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Episode 126 RCSA SHAPE 2025 Recap Part 2
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Episdoe 126
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Transcript
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome
Introduction to RCSA Shape Summary Part 2
00:00:09
Speaker
to the Recruitment News Australia RCSA Shape Summary Part 2. My name's Adele Last. And I'm Ross Klenit. Welcome to the show. What are we going to start with, Ross?
00:00:21
Speaker
Let's talk about Day 2 on stage. So we
The AI Edge Presentation by Tim Martin
00:00:25
Speaker
opened up with Tim Martin. Tim... Tim's presentation, the AI Edge, the latest in AI and how to leverage it within your staffing firm. Tim was obviously a very popular presenter last year in Noosa, so he was invited back. Did you enjoy Tim's presentation, Adele?
00:00:41
Speaker
Yeah, he did a bit of an updated version of his presentation from last time. And I remember last time it blew my tiny mind. It was 12 months ago. And he pretty much did a live presentation of ChatGPT's functionality and power.
00:00:56
Speaker
and showed us as recruiters what we could be and should be using it for. And as I said, really ah was eye-opening. And this presentation was flow on from that of kind of the next generation of what ChatGPT and equivalent products, because he doesn't, he's not aligned to any one product. He talked about Gemini and all the others, but those kind of tools.
00:01:17
Speaker
And again, what recruiters could be using them for. Again, he did a live presentation. He's so brave doing this on stage live in real time. But it was pretty powerful. It was. And just to stress, he was talking about the paid version. So typically, it's around $30 a month for the paid version of each of the main tools.
00:01:40
Speaker
So he started pretty powerfully by taking a photo showing how... the advanced chat GPT could analyse one of the people in the photo and provide some form of summary. So it was kind of pseudo-psychology, if you like, but he was demonstrating the power of what can be inferred from a person, just the power of what it can do with a photo.
00:02:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think he was trying to show us that we're moving on from just word and prompt verbal instruction or or prompting instruction and move to verbal, move to video, move to photos so that you're giving these tools as much information as possible to get what you need out of it. And I think one of the key things that several people I heard say after the presentation was that he said the traditional Google search is dead.
00:02:32
Speaker
Don't use Google anymore. And that was a really big big thing to say. I think most people in the room kind of went, oh, okay, um I've been Googling still, but he's right. You can find what you need on your ChatGPT.
00:02:44
Speaker
As he said, search using ChatGPT is driven by user intent, so it's got a much better but and more It's more powerful in terms of understanding context, the spirit spirit of the query, and being able to perform a much, much better job.
00:03:00
Speaker
In fact, he demonstrated that by asking to research the Mariner Group, which is a theatre assets group, and to provide a summary of of a potential recruitment proposal.
00:03:13
Speaker
So literally in front of us, it produced that proposal drawing on all sorts of web pages covering reviews on Glassdoor, Indeed, um types of roles that they recruit.
00:03:27
Speaker
And all of this was done live. So this report was generated in, I don't know, 15, 30 seconds. And there it was on the screen. It was quite extraordinary. And I think what was great was he really applied that in the recruitment space of being able to get really deep in your research around clients and prospects.
00:03:45
Speaker
So utilising these tools to be able to provide you with intimate knowledge about a prospect, let's say, before you go in or where you're trying to pitch or you're trying to find ah connection between your business and theirs. And I think that was really powerful in the recruitment space because we're so used to responding to a, you know, a tender document that's pretty generic and responding with really generic responses as well.
00:04:10
Speaker
And this started to make it really personal. the thinking that the Gen.AI tool does for you. So you don't have to instruct it where to go and find these things in this example about the Mariner Group.
00:04:23
Speaker
You just ask it to find information pertinent to recruitment So it searches vacancies, it searches review sites like traditional text prompt, whereas he highlighted conversational AI, where you use it as a coach, effectively ask questions. So the example was asking about MBTI and DISC and the differences and applicability for recruitment and all of that was demonstrated live on stage.
Economic Challenges and Reforms by Paul Bloxham
00:04:53
Speaker
so And what I found really interesting, I don't know if you noticed this, Ross,
00:04:57
Speaker
ah He was pretty rude to his chat GPT. Like I'm very polite when I'm interacting with mine. I'm still saying please and thank you. I don't know why. But he was kind of cutting her off and he was saying, no, no, no, you've got that wrong. I want you to follow this area. I want you to find, you know, he was really direct and kind of barking orders at her. yes And I found that really interesting as well, the way he was directed.
