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Episode 120 - Will the interview be made redundant by AI?
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Episode 120
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Transcript
Bullhorn Amplify's Impact on Recruitment Efficiency
00:00:09
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Have you checked out Bullhorn Amplify? It's the game changer for recruitment teams. Amplify delivers 17% faster submit times, 22% higher fill rates and 49% better candidate matches.
00:00:21
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If you want to boost your productivity, visit bullhorn.com to learn more about Amplify.
Rising Unemployment in Australia and Government Dependency
00:00:27
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This is the news for the of July, 2025. I'm Ross Clannett. i'm rosslenet According to the June labour market update released by the ABS earlier in the month, the national unemployment rate rose to 4.3% in seasonally adjusted terms.
00:00:42
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This is the highest unemployment rate since November 2021. Employment increased by only 2,000 after a 2,600 decline in May, a significant change in momentum from the robust job growth of 87,600 in April The participation rate increased by 0.1% month month to in June. Most concerning was the decline of full-time employment to ten point ah six million ah part-time employment increased by forty thousand two hundred
00:01:15
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to four point five six million Innes Wilcox, Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group, identified weak private sector hiring as a problem for the economy. This unfortunate outcome is a consequence of our weak private sector labour market.
00:01:29
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For over a year, there's been negligible jobs growth in the private market sector, with government-supported employment in the public and non-market sectors doing the heavy lifting, he said in a media statement.
00:01:40
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According to Wilcox, over the past year and a half, job creation has been far too reliant on government-supported sectors. During 2024, approximately four in five new jobs created in Australia were in these government-supported sectors.
00:01:53
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As the Australian Industry Group has been warning since the start of this year, this level of dependence on the taxpayer for job creation is plainly unsustainable,
Employment Hero vs. SEEK: Accusations of Anti-Competitive Behavior
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he said. In an update to the legal stash between Employment Hero and SEEK,
00:02:08
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Employment Hero is accused SEEK of anti-competitive conduct after they terminated Employment Hero's access to its platform, although the Federal Court ordered access to be maintained while legal proceedings are ongoing.
00:02:20
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SEEK emailed customers last Thursday stating it had expressed concerns to Employment Hero about its practices on multiple occasions in the past and that it would be monitoring Employment Hero's adherence to their terms closely.
00:02:33
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Employment Hero must comply with our SEEK API terms, the same ones that apply to partner platforms that integrate or have access to SEEK and your ads and applications, the email seen by Smart Company said.
00:02:44
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These terms include obligations around use of data and compliance with applicable laws, areas where we have expressed concerns to Employment Hero about its practices on multiple occasions in the past.
00:02:55
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SEEK framed the legal action as an opportunity for substantive evidence to be tested rather than ambant claims and told customers it would vigorously defend the legal action. It also stated it strongly rejects Employment Heroes allegations that Seek has misused its market power by cutting off access to a critical integration.
Randstad and Robert Half's Financial Performance in APAC
00:03:16
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Randstad Asia-Pacific was the Randstad Group's best performing region, with total revenue up 2% in Q2 results reported last week, although revenue in Randstad ANZ was down 4%.
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Group organic revenue per working day was down 2.3% year-over-year in q two to billion. group operating profit in q two was down forty three percent to forty seven million euros Robert Half reported Q2 revenue fell 7% year-over-year to approximately $1.37 billion. dollars By geography, Robert Half's US revenue was down 7.4% year-over-year and international revenue declined by 6.3% on an adjusted basis.
00:04:00
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Permanent placement income was down 12.5% and temp and contract margin declined 11.1%. Operating profit for the quarter was down 40% year-on-year to $41 million. to forty one million dollars ASX-listed Hime reported June quarter revenue of $7.49 million, dollars down 7.6% from the prior year period.
00:04:21
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The company said its decline reflected the recovery phase following the completion of a contract with a key client. Revenue improved 4.4% quarter-on-quarter. Quarterly gross profit was down 16.2% from the prior year period,
00:04:34
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but up 5.2% from the previous quarter. For the full year ended 30 June 2025, Hymie reported sales of $29.8 million, 1% lower than the previous financial year.
