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Episode 53
255 Plays7 months ago
News for the week beginning 18 March and Question of the Week: "What did you take away from Bullhorn Engage, Ross?"
#RNA #recruitmentnews
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Transcript
Jijatjo's Strategic Shift
00:00:08
Speaker
This is the news for recommencing the 18th of March, 2024. I'm Adele Last. Network by Jijatjo, a time and attendance gig work platform for the hospitality sector, has ceased its offering in both its Australian markets, Sydney and Melbourne, as of Friday, the 1st of March. Founded in 2015 by expat Australian Tim Chatfield, the New York headquartered business launched in Australia in March, 2022.
00:00:35
Speaker
An email to customers announcing the decision was sent just two days before the closure came into effect. The email did not specifically state why the decision had been made. It stated, we are refocusing our efforts on growing the US market for the near future and the decision to realign our resources is a strategic move, which suggests its expansion into Australia had failed to meet shareholder expectations within its two-year existence.
Leadership Changes at Adecco ANZ
00:01:02
Speaker
Adecco ANZ CEO Nicholas Lee is no longer with the company effective the 8th of March Industry News Service shortlist confirmed last week. Cidexo's former CEO of global government and agencies Tony Leach is currently acting in Lee's role for an unspecified period. Lee's departure comes three weeks after the performance of Adecco on their recently won ADF recruitment contract was publicly questioned by the Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keough in an interview on radio station 2GB.
00:01:32
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Leech is ADECO's fourth local CEO in the past seven years.
PwC's Restructuring Moves
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Executive search and consulting firm Corn Ferry reported revenue fell 2% to US$669 million in constant currency for the third quarter ending 31 January 2024, with declines in both executive search down 6% and RPO down 21.6%.
00:01:56
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However, operating profit for the quarter rose fourfold to US$59 million. In the Asia Pacific region, search revenue dropped by 5.7% to US$21.3 million. PwC Australia's staff have been told 366 jobs will be axed as part of widespread cuts announced within the firm last Wednesday.
00:02:19
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The firm's 7,200 strong staff were informed at midday that 329 staff and up to 37 partners were losing their jobs due to the restructure. All affected staff will be informed within the coming days about their future within the company. Anyone affected may be invited to apply for new roles created by the changes in the business structure, PwC said. The restructure is reportedly to ensure the business model is simplified in the wake of a controversial 2023.
00:02:48
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PwC's tax practice was discovered to have misused confidential government briefings to assist clients bend the impending tax laws. Almost 350 jobs were also slashed late last year, with several partners also entering early retirement. The company's skilled services hub in Adelaide was also closed as part of the restructure, axing 141 jobs as a result.
Post-Pandemic Workforce Trends
00:03:11
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The firm has also recently lost several clients, including Westpac, which dumped PwC as
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external auditor last November after a 20-year partnership. In 2022, salaries vary between $380,000 for junior partners and $3.9 million for most senior partners.
00:03:32
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A recently published piece of trans Tasman research on chef wellbeing and working conditions shows chefs in Australia and New Zealand experience significant financial hardships and mental health issues with many wishing to leave their jobs. Most of the 300 respondents were men with an average age of 37.
00:03:49
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They'd been chefs for 16 years on average and 42% originally came from outside Australia and New Zealand underlying the profession's high mobility. 44% of the respondents said they were currently in precarious employment. 67% of respondents work more than 38 hours weekly but a fifth of chefs worked 52 to 61 hours
00:04:11
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with unsurprisingly poor lifestyle and health habits common amongst respondents. These included low consumption of breakfast, low rates of regular exercise, a less than recommended number of hours sleep on a work night and negative perceptions of their sleep quality. Financial hardship was reported by almost one in five chefs, a quarter of respondents went without meals due to financial pressure and two thirds also reported working when sick an average of nine days a year.
00:04:38
Speaker
The results show the chef's intention to quit declines with better management support. Victorian local governments are continuing to experience a higher staff turnover than before the pandemic and audit has found putting this down to competition in the labour market. Auditor General Andrew Greaves released his summary of audits of the local government sector for 2022-23 two weeks ago. In this period, the sector continues to experience staff turnover
00:05:07
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at a rate higher than pre-pandemic levels due to a competitive labour market, the report says.
