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Episode 118 - Is LinkedIn the Trojan Horse of the recruitment industry?
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Episode 118
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Introduction to Bullhorn Amplify
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Have you checked out Bullhorn Amplify? It's the AI game changer for recruitment teams. Amplify delivers 17% faster submit times, 22% higher fill rates, 49% better candidate matches.
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If you want to boost your productivity, visit bullhorn.com to learn more about Amplify.
Tribute to Robert Van Stockram
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This is the news for the 15th of July, 2025. I'm Ross Clennett.
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Former RCSA President Robert Van Stockram has passed away 71. His passing was announced by his family via a Facebook post last Tuesday. Van Stockram was a hugely influential figure in the Australian recruitment industry as a business owner and serving as a member of the RCSA's national board for 10 years, culminating in his presidency from 2013 to 2017.
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Van Stockram was a late starter in the recruitment industry, joining labour hire agency Forstaff in 1996 when he was his early 40s. when he was in his early forty s In 2003, Van Stockram and Forstaff co-founder Eddie Badesi, who passed away early last month, left Forstaff.
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The following year, they purchased DFP recruitment, which had revenue of $45 million, dollars generated mainly in Victoria from a balance of permanent and temporary business, predominantly in office and call centre roles.
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Over the following 14 years, DFP grew through an aggressive acquisition strategy, assessing 43 recruitment businesses and buying eight. In January 2018, Japanese staffing company Will Group acquired 60% of DFPs' shares.
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Van Stockram and Badesi completed their earn-out period in March 2022. Although neither commented publicly, the total acquisition price was believed to be in the range of $30 to $35 million. dollars Van Stockram also served as a local government councillor for the City of Knox.
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He was awarded Life Membership of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry after serving on the board for 10 years and chairing the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce. Van Stockram's passions outside of work included travel, playing music, attending concerts and collecting and racing classic cars.
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He and his wife, Leonie Hill, were famous in the local area for the spectacular light show at their home in Sandringham every Christmas season between 2007 and 2023. RCSA CEO Charles Cameron commented on LinkedIn last Tuesday.
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The recruitment industry has lost one of our finest. Robert Van Stockram was passion, purpose, generosity and spirit all wrapped up in one. Husband, father, grandfather and business leader, Rob gave energy and inspiration every time you met him.
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He was one of a kind. Robert was unconventional in business and in life, and that is what we loved about him. He will be so sadly missed. The car racing stories, the dad jokes, the passion, the man, the drive.
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Oh, the drive. Van Stockram is survived by his wife, seven children and 12 grandchildren.
BHP's Equal Pay Case
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Mining giant BHP has lost a landmark test case of the Federal Government's Same-Job-Same-Pay laws and has been ordered to enact equal pay for $2,200 of its central Queensland coal miners on labour hire contracts.
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Labour hire workers at BHP's Siraji Peak Downs and Gunyalla Riverside Mines will now receive the same wages as their directly employed peers. It is the most significant ruling relating to the coal mining sector since the Albanese government's same-job-same-pay laws came into effect last year. The ACTU estimates the decision will cost BHP $66 million dollars in pay increases, averaging $30,000 per worker.
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If applied to all labour-hire workers across its minds, the ruling could cost BHP around $1.3 billion dollars a year, according to the Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association.
Ashley Services Financial Update
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The association's chief executive, Steve Knott, said the Fair Works decision is considered an important test case of the same-job-same-pay laws.
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Businesses that supply labour hire to clients via legitimate and lawful above-award arrangements provide an invaluable service to the economy and they must be allowed to do so with certainty and confidence, he said.
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The mining union's Queensland President Mitch Hughes said the ruling was a significant win for coal workers and marked a nail in the coffin for BHP's sham labour hire model. The decision marks the 17th successful application for the union.
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ASX-listed training and labour hire firm Ashley Services announced that its expected EBITDA for the year ending 30 June 2025 will be between $8.5 and $8.8 million. dollars The company said the financial results have been negatively impacted by delays in commencing new work in the construction traffic and engineering labour hire businesses in Victoria, although these businesses are expected to return to historic levels of revenue and profits during the 2026 financial year.