Queensland Health Services Audit Due to Poor Credentialing
00:04:48
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Queensland Public Hospitals have been directed to audit their recruitment practices following an independent investigation into hiring practices at Mackay Base Hospital. The review covering 37 senior medical officer appointments from January 23 to December 24 found that poor credentialing posed a low but real risk to patient safety.
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Concerns had been raised by staff about doctors working beyond their expertise. One case revealed a senior doctor's position was not publicly advertised, nor was a selection panel used, breaching standard procedures.
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The report also highlighted insufficient training of recruitment staff and an overstretched hiring system. In response, Queensland Health has mandated audits across all 16 hospital and health services.
00:05:33
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Mackay Hospital and Health Service stated that steps had already been taken since October 24 to improve recruitment and credentialing practices.
Underpayment and Exploitation of Young Workers in Australia
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Young workers across Australia are being underpaid at an alarming rate, according to a new report, which uncovered widespread exploitation of young workers in Australia.
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The Melbourne Law School has released the final report of its Fair Days Work Project, which surveyed 2,814 workers aged between and identify the scope of underpayment among young workers.
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It found that 33% of the respondents were underpaid, with 26% receiving less than $15 per hour, much lower than the current minimum of $24.95 per hour.
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30% of respondents also said they were required to pay for their uniform. The survey affirmed the alarming rate at which young workers are underpaid, the report read. Underpayment remains one of the most pervasive issues confronting Australian labour law.
00:06:31
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In this context, young persons are a group especially vulnerable to workplace exploitation. In addition to being underpaid, the report found that young workers are also subject to other forms of workplace exploitation, such as required to complete additional work outside their usual responsibilities without pay, 43%,
00:06:51
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forty three percent forbidden to take breaks that they were entitled to, 36%, had timesheet hours reduced by their employer, 35%, not paid for work during a trial period, 34%, not paid superannuation, 24%, and forced to return some or all of their pay to their employer, 8%.
00:07:11
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eight percent The Fair Work Ombudsman has described young workers as often vulnerable because they are new to the workforce, lack experience and have a limited knowledge of industrial relations, according to the report.
Job Advertisement Stability and Low Mobility in Australia
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SIG's June employment report revealed that job ads nationally fell 0.7% month-on-month seasonally adjusted and 0.3% based on trend, making it a second month of marginal declines.
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On a monthly basis, the construction sector was the only sector to record job ad growth in June at 1.8%.
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Applications per job ad which are recorded with a one-month lag, rose 2.1% month-on-month on a seasonally adjusted basis in May and are now at the second at the highest level on record.
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With the year-on-year decline in ad volume hovering around 5.5% over the past quarter, this is the most stable job ads have been for some time, seek Senior Economist, Blair Chapman said in a press release.
00:08:11
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On the other side of the market, applications per job ad have never been higher and have now surpassed the peak recorded in 2020 when job ads were at their lowest. This rise is due to an increased candidate pool rather than candidates applying for more roles.
00:08:25
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Despite the widespread perception of job hopping by younger workers, the evidence shows that job mobility is close to record lows in Australia. The proportion of employees who changed jobs declined in the 12 months to February 2024, according to a new report from Jobs and Skills Australia.
00:08:42
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Staff leaving for other job opportunities and the nature of the job were the most common reasons for employers needing to regularly replace staff. The key reasons employees stated for leaving jobs in the two largest employing sectors of healthcare and social assistance and retail trade were job conditions and salary dissatisfaction.
00:09:03
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The report field revealed that 1.1 million Australian workers changed jobs in the 12 months to February 2024. twenty twenty four This brings the country's job mobility rate to 8%, down from the previous peak of 9.6% in February 2023, but higher than the record low of 7.5% in February 2021. It is worth noting that despite the recent increased rate of job mobility over the 2021 to 2023 period, it is still relatively low compared to earlier decades and has generally been trending downwards since the late 1980s, the report read.
New Zealand's Migration Loss to Australia
00:09:42
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New Zealand recorded a net migration loss of 30,000 people to Australia in the year ending December 2024, according to Stats New Zealand. This is similar to the 29,400 loss 23 and the largest calendar year-on-year loss since 2012, although still the 2012 record 43,700. The 2024 figures include 47,300 departures to Australia 17,300 arrivals from Australia.