00:05:18
Speaker
You're right. Yes, there there absolutely were no nicety. I mean, it's not that he was being rude necessarily, just being very direct. Yeah, absolutely. ah Deep research reports. He spoke about the deep research functionality reports.
00:05:32
Speaker
where you can request it. And ah again, how many times you can request deep research depends on how much you're paying for which premium product. But this um type of ah service can take 10 to 15 minutes or up to 30 minutes to complete. So it's doing really deep research and then producing an extraordinarily deep ah report based on that.
00:05:55
Speaker
Who else was next? Paul Bloxham, how to navigate an uncertain economy. So no surprise, Paul Bloxham is an economist. Very, very simply, he spoke about the US. He just said Trump's policies are expected to slow US growth and global growth, raise US inflation, but potentially lower global inflation.
00:06:17
Speaker
inflation. Talking about China's export-led model is under strain because of new trade barriers and they they have a collapsing property sector in China.
00:06:29
Speaker
And he said the critical thing for the Chinese economy is to shift to consumption-led growth because at the moment it's export-led growth. But The average Chinese consumer is not rich enough to do that quickly.
00:06:44
Speaker
For Australia, he said direct trade impacts of what's going on in the US are relatively minor, may even help inflation. But he said, look, the resource-driven boom of 2003 to 2023, fueled by Chinese demand, is over. It will not return.
00:07:02
Speaker
And our biggest long-term challenge in this country is falling productivity, And it's only because we have high immigration that we are not slipping into a recession.
00:07:13
Speaker
So he said, solutions, we need more competition. We need to cut regulation and introduce politically difficult tax reforms. He's saying lower personal and corporate tax rates, broadening the GST and get rid of inefficient taxes like Stamp duty, we've got to develop new export markets, especially in education and focus on Southeast Asia.
00:07:38
Speaker
And even though we're probably at the beginning of a modest upswing in the economy, supply side reforms are important. And he doesn't feel very optimistic about a significant number of interest rate cuts. He says one or two, but he doesn't think there'll be ah more than that.
Gen Z Perspectives on Employment by Jahan Kassinata
00:07:56
Speaker
All right. So we don't want him on stage for too long then. Who else was next? So moving into Jahan Kassinata, I think is how you say it.
00:08:11
Speaker
Yeah, he's from New Zealand and he spoke about Gen Z, so roughly those born between 97 and and 2012, which factors in all three of my children. And he said they bring a different perspective on life.
00:08:27
Speaker
because you think about of the things that have become um sort of ubiquitous since their lifetime. Began iPhone, push notifications, selfie cameras, using devices in schools, TikTok, saying that Gen have an average of six and a half hours each day of daily media consumption and therefore a significant reduction in points of social friction.
00:08:55
Speaker
Going to a video store was one of the examples. And he said, these are crucial for developing essential life skills like patience, asking for help, dealing with new situations, navigating conflicts. I don't know. What do you reckon? Are you seeing that in your ah Gen Z kids?
00:09:11
Speaker
kid Yeah, you're reading out a profile of what I'm dealing with at home every day, Ros. Yeah. Very familiar. yeah Me too. And I mean, I'd never really thought about it like that, but he's absolutely right.
00:09:24
Speaker
Those points of social friction where you're having to speak to someone, even if it's just being polite to someone in the video store, you know, when's Die Hard coming back in or whatever. Like that's that's not what kids these days do. That's why I'm glad my son's got a part-time job at Sombrero because he's having to deal with humans, all sorts of humans every day.
00:09:47
Speaker
Even something simple like asking for directions, you know, when we were lost or we didn't know where we were going, we you had to stop and ask somebody. They just pull out their phone out of their pocket. Absolutely. And they keep going. Yeah. um So moving on to recruitment, he said Gen zd in views employment more as a partnership, that they bring in talent and skills to the table and they want to know what the employer, their employer will offer in return.
00:10:12
Speaker
ah They want jobs that facilitate their lives, not the other way around. Therefore, they're keen on remote work, um ability to disconnect from work-related communication after hours.
00:10:25
Speaker
as um As we said, Gen Z believed that many things once considered privileges are now necessities. His recommendation, engage Gen Z as partners,
00:10:37
Speaker
businesses should communicate in their native language. In other words, think much more about audio and video rather than the written word. So, for example, don't ask them for cover letters, but submit a selfie video or a voice memo.
00:10:52
Speaker
um And he said interview processes should be redesigned to be more inclusive and effective. Bring them into the office for half a day. Send them the interview questions in advance. Don't make them perform in a high-pressure setting like the traditional 45 to 55-minute interview.
