Transcript
Speaker: Adele, we've got a sponsorship update. We do, Ross. We are very excited to announce our new RNA sponsor, IMS People Possible.
Speaker: um IMS People Possible helps businesses access skilled offshore talent and operational support. That means you can grow capacity without growing your fixed costs and still keep quality and control.
Speaker: There will be a full introduction to IMS in an upcoming episode. Welcome to the ah RNA family, um IMS. Welcome to Recruitment News Australia. This is the news for the 10th of November, 2026. I'm Ross Clennett.
Speaker: And I'm Adele Last. Recruitment is at the centre of the latest crypto theft in the United States as hackers stole US$6.3 billion us dollars worth of cryptocurrency, equivalent to AU$9 billion, australian dollars from the crypto exchange platform Binance in a stealth operation over four months. The FBI has linked the activity to the North Korean group Trader Trader. It is reportedly one of the largest digital asset heists ever.
Speaker: Last week, the details of the Binance breach were released by the company and it makes for fascinating reading. The attackers did not place a malicious remote worker inside the company, as often happens in cases of corporate extortion. These criminals used a fake recruitment process to target an engineer who believed he was applying for a legitimate job.
Speaker: The heist began months before the theft. In June 2026, a Binance engineer downloaded a tampered version of Homebrew, which let malware into the development environment and helped attackers collect employment-related information about the engineer and his colleagues.
Speaker: Then in September, another Binance software engineer whose specific details the hackers had obtained in the previous strike was contacted through a legitimate job site by a project director,
Speaker: about a fake job opportunity. The employee completed a video interview with a fake human resources representative and later spoke with a fake CEO through a chat app. During the second interview, the engineer was told to download a coding assignment. The assignment was actually malware disguised as an ordinary test, giving the attackers access to a developer's computer.
Speaker: Binance's account describes the campaign as a multi-stage operation that continued for four months. This type of attack via a job-seeking employee has been coined contagious interview by Paolo Alto Networks.
Speaker: It seems like a very sophisticated operation. Are there precedents? Yes. In March 2022, a fake job offer aimed at an engineer at the company behind the game Axie Infinity preceded the theft of roughly half a billion US dollars from the Ronin network. Reports describe the engineer as being deceived by fake recruiters and sent spyware through the hiring process.
Speaker: The reoccurring weakness is not only software, it is trust. Attackers can spend weeks creating believable recruiter profiles, interviews and assignments before asking someone to run a file.
Speaker: Binance says it has replenished 98% of the affected assets from its own funds. The exchange also said some stolen assets were frozen and are no longer available to the hackers.
Speaker: This should not have happened, Binance said in its public statement. We are reviewing the incident response process, signing policy coverage, hot wallet controls and identifying opportunities to further strengthen our ability to respond rapidly to threats in the future.
Speaker: Binance said it detected and prevented 57 suspected threats from operatives based in North Korea in 2026. The theft is believed to be the largest successful cyber attack in the cryptocurrency sector's history and caused a sharp drop in the prices of most major cryptocurrencies.
Speaker: The incident vividly shows why recruitment has become part of the cybersecurity perimeter. Normal parts of the hiring process can give hackers the opportunity to use unsuspecting job seekers as a gateway to sensitive and valuable organizational information and assets.
Speaker: Persol Holdings' integrated report 2026 released last Tuesday has not dampened speculation. It may sell programmed its largest Australian asset. The report doesn't announce a sale, but the tone has shifted. Asia Pacific is no longer pitched as a growth engine. Instead, Japan's second largest staffing business says its business portfolio is under review.
Speaker: Compare that with last year's report, which said that the Asia-Pacific unit aimed to become the region's leading ah HR services company. It also highlighted Programme's profitable facility management business, the sale of its health division and plans to take the Go app into Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Speaker: This year, Programme isn't mentioned at all, and that's telling given the AFR reported in June that Persol had engaged an advisor to consider options, including a possible sale.
Speaker: Asia Pacific is now classed as a core business with moderate growth prospects, but it has no financial year 2028 revenue or margin targets under the new midterm plan. That follows the unit missing its 10% return on invested capital target and a adjusted EBITDA fell 10.2% year on year.
Speaker: This is obvious on the report. Asia Pacific outside Japan gets about a third of a page compared to a full page in previous years, while the growth story now centres on GoJob, the French AI staffing platform that Persol bought in October 2025.
Speaker: Leadership has changed too. Francis Coe, CEO of Persol Asia Pacific and a 20-year veteran of the company, left in March after the region missed its most recent financial year targets.
Speaker: Former program CFO Stephen Leach, also with two decades at Persol, is now Executive Officer Asia Pacific and SBU lead. That suggests financial discipline is taking priority over expansion.
