most. Knowing that someone is actually not afraid to call it for what it is and provide a strategy to move forward.

“As a business owner, having a sounding board that understands recruitment intimately, gives you the opportunity to take your head up out of the business, step away and reassess operations.

“When a challenge has come up, Executive Performance Partners were so readily available for the entire team and came through within minutes in some cases.”