The collapse of electronics chain Dick Smith, and the 3300 jobs that were subsequently put on the line, sent ripples up Collins Street into the office of Lewis Romano.
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Dick Smith had been one of the first customers of Mr Romano's fledgling job search company, SpotJobs.
Not only that, the retailer held the record for attracting the most applications for any SpotJobs' listing.
"There were 1300 applicants for one sales assistant job at a Dick Smith's store in western Sydney. That's the most we've ever had," said Mr Romano.
"So Dick Smith was valuable to us and we were shocked when it went into administration. It was one of our first customers, so it was pretty sad."
The company fell into voluntarily administration on January 4 after its shares dived more than 80 per cent following a profit warning, which led to it being booted off the list of Australia's 200 biggest public companies.
While Dick Smith's demise surprised Mr Romano, he said it isn't holding back SpotJobs, which he and close friend Jake Williams launched in 2012 with the backing of the Simonds and Smorgon families.
Mr Romano has his eyes on floating SpotJobs on the ASX and is planning a pre-IPO capital raising for later this year.
The capital raising will be use to bolster its sales force and marketing, which has included being the co-major sponsor of the Australian Football League's newest club, Greater Western Sydney.
"It's about consolidating our position," Mr Romano said.
SpotJobs, which specialises in entry level jobs, has already secured a diverse customer base in the past three years, including Uber, Apple, Toyota and fast food chains such as Rolld, Nandos, Grill'd and KFC.
Mr Romano attributes the SpotJobs' rapid growth to securing capital early on to build brand awareness, which included a national television campaign, billboard advertising across Melbourne and Sydney and the AFL club sponsorship.
"We identified a gap in the market but we needed to really start with a big bank to compete against a gorilla in the market like SEEK."
As the business grows, it is also learning more about young job seekers and the results are surprising when it comes to the thorny issue of penalty rates.
Last year Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the government would consider reducing Sunday penalty rates, while Opposition leader Bill Shorten has defended the entitlements, saying millions of Australians rely on them and therefore would be worse off.
But Mr Romano said the debate seemed to be "more philosophical struggle rather than based on evidence from jobseekers".
A generation report from SpotJobs found 52 per cent of jobseekers across generations Y and Z were not sure about whether penalty rates should be abolished.
"Gen Y and Gen Z focus less on penalty rates and more on flexibility of the job, both in terms of hours and tasks, location of the job and training to assist progression within the organisation," Mr Romano said.
"Both Gen Y and Gen Z want to be understood by their employer because they are looking for jobs that align with their own personal/social network passions so that they can commit to that organisation and be rewarded accordingly."