Speaker: It doesn't confirm a sale, but it fits a more cautious strategy with each Asia-Pacific business being assessed against the group's financial expectations. In summary, programs placed in Persol looks less secure. Last year's growth story has given way to a narrative of restructuring tighter scrutiny and a portfolio review that still appears ongoing.
Speaker: Despite improving job ad data, New Zealand's unemployment rate rose to 5.7% in the September quarter, up from 5.6% in June, according to Statistics New Zealand's latest labour market update.
Speaker: Employment grew just 0.7% over the year 2.89 million, compared 1.2% in Australia. two eight nine million compared with one two per percent in australia The number of unemployed New Zealand rose 8.7% over the year against 8.2% over the year in Australia. Unemployment in New Zealand was highest among specific peoples at 11.5%, Maori at 10.9%, compared with 5% for Asian and 4.5% for European New Zealanders.
Speaker: There's also a skills mismatch. Firms found skilled workers harder to hire while few said unskilled workers were easier to find. Stats, NZ's Abby Johnston noted casual roles jumped 19.5% over the year and fixed-term roles rose 18.9%, a sign employer confidence was still fragile. Separately, 47,900 New Zealanders' migrant departures to Australia were recorded in the year to March.
Speaker: though the net migration loss to Australia of 27,950 was down from 31,100 the year before. So the December quarter is the real test. Does 5.7% start falling and do hiring intentions turn into permanent jobs rather than more short-term contracts?
Speaker: Meanwhile, last weekend's New Zealand election has no clear winner. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's National Party and its right-leaning partners appear to have a one- or two-seat majority, while Labor and the Greens fell short.
Speaker: With hundreds of thousands of special votes still to count, final results are due on the 27th of November, and coalition talks could take weeks yet.
Speaker: Another item from across the Tasman, a labour hire company director was ordered to repay 203,000 New Zealand dollars over employment-related breaches affecting three Vietnamese migrant workers.
Speaker: Hoi Quang Tran, the sole director of High End Renov Group, was held personally liable by the Employment Relations Authority. The firm supplied painters and plasterers to construction sites in Auckland and Christchurch. The company went into liquidation in March 2025. The ERA presiding officer said he was satisfied Tran was actively involved in the breaches and knew the essential facts, so he ruled Tran must pay the employees back directly.
Speaker: $132,000 goes to three former employees as wage arrears, holiday pay and repayment of the unlawful premiums. Penalties were assessed at $71,000, with each worker receiving $6,000. The remaining $53,000 goes to the Crown.
Speaker: Even more damning was the evidence tendered by the workers that two of them paid $30,000 their respective jobs. The payments were made in Vietnam before the workers even arrived, tied to employment arranged through the accredited employer work visa scheme. Tran argued they were personal loan repayments, but the authority rejected that and found that they were made to secure the respective workers' jobs, which is illegal under the Wages Protection Act.
Speaker: Tran was found guilty of other breaches, including failure to pay minimum wage, unpaid holiday entitlements and inadequate record keeping. The Labor Inspectorate's acting head made the point that employers can't escape obligations by having poor systems or bad records.
Speaker: Question of the week. How are leading recruitment agencies putting AI to work? Oh, my favourite topic, Ross. Yes, I know it is, Adele. And after... the last two weeks of ah me doing too much talking, it's time for me to ask you quite a few questions.
Speaker: So what I'm interested to understand is firstly, how many conversations have you had with agency owners about their databases and AI in the last five months? Hundreds, literally hundreds. I've done about 200 odd demos and i have been speaking to mostly agency owners in businesses of anywhere from one seat um On average, about 10, but right through to 50 seats as well. Okay, great. And what percentage of those agency owners would you say are right on top of AI, fully informed, versus the percentage that are, you know, reasonably good versus everyone else that's probably beginner-ish?
Speaker: This is a scary number. Very, very small portion of our whole industry, and in particular, the people I speak to, but I'm also referencing other agencies scenarios and presentations that I make where I ask the question about AI to the room, ah small percentage, less than 10%, 5%, if I had to guess a number, are early adopters who are very au fait, are really pushing the limits of AI and really understanding how to use it. I would say there's probably a big chunk of about 70%, 80% who are using it in a very basic function in in a basic functional way, you know, copy pasting things and getting some basic support out of AI. And then there's probably a small portion of, you know, 10% that are, you know, putting their, you know, hands over their eyes and saying, I don't want to know about this. Don't show me. I'm, you know, I'm not interested. I'm too old or I don't trust it.
Speaker: Okay, great. So let's just cut to the chase. What are the key outputs that you're seeing that the best recruiters and agencies are producing? And what are they doing at the back end with AI that are producing that output?