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although still below the two thousand and twelve record of forty three thousand seven hundred the twenty twenty four figures include forty seven thousand three hundred departures to australia and seventeen thousand three hundred arrivals from australia Of the 69,300 New Zealand citizen departures worldwide, 58% went to Australia.
00:10:20
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Notably, 35% of New Zealand citizens who migrated to Australia in 2024 were born overseas, higher than the 29% of overall New Zealand population who were born overseas.
00:10:31
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And that's the news for the 29th of July 2025. Adele Last. Stay tuned now for Question of the Week.
AI-Based Hiring Tools and Their Impact
00:10:48
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Question of the week, is the interview likely to become redundant in the recruitment process? This is a really relevant one for me, Ross. You spoke about this at the Bullhorn Engage event and Greg Savage also touched on it last week at the Appsco Emerge event.
00:11:07
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But my personal experience is with my own family. My own son who's 16 has just recently been employed by McDonald's. And what I'm talking about is a tool they're using called McHire.
00:11:18
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Makaya, yes. And I mentioned it in the context of 7-Eleven. I've also seen a publicity that Hungry Jacks have put out about the same sorts of process. So briefly describe what your son went through to get the job, Adele.
00:11:36
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Well, this is complete AI-based hiring tool, a hiring platform. Essentially, he went through a full recruitment process with multiple steps, including screening,
00:11:47
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including collecting data, including employment information, all sorts of bits of information that he had to submit. And it was all AI based through the platform before even seeing a human, before having any contact with any person.
00:12:01
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And the very that was the very last step of the process. Come down to the local store, meet the the store manager, um you know, pick up your uniform and off you go. So it was a really streamlined process.
00:12:12
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It was very fast. It was efficient. was And my 16-year-old son didn't know any different. Even after my 28 years in recruitment, I was horrified. He him, mate, that just did me out of a job. And he said, mum, it was so fantastic.
00:12:24
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I don't know what you're talking about. Because it was quick, no doubt, that he that he got his answer pretty quickly. What, within 72 hours? Yeah, it was. It was literally within the same week of his application. It was done.
00:12:36
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Right. And of course, the critical question is, has he proved to be a worthy worker that the AI has effectively screened in as someone likely to succeed in a McJob?
Deep Fake Risks in Remote Jobs: FBI Warnings
00:12:48
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Well, that's the funny thing. And I would hope that they are using some of that data around appointments, how many people convert from applying through that process to getting a job, how long they're at retaining them for, what their tenure is as well, what sort of shifts, how many shifts they're taking up, all that kind of stuff. You would hope that it's tracking things all the way through and helping ah learn itself on, you know, the algorithm of what makes a good McCire, essentially. Yeah. And this is no doubt where the power of these platforms ah is. It's using the vast amounts of data from their own hiring, not generic hiring data, but their own hiring,
00:13:29
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to continually tweak the system to better identify the types of candidates who not only accept and start jobs, but prove to be reliable workers.
00:13:41
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And all without an interview. So our question of is the interview redundant, it looks like that could be a reality. Certainly for jobs at that level. I think what is clearly happening, it's significantly reducing the amount of human intervention. In other words, no human to phone screen and no human to conduct a full assessment.
00:14:06
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From the way you described it, your son pretty much had a sort of tick the box final interview type experience face to face. Would that be right? Yeah, pretty much.
00:14:17
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Where do you think this wouldn't work then, Ross? Well, I think the obvious one is probably what we're not seeing on Australia yet, or certainly not to any large degree, but we are seeing in the US.
Can AI Replace Traditional Interviews?
00:14:31
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And I wrote about this in my blog in June, and this is deep fakes.
00:14:36
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so just So just to summarise this, that the FBI has announced that they've identified um remote jobs in over 100 US companies that are occupied by North Korean operatives, people who have nefarious intent either to steal industrial or government secrets or to plant malware or spyware or ransomware with a view to, at some future point, um demanding and gaining
00:15:14
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ah financial significant financial return for disabling that type of spyware. And this is a significant problem made all the greater because the people who've been hired for these remote jobs don't have to turn up in person.
00:15:34
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And the um advice that the FBI gave in terms of US companies to avoid this happening, the number one piece of advice is paying for the candidate to attend an in-person interview, including for relevant jobs performing technical skill tests online. Because what the FBI have been able to prove is that they have one person conducting the interview, they have maybe one different person doing the skills test, and neither of those people really are the person who's being employed.