India's Recruitment Scandal
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It says the sector experienced an average staff turnover of 18%, which is an improvement from 20% in 2021-22, but still higher than the 14% in 2018-2019. Small shy councils had an average turnover rate of 22%.
00:05:31
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The Auditor General reminded councils that recruiting and retaining appropriately skilled staff is a risk that has to be actively managed to ensure councils meet their legislative reporting requirements. Staff turnover affects an entity's ability to prepare financial reports and performance statements and can lead to a loss of corporate knowledge, the report warns.
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India's Central Bureau of Investigation is examining the conduct of over 20 local recruitment firms allegedly complicit in international human trafficking networks involved in sending young Indians to fight in the Russia-Ukraine war zone. The Law Enforcement Agency is investigating recruitment firms in three Indian cities, as well as Dubai,
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in the aftermath of the death of two Indians on Russia's Ukrainian border who were promised lucrative jobs in Russia only to end up fighting on the side of the Red Army.
Workplace Trust Challenges
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The investigation found that the networks lured Indian nationals on the pretext of highly paid jobs through social media channels like YouTube and Instagram, as well as via local recruitment agencies. New research published in the Harvard Business Review this month concluded that when organizations paid new hires more than equivalent existing employees,
00:06:41
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the best performers were the fastest to resign. The researchers examined how likely employees were to resign after the addition of a higher paid coworker, as well as to the extent which getting a pay rise might reduce their chances of resigning. The research dataset covered more than 4 million live employee records from nearly 100 companies across the US, Canada and Europe during the period of 2018 to 2023.
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The researchers discovered that when pay was adjusted within a month of the new employee starting, existing employees remained for an average of another two and a half years. In contrast, when pay adjustments took six months, employees stayed for an average of just one and a half years. And when pay increases took an entire year, employees quit an average of just 13 months after the new hire joined. Analyzing the quality of those employees quitting, the researchers concluded high performers were disproportionately represented
00:07:36
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among resigning employees. While normally about 1 in 4 resigning employees are high performers, this reduces to 1 in 3 when a new employee is paid more.
Australia's Stance on Migrant Worker Exploitation
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The researchers concluded that existing employees are likely to resign in response to sustained pay disparities because it erodes their trust in their teams and broader organisations, adding that even employees who aren't actively looking for a new job may become more aware of shifting market prices when a new person joins at a higher salary
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Sparking concerns they're being taken advantage of.
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Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Andrew Giles, is warning businesses about exploiting migrant workers. During a recent Law Council of Australia conference, Giles delivered a speech where he pointed out that the exploitation of migrant workers was harmful to the whole workforce and such behaviour had been tolerated for too long. Giles further explained the policies regarding workplace relations and immigration needed to work hand in hand to address the ongoing issue of temporary migrant workers being exploited by businesses.
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With the recent reforms to industrial relations, the government has now made it a criminal offence for employers to force or unduly influence migrant workers to work in breach of their visa conditions.
AI at Bullhorn Engage
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The law also grants the Minister of Authority to ban employers from hiring any migrant workers on temporary visas if they have found guilty of exploitation and those employers will be given a prohibition notice and have their names posted to the Department of Home Affairs website.
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And that's the news for the week beginning the 18th of March, 2024. I'm Ross Clannett. Question of the week this week is about the Bullhorn Emerge event that occurred in Sydney last week. Ross, you attended the event. What did you take away from it?
00:09:35
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Before I answer the question, Adil, just for people listening who don't know what we're talking about, Bullhorn Engage is a one-day conference sponsored by, well put on by Bullhorn. Bullhorn is a Salesforce product and most people would know it as a recruitment database. It was on at the Ramwick Racecourse last Thursday, the 14th of March and I was there as a panel member. So I sat on a panel
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with Charles Cameron, the CEO of the RCSA and Leslie Horsbrough, the MD of Appsco. And I also attended most of the other sessions. So that's the context. So to answer the question, it just completely changed my mindset about AI and large language models specifically. Okay. Tell us more.