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The company also cited challenges in generating increased fees for service revenues to offset state government funding reductions within the Victorian training business. The board has also resolved not to pay a final dividend for the 2025 financial year.
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Ashley Services' share price has declined 35% in the past 12 months.
AI Concerns in Recruitment
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The New South Wales Office of the Public Service Commissioner has issued guidelines stating that AI should not be used for making recruitment-based decisions and with a particular emphasis on avoiding its use for highly specialised roles.
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According to the Commissioner's report, Use of AI in Recruitment Guidance, AI can be appropriately used for tasks such as developing recruitment documents, preparing materials and communications, summarising candidate responses or interviewers' notes, handling applicant inquiries, especially when volumes are high, and scheduling interviews.
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Critically, AI must not replace humans in decision-making, it said. Bias was the primary concern about AI in hiring decisions. These included automation bias, where hiring teams may unknowingly over-rely on ai outputs, inherent biases built into AI tools, video interview technologies making inferences based on candidates' emotions, personality or appearance, and unreliable assessment criteria.
MinRes Resort for FIFO Workers
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ASX-listed mineral resources known as MinRes is hoping its latest FIFO accommodation will help make recruitment easier improve its gender balance and improve its staff retention.
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Formerly opened late last month, Mangala Resort accommodates mineral resources fly-in, fly-out workers at the site, which is under the Onslow Iron Project, about 1,200 kilometres north of Perth in the Hammersley Range.
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The resort's features include 500 rooms, each 45 square metres with big screen TVs, buffet breakfasts and dinners, a swimming pool and indoor fitness centre, an outdoor fitness park including cricket nets and a football oval.
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Chris Ellison, Managing Director of MinRes, said in a statement that he believes they have created a new standard for mine site accommodation and wellbeing. We recognise traditional mining camps must evolve to meet the needs of our people, grow female participation and build a more diverse and productive workforce.
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At Mangala Resort, that includes providing rooms that are suitable for singles and couples, he said.
Talent Hook Data Breach
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Cloud-based ATS Talent Hook continues had almost 26 million files accidentally leaked by an unsecured Azure blob storage container, according to an article in Cyber News last week.
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The archive contained almost 26 million files, most of which were resumes belonging to US citizens, including people's full names, email addresses, phone numbers, education details, professional details and employment history.
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Cyber criminals typically use this information to create fully customised, highly relevant phishing emails targeting active job seekers in an attempt to lure them into downloading malware or sharing login credentials via sham job ads or fake job trials.
Goldman Sachs Loyalty Checks
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US headquartered investment bank Goldman Sachs plans to ask junior bankers to confirm their loyalty regularly in a bid to limit advances from talent-hungry private equity firms.
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Bloomberg reported last week that, according to sources inside the firm, Goldman has plans to ask new analysts to certify every three months that they haven't already lined up jobs elsewhere. The move is intended to thwart poaching by private equity firms that have been recruiting junior bankers near the start of their on-the-job training, a practice known as on-cycle recruitment.
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Last month, JPMorgan Chase & Co. informed incoming graduates that they'll be fired if they're caught accepting offers of future jobs many months before completing their 18-month training program at the firm.
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We are committed to a culture where our employees act with integrity consistent with all our policies, said Goldman spokesperson Andrea Hurst in response to Bloomberg's request for comment about the plans.
GEM's Recruitment Challenges
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US ATS and recruitment platform GEM has reported that in the three years between 2021 and 2024, the average number of days to fill a job has climbed by 24% from 33 to 41.
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The report concluded that the main driver of the blowout in days to fill was the 42% increase in the average number of interviews per vacancy from 14 to 20. Job boards and social sites dominate the application pool accounting for 49% of all applications yet they contribute only 25% of actual hires.