00:16:07
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And because these are for jobs that have highly technical um requirements and candidates are in low supply, what they've discovered is that many companies have been less than rigorous with background checking to prove that the person they're hiring is in fact the person who's doing the work because of stolen u identities, meaning that these workers present as US citizens working in the US, but they are not.
00:16:37
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So these kinds of case studies and this kind of information is what probably holds back the advancement of the technology into this space because we know that ah the AI tech is there. We know it's there or it's about to be there in terms of being able to replace the interview process itself, but it's often the human mistrust of that. I mean, i certainly wouldn't want my doctor being employed by AI and his credentials checked that way and assessed whether he's a good doctor or not.
00:17:08
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That's not something that you'd want for somebody that might be saving your life, let's say. But that's a classic example of jobs that are in high demand and low supply, where there's a temptation to potentially take shortcuts because you want to offer a job to a candidate who you perceive is difficult to obtain and therefore maybe not as rigorous with background
The Future of Interviews: AI vs. Human Judgment
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checks.
00:17:32
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So to me, you've got to look at, well, what's the purpose of the interview? And... in the case of your son, really the purpose was just to clap eyes on him and kind of give him some final bits and pieces of information prior to him starting the job. It wasn't really to undertake any sort of assessment.
00:17:58
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No, I agree. He pretty much had the job by then. It was just making sure his you know head was on the top of his shoulders pretty much. But the this will be being used. This is going to extend further into the recruitment space, both, you know, with agencies potentially because we are early adopters of tech, but with our clients as well.
00:18:16
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So, you know, what's stopping the interview being but being made redundant? why can't, you know, as as the generative AI gets better at learning what we are assessing, surely there is a point where it's going to be made redundant.
00:18:32
Speaker
I look, I'm going to make a bold statement and say, firstly, I've probably got three decades left on this earth. Let's hope. Let's say I'll get close to my 90th birthday. I would be very surprised in the time I have left on this earth that interviews largely disappear um in in the hiring process.
00:18:52
Speaker
For some jobs, sure, but I don't reckon even for most jobs for the simple reason that hiring managers still want to feel like they're they have the final say and that their view counts and they've got some sense of team culture that they want to assess with that candidate.
00:19:13
Speaker
And so I reckon you're going to get a lot of resistance to reducing interviewing altogether, sorry, eliminating interviewing altogether, where I do think people will be supportive is reducing the number of interviews because certainly I think ah for many jobs there are too many interviews and it's too onerous on both the candidates and the employer.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's faster than that. I hate to say, I think you might be you might be retired, you might be sitting back in your rocking chair, Ross, but I think we're going to see a really dramatic change. it's It's moving way too fast and I think it's only a matter of time but that the the tech is is really brilliant.
00:19:54
Speaker
And that we start to trust it, the legislation catches up, all of those things. But I think it's going to be sooner than you think. Well, okay, so let's look at the difference between candidates who, ah let's call them generic jobs, and they don't need to be outstanding, versus those candidates where, for a smaller proportion of jobs, where the difference that the human makes is significant.
00:20:19
Speaker
And I think for those jobs, I suspect interviews will will be with us for a long time. And let's not forget that we're putting standards on generative ai that human interviewers can't really reach themselves. I mean, how many hiring managers are not very good interviewers? They have not been trained or they don't follow their training. They're susceptible to biases.
00:20:47
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they're interviewing people at the end of the day when they're tired and they're not so attentive. um I mean, this is one of the things that I think people push back against in terms of AI, but I think you've got to look at what we know about human interviewers and we know about their fallibility and it's pretty significant.
00:21:04
Speaker
And I think that's a really interesting point, that final point you make, and I think that's why this will advance pretty quickly. And um I really look forward to watching this space. It's a little um Pet hobby of mine, I'm loving watching where AI is starting to make its reach.
00:21:19
Speaker
Well, one thing we know for sure, Adele, is that there's plenty of vendors who have got a lot of investors' money at stake in minimising human involvement in interviewers and maximising the involvement of generative AI. so So, you know, it's the old Tom Cruise line, show me the money and let's see what happens with interviewing.