Speaker: The AI can now be part of the whole process. I think that's the bit that people are not understanding. Again, i see most people using it it in a very basic way of, you know, I can take a candidate resume, I can take a conversation potentially if I've transcribed it, pop it into ChatGPT, pop in the PD and ask it to produce something on a template. That's now considered basic functionality. The AI can be used throughout the whole process. from the very start of, you know, finding the job, in fact, finding the candidate, of course, um you know, and and everything in between, producing the document, as you said, ah utilising AI in a more sophisticated way to match candidates to jobs and really tie in the criteria, ah educate the recruiter on things they might have missed. ah For an example, i ran actually and a demo of our candidate summary
Speaker: our candidate summary building tool. And the client asked me, will it pick up any gaps or shortfalls? And so we asked it to do that, summarize this candidate for the job, but also highlight a couple of areas where they might fall short. And it did that as well in a really detailed way from the conversation. So there's so much more that can be done than just, you know, paste this in here, do this for me um and produce it at the other end. I think people really need to understand The technology is way beyond, and they probably do know this, it's way beyond what they're using it for and what can be used for. You need to speak to an expert to understand what you don't know. You don't know what you don't know.
Speaker: So I'd imagine, just using that example, that that helps the consultant think a bit more deeply about the candidate. So if these are the gaps, have I considered them? And if the client raises them, how am I going to ah counter them?
Speaker: Absolutely. it It can help the recruiter be prepared for those client conversations. They can utilize the AI to get the answer as well if they don't understand that. How would i you know address this or should I go and speak to the the candidate? How do I prep the candidate for this? So there's so many elements to that end-to-end recruitment process and people listening to this, some of them might be saying, yeah, I do that, I do that. ah But there'll be many saying, I didn't know or I should be using it for that And I think that's the appeal of, you know, kind of bundling it into a system. And again, I don't want to do the sales pitch of Atlas, but a system that already has a lot of that built in. You're not having to think about building those agents or building that flow. You've kind of got access to doing that automatically in a system. But there are so many more applications that are even outside the recruitment process as well, huge ones in relation to client data and marketing data as well. So we'll get on to that in just a sec, but I'm interested in what you just said before that. So does that mean really recruiters should very rarely have to run an ad on their favourite job board? Because if they're using AI effectively, they should be using their whole database to source and in, let's say, 90% of cases, that should produce a suitable shortlist?
Speaker: Without having the job boards coming at me, yes. that is exactly That is exactly ah the premise of a system like Atlas is that you should make more placements from your existing data, from your existing database, the holy grail of what every recruitment agency has been trying to do. i collect all of this data. i collect this candidate information And then I don't do much with it. I don't make enough placements from my own database. So surely following the mantra of da a garbage in, garbage out, that this is putting a spotlight on recruiter interview questions. If they're not asking candidates appropriate key selection criteria, behavioural event interview questions, then it's it's going to be a big disadvantage compared to agencies that have recruiters properly trained in that methodology and hence the data is being captured and stored in the database for them to be found.
Speaker: It's always been an issue, of course, is what you're alluding to, Ross, that yeah, if you're not asking the right questions and collecting the information, you're not going to have the information available to you. But up to now, you've also had to then input it in. And yes, the reality of the new way of working is you have that conversation. it is And if you're having a good quality conversation, that data is going into the system and then can be utilised for all sorts of different purposes. Great. And that's a good segue to the point you were leading into before.
Speaker: So, we've spoken about the recruitment process. So, what about market intel and clearly recruitment agencies for decades have had that captured in their database from candidate and client conversation. So how's AI helping the leading recruitment agencies ah collect that information and package it up to create compelling market insights or using it in some other way?
Speaker: Well, I'll give you an example of an Atlas customer and she's a single seat operator. She's utilising Claude and Atlas connection and she has claude set up to review her conversations for the past week, both client and candidate conversations, come up with three key topics or themes that are common through those conversations, and to write a thought leadership piece about what's going on in her market from those conversations. So in a matter of seconds, she's got all of that information captured, written, and she's got her blog posts or her LinkedIn posts for the week on really specific topical ah elements that are relevant to her market. So that is a really great example of something that would have taken hours for somebody to do ah because they would have to recall that information, write it down, write an article, all of those things. The data's all there. You can now utilise it really simply.
Speaker: So again, it puts the spotlight on the questions that recruiters are asking their candidates to capture the right information. So what are you finding to be, what what are what are examples of really powerful questions that are relevant to the recruitment process but also provide great data points for this sort of marketing intel?
Speaker: Well, I think that could be done really simply with the job description itself and the client conversation. So as an example, it would be, you know, take the job description, take the conversation I had with the client, the briefing conversation, put that together and now create a body of information about the job and then work out a list of questions I need to ask. Yes, criteria-based, but also ah How do i ask the candidates to provide the right examples to me so that the client can see what they need to see at an interview or at a referral stage? So an interview coach, if you're using AI effectively, going to be an interview coach?