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The picture for job seekers is bleak with the report saying a prospective applicant is three times less likely to get hired for a role today than three years ago due to a combination of lower vacancies and a higher number of applications per vacancy.
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GEM's 2025 recruiting benchmark report was compiled from over 140 million applications, 14 million candidates and 1.3 million hires.
End of News Segment & Teaser for Q&A
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And that's the news for the 15th of July, 2025. I'm Adele Last.
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Stay tuned now for Question of the Week.
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Question of the Week. Is LinkedIn the Trojan horse of the recruitment industry? ah Where is this coming from, Adele?
LinkedIn's Impact on Recruitment Agencies
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This is coming from a very interesting post on LinkedIn this week by Daniel Bellick, who is the co-founder of Find, F-Y-N-D.
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He's made a post about LinkedIn costing a lot of money, be charging recruitment agencies a lot of money, but actually undermining us at the same time. And he's posted a photo of a letter that's going out to employers, direct employers,
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telling them to use LinkedIn instead of recruitment agencies, basically saying your recruiter is pretty much doing the same thing you could be doing, access our tools, find your own staff and don't worry about recruiters.
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And it's caused quite an uproar in the industry. 571 people have um liked the post or found it insightful, 195 comments and 18 reposts. So it's had a lot of traction on the platform itself, but essentially the gist of it is you know They're charging us a lot of money and at the same time trying to steal our clients.
00:11:13
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Well, that's always been the case. I mean, LinkedIn, frankly, have been very clear about that. I mean, I'm just looking at an extract from... their filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission before they went public. So this is documentation from January 2011.
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And I quote directly, we believe our solutions are both more cost-effective and more efficient than traditional recruiting approaches, such as hiring third-party search firms to identify and screen candidates.
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So they've always been after us. They've seen us as the target market. They look at all the money that the recruitment industry makes all around the globe.
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And they go, we want some of that. We believe we can get some of that. And guess what? 14 years later, they're still at it. And guess what? 14 years later, the recruitment industry is still growing. So whatever they've done and whatever they continue to do really hasn't made that much difference.
Value Beyond LinkedIn
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Well, I get your point on that. And you're quite right. Like I recall when LinkedIn was coming into the market and it was supposed to be the end of the recruitment industry. That was The message that was kind of being sent out and what everybody was very concerned about, that the recruitment sector was going to die because this wonderful platform was coming out where employers could contact potential employees and candidates directly.
00:12:31
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And we know that hasn't happened. As you said, 14 years later, here we are, um definitely stronger, definitely making better use of the platform. But I think that's really kind of, you know, ick in all of this is that they take so much money from us as a sector.
00:12:48
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And then they are doing this kind of underhanded tactic in terms of telling recruit telling companies, telling employers not to use us. You know, it's one thing to say we think it's a great alternative, but it's another thing to sort of, really, it's undermining the the hand that feeds you. And someone makes that comment, biting the hand that feeds you.
00:13:09
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of course. I mean, of course. course they're going to do that. That's kind of what SEEK do as well. I mean, SEEK clearly have ah piggybacked on the initial money that they got, which was predominantly the recruitment industry, and then have firstly gone into targeting the end user employer directly.
00:13:34
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And then, of course, through Seek Investments, investing in products that are very specifically ah an alternative to a traditional recruitment agency.
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And that's going to continue happening. And again, the local recruitment industry has still continued to do well, despite Seek effectively speaking out of both sides of their mouth, let's face it.
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Well, one of the comments that's made against this post, and and this is
Proprietary Databases vs. Platforms
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a really interesting thing for recruiters to think about, is that if you are worried about this, if you're worried about what is essentially another competitor, you know, your other agencies are competitors, your client is a competitor, and potentially Seek or LinkedIn are competitors as well.
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And if that's what you're worried about, that's kind of the least of your worries, ah you need to focus on what value you actually bring. Because as a recruiter, if all you're doing is using LinkedIn or Seek,
00:14:28
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to produce the same candidates to your client, you're not adding a lot of value. so Completely. That's what this, you know, kind of person is arguing back against it to say, what are you all worried about?