00:11:12
Speaker
And he said teams should have user manuals. Each person should be able to outline their communication preferences and work styles so bosses and colleagues um communicate with them with them more effectively to reduce...
00:11:27
Speaker
opportunity for misunderstanding. And he said, Gen true career fulfillment lies the intersection of what a person cares about, purpose, what they enjoy, passion, and what they're good at, proficiency.
00:11:41
Speaker
That sounds so interesting. And there's so much application there in the recruitment space, both within your internal teams and also from the candidate sourcing perspective. If you're not modifying your attraction an application process to accommodate for Gen Z, you are missing a huge part of the market.
Personalizing Recruitment and Maximizing Brain Power
00:12:01
Speaker
Excellent. And the next presentation was human connection from a customer perspective. Yes, this was Sinead Hurigan and ah Megan Woodbury talking about the future of customer experience. Recruitment agencies have a lot of candidate and client data and mostly We don't have a strategy around how to utilize that data to communicate more effectively with candidates and clients.
00:12:28
Speaker
And this requires i clear strategy. And um Megan spoke about Talent International's strategy with respect to customer experience, prompted by the fact that their net promoter score from their candidates was kind of just average.
00:12:45
Speaker
they decided one of the things that was critical was hyper-personalization of messages. And so they invested a lot in getting that messaging right for specific customers, for specific candidates.
00:13:01
Speaker
Surveys and feedback are important. they concluded it's how you act on the insights derived from those insights and then how you drive employee engagement by valuing everyone in the organisation, not just the traditional fee earners, but everyone because everyone contributes to customer experience.
00:13:28
Speaker
And I thought that was... some a valuable message to be sending out in this time where for many agencies, fees can be a bit of a struggle and there's that temptation to lionize those people who are generating the fees rather than considering every person in the business and their importance in providing a great customer experience.
00:13:54
Speaker
Okay, and on to the final speaker on the final day, who was a big headline name and was obviously strategically placed in that spot in order to make sure the room was full at the end of the day.
00:14:06
Speaker
And he absolutely didn't disappoint as a speaker, in my opinion. That was Todd Sampson. Those of you who watch Gruen, you all know who he is.
00:14:18
Speaker
His presentation was Brain power And it was a mixture of the research around the fluidity shots from the documentary series that featured Todd Sampson and the various challenges that he trained for and undertook.
00:14:40
Speaker
to demonstrate the power of the brain. I've got to say, i was but I'd ah'd not seen any of those, Adele, and I was on the edge of my seat looking at what he was doing.
00:14:50
Speaker
Oh, sorry, what the video was showing that he was doing. I'm a huge fan of his from a range of different um things that he's produced, including Gruen and and some of his ah Discovery Channel specials as well, which many people would have watched.
00:15:05
Speaker
But he was amazing as a presenter. He really did have you on the edge of your seat He was obviously very experienced in public speaking, but he made it seem like he was delivering it for the first time. That's always a really good ah measure, in my opinion, in terms of, you know, you feel like it's the first time they've delivered the presentation to you.
00:15:22
Speaker
The type of things he was talking about were more of a personal nature. So it was about kind of looking at yourself and looking internally around how your brain works. And look, for me personally, this one was really touching. I've... um a father who is very unwell and dying with really advanced dementia.
00:15:42
Speaker
And I'm always reading about it and trying to educate myself as best I can and constantly thinking about how I can stave it off in my own life. And so I'm really interested in the way our brain works. And Todd really challenged it us in that capacity, even within the context of just your own working life and how to get your brain working at its maximum power to achieve the best you, the best version of yourself and the things he has put his own brain under, in ah he challenged his own brain to achieve were phenomenal things. Then he took us through those stories and he showed some video.
00:16:20
Speaker
It was an outstanding presentation that stayed with me long after it finished. For those of you who have not seen Redesign My Brain, then um check that out. We won't describe what he showed on the screen other than these feats that you're really going to wonder whether he succeeds.
00:16:40
Speaker
High wire walking, Houdini escape in a pool, and then rock climbing blindfolded. Other than him standing on stage in front of you, you really think this person can't make this. There's no way this can be done.
00:16:54
Speaker
ah other than the fact that, you know, he's standing there and obviously he survived it. But yeah, it was harrowing. it was emotional. There were highs and lows. It was really thought-provoking and challenging. it was everything i think RCSA would have wanted that presentation to be at the end of the day. Yeah, well i mean, it was perfect to close.