Speaker: There's so many elements, Ross. Like it is such exciting technology that, again, so many people are not utilizing the best of their ability. But the ones that I'm seeing are doing a really great job are gaining huge efficiencies. And the obvious example to me would be you've got a candidate who's a bit 50-50 about the job. You've got the offer. So you say to the AI, right, script me a conversation to put the offer.
Speaker: What's likely to be the candidate's pushback? And what are the best ways that I can ah hear what the pushback is about and provide some other ah pieces of information for consideration to help the candidate think more positively about this opportunity?
Speaker: Well, the best AI is actually going to lead you to that before it even gets to that pointy conversation, Ross. The best AI is actually going to start to recognise some of the the signs or signals the candidate's giving that that they're not interested at or you're losing them or they're starting to become disinterested in the process and you capture it much earlier. So, you know, even monitoring how long someone's taking to get back to you and those kind of things could be a sign that they're perhaps losing interest and you should stay on top of the candidate. So, yeah, there are there is even broader applications, but in that same vein, yes. I love it. Red flags that the system learns the red flags about when a candidate's losing interest or the client's losing interest and then proactively notifies the consultant, you have a client with waning interest because of this reason, I suggest you do this to try and understand why their interest is waning.
Speaker: Absolutely. I mean, the the Atlas AI will tell you your probability of conversion of a client. You have a conversation, it will analyze that conversation. It will tell you whether that client's likely to convert, whether they're going to give the job to you or not, if you've done the pitch. So, Yeah, these are the kind of things that I think people need to push on to the next level of no more just, as i said, copy-pasting basic stuff. Start to get really strategic about what are the outcomes that I want to achieve from the AI? How can I build in processes that do that? And is the technology available to me? Is the technology I'm currently using the right piece of tech to do what I want to do with the business moving forward? Yeah.
Speaker: So, does this mean realistically that we should all um think that halving the time to fill a job is realistic as an industry average across the next couple of years?
Speaker: There should definitely be an improvement in time to fill. There should definitely be an improvement in how many candidates you're filling from the system. There should definitely be an improvement of repeat customers, repeat work because they're getting something from you that that they can't get elsewhere. They're getting insights. They're getting information that you're using that data and that analysis in the right way. Another example of that is, you know, to me, salary surveys are gone. If you're still sending out surveys and patiently waiting for people to fill them in, collating that data and putting that out there, you don't need to do that anymore. ah
Speaker: AI can be collecting that information in real time in every interview. You can go back and say, go through all my candidate interviews for the past 12 months and put together a salary summary of what's the average salary people were on what were they what percentage increase were they looking to move, how quickly did they move after that, check LinkedIn and see if they have moved, you know, in what period of time. I mean, that kind of data, which used to take weeks and months to collate, can literally be a job done in minutes. and is so valuable to your client, you could be producing something like that on a regular basis and and sending it out.
Speaker: Well, the possibilities are endless. We don't have time for any more today, Adele, but I look forward to revisiting this topic in the near future. Thanks very much.
Speaker: I'll always have lots to say on it, Ross. Thanks for asking the question.
Speaker: So, Adele, before we finish today, I'd like to just say a little bit about my sub stack.
Speaker: What's Substack, Ross? Substack is a platform for writers and enables writers to produce content that they can either produce for free or ask people to pay. And I've transitioned my old newsletter, Insight, that was produced on WordPress across to Substack.
Speaker: Ah, that's cool. And so your is yours free or do we have to pay for it Well, firstly, let me tell you what you get. So I produce three posts a week. I have a news update Tuesday morning and I have a news update Friday morning. And typically there's between six and eight different pieces of news. And then I have my standard commentary or opinion piece on a Thursday morning, the sort of thing that people have been used to getting via insight from me. And I will also post other ad hoc pieces. So while I was traveling, I was posting every couple of weeks about my travels on the road. So across a month, you're probably getting about 15 or 16 pieces. If you are a free subscriber, you get access to the beginning of all of those posts. And then if you're a paid subscriber, then you get access to all the posts and you've got access to the archive and all the complete archive of rossclannett.com from right back to 2008. Well, knowing you and how detailed you are in researching topics, how while you write about different topics in our industry and keep people informed, i have to say this is a no-brainer. If you are not subscribing to Ross's Substack, I think you need to get on it.
Speaker: Great. Thanks, Adele. And the price I'd like to think is very reasonable. It's $45 a month plus GST, or you get 12 months for the price of 10. If you sign up for an annual subscription, that's $450 plus GST. And there's a 20% discount for three or more subscribers from the same domain. So visit substack.com backslash at Ross Klenitz. And i hope to see you on my subscriber list very soon.