00:14:39
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You know, if you're really good as a recruiter, you're offering much more to the client than just finding a candidate. but Precisely. I mean, let's face it. Seek, LinkedIn, their tech tools are to help you find candidates, but they're not a substitute for the genuine competency of a skilled agency recruiter.
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So if you genuinely think Seek and LinkedIn are out to cut your lunch and that terrifies you, then frankly, I'd be saying, well, what value are you really adding?
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Are you really demonstrating the deep skills of a human recruiter, the person who can ah attract candidates onto the market who won't apply to an ad on Seek or LinkedIn or flex an employer's selection criteria?
00:15:35
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to be able to accommodate a candidate that wouldn't otherwise be accommodated via just purely a tech platform. Like to me, that's always been and will continue to be the point of difference for agency recruiters.
00:15:50
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And that's not what Seek and LinkedIn are in the business of doing. I know, but it just, the manner in which this particular letter, which is obviously going out to employers and there's some other commentary that that's being posted on their side as well,
00:16:04
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it It's just a really dirty way of playing. think it's fine to offer an alternative. I don't think any recruiter worth their worth their weight will be worried about competition.
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As I said, we're not worried about the fact that it's competition and that there is an alternative. We know there's been an alternative this whole time. it hasn't taken us down, as we said. It's it's actually helped us grow.
00:16:26
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But I think it's just a really underhanded way of reminding the client of that. Why not just talk about the the benefits of what an employer could obtain by going onto the platform and using it. why need Why do you need to stab recruiters in the back at the same time? Sure.
00:16:42
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I get it. But again, i'd say that as a recruiter, you should be valuing and tending to your own database. And yes, of course, LinkedIn can help you or running an ad on Seek may help you.
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But ultimately, focus on your own patch. ah No recruiter can control what LinkedIn is doing or what Seek is doing. Don't Devote any time to thinking about it would be my advice. It's like focus on things you can control.
00:17:13
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What does generate value? It's the caliber of your proprietary data. So how you ensuring that the database that you have inside your own company is continually updated, that you're building relationships with your candidates and your clients.
00:17:34
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So neither your candidates or clients see LinkedIn or seek as a viable option. They want to use you as a recruiter because in their minds, clearly you add a lot of value.
00:17:46
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Yeah, I think that's um really wise advice and we've probably become a little too reliant on these kinds of tools, right? we've We've probably put so much emphasis on what they can provide us because it's easy. It's much easier to do it that way than to nurture your own relationships. But you're right. you are The only thing you actually own is your own database And if you're in a particular niche, you probably have a big portion of your own market available to you.
00:18:12
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And yet here we go, keeping on going back to places like LinkedIn and Seek to keep replenishing that and and, you know, sourcing people. But, you know, I think recruiters um need to yeah have a really good look at what they've got available to them and, you know, but, you know, be be wary of these tools, use these tools where you need to. it's just It's just a lot of money. I think that's the underlying thing of it, right? We spend a lot of money with the tool.
00:18:37
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um and Exactly.
Podcast Sharing and Access
00:18:40
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Aim to spend less. Aim to reduce your reliance. I'm not saying forget about Seek or LinkedIn. I'm sure they have some role. But really, to me, the sign of your effectiveness as a recruiter is your reliance on either or both of those tools is minimal because you know the best source of candidates are the candidates that exist on your database, not just to attempt to place them or place them again, as the source of referrals for other high-caliber candidates.
00:19:13
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And I guess like the old Trojan horse analogy we've made, it only worked once, right? They only fooled the Greeks one time because once they understood what the the model was, they weren't fooled again. So don't be fooled.
00:19:26
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um Make sure you go in with your eyes open. Understand, as you said, what you're spending, what you're getting, in terms of value and maybe get a bit smarter about that. Well, I certainly agree with that. And frankly, if it's taken that post on LinkedIn to wake people up, I'm surprised. But hey, better late than never.
00:19:43
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you
00:19:50
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00:20:02
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