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The opening keynote was naturally enough at a Bullhorn conference by a Bullhorn employee. And in this case, it was Jeff Newman, the senior vice president of product marketing. And also had a section by Nathan Green, senior solutions consultant at Bullhorn and
00:10:57
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I can summarize it by three words that Jeff put up on the screen and talked about. Find, write and focus. So what does that mean? So find is, well, actually just to take a step back. So my
00:11:20
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Consumption of chat GPT and thinking about AI has been based on what chat GPT is doing at the moment, which of course is accessing publicly available information. But what Jeff opened my eyes to was the real game to be won is with your own proprietary data. It's not the use of data publicly available for everyone.
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But what you as a recruitment, I mean, you could apply this generally in business, but let's talk specifically about recruitment is the power of accurate, clean, up-to-date relevant data.
AI's Role in Recruitment Automation
00:12:10
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So let me specify what I mean by that.
00:12:14
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Let's start with write. So what does write mean in terms of what AI can do? Well, let's just a simple example that everyone can relate to. The AI looks at the job description. It looks at the notes that you have made from the briefing that you've had with the hiring manager.
00:12:33
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and the AI looks at the information held in your client file about that client, and then the AI writes a draft job ad.
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So you can then polish it up and post the job ad. Another thing that the AI would be able to do or can do would be to draft an email. So if you've got a candidate that you've selected, then rather than start from scratch, the AI pulls the relevant information about the candidate from your notes, the relevant information about the job description and the recruitment brief.
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and it populates the email that again, you can then just edit and then send. So that's the first thing. Find. Again, a pretty simple example. You upload a job description and your notes from the meeting that you've had with the hiring manager, and then the system will be able to automatically from that
00:13:39
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job description, annual notes, produce a long list or a short list of candidates. So then immediately, so it's literally immediate. The moment that you put the information in into the system, it finds that data for you. So again, you don't have to go searching. It's right there for you and you can then, and it doesn't just provide the list rank order. Okay.
00:14:09
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To me, the most significant one was the third one, which is focus. And what that means, or what I took it to mean, and my interpretation was this, it takes live data and it helps the consultant decide exactly what to do with what's been put into the system.
Future of AI in Recruitment
00:14:32
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So let me give you a simple example.
00:14:36
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So you put a job into the system, including the salary, and then immediately what the system tells you is, let's for the sake of the argument, say it's a permanent job, says the likelihood of filling this job within four weeks is 27%. However, if the client pays another 15,000,
00:15:04
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or you can broaden the selection criteria, the likelihood of filling this job within four weeks goes to 90%, for example. Or you enter a job into the system
00:15:19
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And then the system immediately says insufficient sample size to provide feedback about likelihood of filling this job. Proceed with caution. In other words, based on the information in the database, this is a job outside the expertise of that company.
00:15:40
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The data might also say you enter, you put a job into the system and the system says, this is the fourth similar job received in the past two weeks. Candidate supply in this area is running low, suggest you prioritize, you know, 12 hours to replenish candidate supply because the trend of these jobs continuing to be registered will mean you're going to be short of suitable short lists.
00:16:08
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So they're just some examples. And is like the first two make sense, the right, what we're using it for and the find I can understand in systems. Are you saying that Bullhorn has that focus element? Is that part of their software now? Oh, no, sorry. So, okay, to be clear, I'm speculating on where this is going. So this is not what the Bullhorn product does at the moment or not to my knowledge.
00:16:34
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But to me, it's just as obvious as not following day that this is exactly where the huge productivity gains are going to be made for agency recruiters. Because the quality of data is going to dictate the quality of what you're getting back from the system in terms of information.
00:17:00
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And the more accurate that information, the more powerful it's going to be in
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directing your activity. So for example, maybe you've just put a fifth job in in two days and the system warns you to say, warning, reaching capacity based on timelines you've entered for this job, you'll need to be wary that you've got sufficient time to complete the shortlist by such and such a date. Again, I'm not saying Bullhorn's product does this, but I'm saying this is where the tech is taking us.
