Angelo Mastropietro: Plugging the gaps in Australia’s defences

Angelo Mastropietro started Kinetic Recruitment filling the hard-to-fill positions in Australia's military. Now he's got the country's vast mining sector in his sights.

Australia had a huge influence on Angelo Mastropietro as a child. "My great aunt had emigrated there as a ten-pound Pom and my granddad always used to read me her letters." Aged 22, he decided to discover Australia for himself. But rather than doing "the usual gap-year thing", Mastropietro "swapped the backpack for the briefcase".

He arrived in late 1999. With the dotcom boom in full swing, he quickly found a job working for Hays in IT recruitment. For the next year, "I beat the firm's sales records and felt I was doing really well." Yet "they told me they were freezing pay because the market was slowing down".

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James McKeigue

James graduated from Keele University with a BA (Hons) in English literature and history, and has a certificate in journalism from the NCTJ. James has worked as a freelance journalist in various Latin American countries.He also had a spell at ITV, as welll as wring for Television Business International and covering the European equity markets for the Forbes.com London bureau. James has travelled extensively in emerging markets, reporting for international energy magazines such as Oil and Gas Investor, and institutional publications such as the Commonwealth Business Environment Report. He is currently the managing editor of LatAm INVESTOR, the UK's only Latin American finance magazine.