00:17:11
Speaker
And look, some practical things. So how do you improve the plastic plasticity of your brain? Try unfamiliar or challenging activities, learning a language.
00:17:22
Speaker
Learning how to play musical instrument using your non-dominant hand to brush your teeth or open doors. For example, ah very important to get seven to nine hours sleep a night.
00:17:35
Speaker
So all of these things help. Visualisation. helps. Emotional regulation is a very important part of lifelong success. And so being able to concentrate and visualize something that will help your brain be able to accomplish it.
00:17:54
Speaker
I have personally taken on some of this advice and I have stopped using my calculator because I'm forcing my brain to add things that it would normally not have to worry about with the calculator.
00:18:05
Speaker
And I'm pleased to say this morning, I solved my speed cube, Rubik's cube. Oh, really? So Roy AI was giving out speed cubes at the conference.
00:18:15
Speaker
I did take one home that was all jumbled up. It was the last one. Nobody wanted the jumbled one. And I taught myself with a YouTube video.
Conference Diversity and Social Reflections
00:18:24
Speaker
So somebody who is experiencing this, but there's a step process you have to learn and it's quite complex.
00:18:30
Speaker
And it requires quite a bit of um thinking around what you're doing and understanding how the cube moves. And I'm pleased to say I achieved it this morning. Right. Summary. So a few things. I've got a few things just to close off.
00:18:46
Speaker
Where were the Brisbane recruiters? yeah The Gold Coast is like an hour down the road from Brisbane. And I thought it was a pretty disappointing showing from the Brisbane recruiters. I mean, it's literally on your doorstep. It's closer than Noosa.
00:19:01
Speaker
I agree. I i being unfair? No, I only met two people from Brisbane at the whole conference. I met a lot of people from Adelaide, but you're right. it's They didn't even need to cover accommodation. They could have just driven up for the day and driven back and saved any other expense. So it was a bit disappointing to not see our Brisbane recruiters colleagues in attendance in abundance at this sort of event in their own backyard.
00:19:25
Speaker
ah Next thing, speaker diversity. Adele, how do you reckon we went? oh Ross, this is always something that I'm very interested in, as you know, and I love that you champion this as well. But as far as um gender diversity, I think has improved over years in the speaker um line-up.
00:19:47
Speaker
But um hate to say ah cultural and, you know, varying backgrounds are still but missing, very much missing. Okay. so according to my calculations, there were 33 people on stage across the two days.
00:20:06
Speaker
How many of the 33 were white men? I would say about two-thirds. So you're right. There was 20 people. So 20 out of 33. How many white women?
00:20:20
Speaker
Probably all white women. I didn't see any brown women.
00:20:25
Speaker
There was 11 white women out of 11 women in total. Yes. Yeah. We are still not there. In 2025, we still lack speaker diversity. Please listen to us, RCSA.
00:20:39
Speaker
That's our little our our little improvement suggestion. We had one man of colour. And we had one Asian ah man.
00:20:50
Speaker
And if you broke it down to the keynote speakers, so eight white men, two white women, one man of color.
00:21:03
Speaker
And if you looked at the exhibitors and sponsors who got up on stage, 10 white men, nine white women, one uh man one Asian man and that's Khan from yeah horn so there's even a real yeah lack of diversity in in age as well I mean it's all of the things we're talking specifically about color and race here but you know it seems to lack diversity all around yeah so I've got to score diversity a fail okay
00:21:37
Speaker
All right, ah let's see. Most interesting person of the whole event, Ross Stewart. Ross Stewart from Global Careers Africa. Not just an incredibly interesting guy. i played golf with him on Tuesday morning and he spent seven months of the year working in night in sorry in Kenya, ah which is effectively the headquarters of go but Global Careers Africa.
00:22:00
Speaker
He's a pretty good golfer. And up on stage for karaoke, he sang a pretty mean Mustang Sally. He belted it out, but stood there which with such a relaxed demeanor, hand in his pocket, one hand shoved deep into his pocket, microphone in the other hand, and he belted it out in his husky voice that was so unexpected.
00:22:22
Speaker
It was very impressive. I asked him about that. On the final night at the drinks, he said, oh, yeah, used to play and sing in a band for quite a few years. Okay. Yeah, he was experienced. So if you don't know Ross Stewart, connect with him on LinkedIn. Very interesting guy. Social events. I thought the social events were excellent.