00:17:35
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And so you're telling me that our regional managers who told us that everything has to go into the system or it doesn't count, we're right. They were right back there. Absolutely, absolutely. Oh, but there's even more at stake Adil because the power of AI with your own proprietary data is going to be leagues ahead of the power of data
00:18:00
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that you generate from publicly available information. Now that's not to say what LinkedIn has is relevant. It'll still be relevant, but the real power will be in your proprietary data. And so the
Industry Progress and Challenges
00:18:14
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stakes to me in data integrity have just gone up by like a factor of four, I reckon. Okay. Very interesting.
00:18:25
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You mentioned that you were on a panel as well, Ross. Tell us about what was the topic of that panel. So I was on the panel with Charles Cameron, the CEO of the RCSA and Lesbrey Horsberg, the Managing Director of APSCO. And what we discussed was the results of a poll and the poll questions put out to the, not just the attendees, but wider within the industry. Over the past 24 months,
00:18:56
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Which of these 10 things do you believe the industry has made the most progress in and ranked from one to 10? So 10 is the least improvement and the top adapting to regulatory and compliance changes. So that's what people voted is where we've made the most progress. I completely disagree, by the way.
00:19:17
Speaker
Number two, culture, dedication to professional development and building great places to work. And bottom was vertical specialization. And second bottom was saying no to bad business. And were Leslie and Charles agreeing with that data? Did they find that surprising? They found it surprising because Leslie certainly thinks vertical specialization is an important area where we've made progress. Charles thinks saying no to bad business, important area where we've made progress.
00:19:47
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the feedback would be suggesting not. But to me, circling back to my earlier point, they're actually both right because what vertical specialization will do will ensure that you have deep pools of relevant data. The more you keep mining your niche,
00:20:12
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The more the data you have that the large language model can access and draw from will provide that with powerful, powerful insights far more than generalist data.
00:20:27
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And to Charles's point about saying no to bad business, this will mean that the system will prompt you to say no to bad business because the AI can go and look at your accounts receivable.
00:20:42
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will look at your candidate data and your client data. And maybe the AI says, based on candidate records, this employee has a very high staff turnover. Based on what we're drawing from, from debtors, it seems like this company pays their bills on average 27 days late.
00:21:03
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So the AI can immediately say, this is bad business for these reasons. So it's not just don't work on the business, but for these reasons. Again, just to emphasize, I'm not bullhorned.
00:21:18
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not providing that at the moment, but I'm just saying this is exactly where the development of large language models is taking us in terms of the power of the data and the relevance of the insights to direct and prioritise consultant activity. I love it. I love hearing about these types of events and the topics that were covered in conversations had, but
00:21:46
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I've really enjoyed hearing your connection of the dots for us in terms of what you took away and what you're kind of speculating for the future. And I wonder if others had similar realizations
AI's Impact on Recruitment Rankings
00:21:58
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at the event. If you did, maybe you want to get in touch with Ross and myself through the normal channels and LinkedIn or through the podcast and tell us what you thought of the event as well.
00:22:09
Speaker
Well certainly I didn't endorse that Adele because the panel immediately after the opening keynote was the CEO panel and as part of that panel Stephen Smith, founder and director of Serious People said, I'm paraphrasing, but basically said
00:22:27
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of everything that's happened in his 25 years and being in recruitment, like the last couple of years and the impact of AI is going to have the most profound effect on the recruitment industry. And I 100% agree with him. I've got 10 more years on him, 35 years. I've just ticked over 35 years. And I think without doubt,
00:22:52
Speaker
The development of AI and particularly the power in utilizing proprietary data is just going to turn this industry upside down. And it wouldn't surprise me. Fast forward 10 years, you see a complete reordering in terms of the ranking of size of recruitment businesses in this country and certainly the ranking in terms of profitability.
00:23:23
Speaker
Hey, are you liking listening to our podcast, Recruitment News Australia? If you are, it would really help if you could give Ross Clannan and I a five-star review on whatever podcast app you listen to it on. Please hop onto the review section and give us a review next time you're listening on your favorite episode. And thanks for listening.