00:22:40
Speaker
I did have a bit of a chuckle that, of course, Bullhorn sponsor the opening night drinks, which is the Tuesday night, and Seek. have their sort of client dinner on the Tuesday night. So I thought that's quite hilarious because Seek are obviously looking to try and get all the their customers out away from the opening night drinks before they get too pissed and start talking to the Bullhorn representatives.
00:23:01
Speaker
So a little bit of a yeah vendor espionage going on perhaps for Well, of course, because Seek owned Job Adder and that's the major um competitor of Bullhorn. Yeah, so i did
Future RCSA Conferences and Final Thoughts
00:23:12
Speaker
have a bit of a chuckle about that.
00:23:13
Speaker
ah The other thing, Robert Van Stockram, as we know, former ah president the RCSA, passed away, as was publicly acknowledged on stage. Robert did take his own life.
00:23:26
Speaker
I just thought i'm I would have preferred perhaps Penny as the president to... eu eulogise about Robert just because many people in the room wouldn't know exactly Robert's service and service to the RCSA that is so I just perhaps would have liked Penny to have outlined specifically all the contributions that he's made to the RCSA and the recruitment industry over the years and then perhaps Charles to talk about the
00:23:58
Speaker
The cause of death, particularly he'd spoken to Leonie, Robert's wife, and I mean, it is public now about Robert's cause of death. And that was an opportunity to then talk more about looking after each other, checking in that we're okay, which Charles did talk about, but ah I think having two separate parts to that discussion about Robert would have probably worked a little better.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yeah, i would have liked to have seen a greater... kind of memorial to him, let's say. I think there was a lot he contributed that we are all thankful for in his time. And then because of the cause of death and the tragedy surrounding that, we perhaps owed it a little bit more airtime than it got.
00:24:40
Speaker
All right. ah The other thing I just thought, again, this is the flagship conference of the RCSA and it would have been a good opportunity for a Penny and Charles to talk about the RCSA board strategic pillars, the progress that had been made against The pillars in the most recent financial year, the goals for the current financial year, just very big picture. doesn't have to be more than seven or eight minutes.
00:25:03
Speaker
They have done something like that in the past. It was just missing at this conference. And personally, I would have preferred that they had something like that on stage. Well, at opening night, I believe Andrew Klein, the MC, asked for a show of hands or who had never been at a conference before.
00:25:19
Speaker
And my recollection, it was about half the room or pretty close to half the room put their hands up saying they'd never been in at this conference before. So I think you're right, potentially a missed opportunity there to really push home the work, the fantastic work that the RCSA does to ah to people that may not be aware of how much goes on in the background.
00:25:38
Speaker
And finally, i had a chat with Con Mutchson from SEEK, who everyone who who's got a big account with SEEK in the recruitment industry would know of Conn. And I asked him about the SEEK recruiter network, which was closed last month. And simple explanation from Conn was that the conversion rate wasn't high enough, really commercially didn't work, which meant that, because of course SEEK are making their money through clipping the ticket, there just wasn't enough volume.
00:26:09
Speaker
And SEEK are pushing much more towards high tech, solutions and this probably wasn't high tech enough and therefore They've decided to spend their money elsewhere. Look, you have to try things and they tried it.
00:26:22
Speaker
But what it does prove is that that model of attempting to create a marketplace for clients and agencies, it's almost impossible to make money out of. you know Talent Vine are still going along. I don't know how well they're doing, but every other version of that type of model has not worked. And frankly, if Seek can't make it work, ah don't see who can.
00:26:45
Speaker
Okay, so that was a wrap for Shape 2025. Adele, out of 10, what would you give the event? I was pleasantly surprised. I don't know why I'm saying it that way. I've been to lots of conferences, though.
00:27:00
Speaker
i think my expectation was a bit lower because it had been a venue we'd been to ah It was lower numbers. I was thinking maybe it wasn't going to be as good a conference as it has been in previous years.
00:27:13
Speaker
pleasantly surprised I will definitely give it an 8 out of 10. 8 yeah I'd give it an 8.5 out of 10 mean as I ah said I've been to 16 17 and overall I thought the calibre of the speakers was great the venue was great the food and generally the ambience the only thing that marked it down was just not Not as many people.
00:27:33
Speaker
And that, you know, to me um was bit of a missing. But anyway, it's a reflection of the year that was, the financial year that was 2025, a pretty difficult year for most people in the recruitment industry in Australia.
00:27:46
Speaker
And if anyone is listening and considering attending these sorts of events and wants to chat with Ross and I, we'd be happy to do that at any time. Continue to listen to Recruitment News Australia because we'll be announcing the next venue for Shape 2026 the coming weeks.