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Episode 148 - What is the hidden cost of advertising a job in 2026?
30 Plays3 hours ago
RNA episode 148 includes news for 17 February 2026 featuring SEEK's sudden share price drop, Robert Half report that just may show why an increase in overqualified candidates is so significant to our market. Company results Randstad, Recruit, and Will Group and the overlooked consequences of the PALM scheme. Question of the Week is, " What is the hidden cost of advertising a job in 2026?"
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Transcript
Intro & Sponsor - Wingman Recruitment
00:00:08
Speaker
Today's episode of Recruitment News Australia is proudly sponsored by Wingman Recruitment. Wingman helps recruitment agencies scale faster by removing the admin bottleneck. From sourcing to compliance, their remote professionals handle the heavy lifting so your team can stay focused on revenue driving work. Less admin, more placements. That's the Wingman effect. Discover more at wingmangroup.com.au via the services tab.
00:00:34
Speaker
And this is
Seek Limited's Financial Struggles
00:00:35
Speaker
the news for the 17th of February, 2026. I'm Adele Last. And I'm Ross Clennett. Big news locally, Adele, is the significant write-down from Seek Limited. It's slashed more than $350 million dollars off the value of its carrying stake in Chinese jobs platform, Xiaoping, which has precipitated a collapse in the company's share price in the past week.
00:00:57
Speaker
It's been an astonishing loss of confidence by analysts and fund managers. Three weeks ago, the shares were trading at just below $23, but by yesterday morning, the price had plummeted 30% to just over $16.
00:01:10
Speaker
That's not a wobble. That sounds like a collapse, Ross. It is brutal. Stock has fallen 45% from its 12-month high of $29.18 and it's a staggering 55% drop from the post-COVID peak of $35.55 reached in November 2021.
Implications of Past Controversies on Seek
00:01:32
Speaker
This raises the big question, is this just about China's slowing economy or has the market basically abandoned Seek as a growth company?
00:01:41
Speaker
Well, let's unpack it. China's economic growth has been sluggish. Youth unemployment has been high. Corporate hiring has slowed and that hits online job platforms immediately. That's true, but markets don't usually knock 30% off a company share price in a month just for slow growth in one part of the business.
00:02:02
Speaker
Feels more like fear. Either investors think more write-downs are coming or they're worried about the long-term growth prospects of the company's core business. And remember, Zalpin isn't new to controversy. Back in 2020, activist short seller Blue Orca Capital accused the platform of inflating growth with fake listings. Even if those claims were denied, the market has a long memory.
00:02:25
Speaker
Exactly. If confidence in earnings prospects gets shaken even slightly, valuations compress fast.
Leadership Changes at Seek
00:02:33
Speaker
Andrew Bassett handed the top role Ian Arev just over five years ago and moved across to head up Seek Investments, the company's growth fund that invests in various employment and related platforms such as Jora, Sourcer and JobAdder.
00:02:49
Speaker
Seek's share price was just under $30 when Bassett moved across, so clearly the market has taken a very negative view of his performance and the future prospects of SEEK investments. Investors will be watching closely how SEEK responds to the market's loss of confidence.
Job Market Adjustments & Overqualification
00:03:04
Speaker
A new survey from Robert Half found that 82% of employers of white-collar professionals have seen an increase in overqualified candidates applying for roles over the past 12 months, with Australia's unemployment rate sitting at 4.1%. This points to it not being a recessionary spike, but more suggesting that there is a softening of labour market conditions.
00:03:31
Speaker
And the sector breakdown is telling. Technology hiring managers are feeling it the most. 87% report seeing more overqualified candidates. Finance and accounting follow at 82% human resources at And we see at the same time, job ad applications on SEEK are up nearly 18% year over year, more applications, more competition and increasingly experienced candidates applying for roles that may sit below their current, almost recent level of seniority.
AI's Role in Job Application Processes
00:04:04
Speaker
The survey conducted in October 2025 polled 500 hiring managers across finance, accounting, IT and HR, These professional sectors were extremely tight during the post-pandemic hiring surge.
00:04:17
Speaker
What we now may be seeing is a rebalancing, but is this just short term or is this the beginning of a structural adjustment due to the impact of AI? I think that is absolutely the question, Adele.
00:04:29
Speaker
There's also an operational impact for employers. 37% said the sheer volume of applications makes it difficult to properly assess candidates. Screening becomes more time-consuming.
00:04:42
Speaker
and hiring managers say quality can get lost in the quantity. With generative tools making it easier to produce polished resumes at scale, it's pretty obvious hiring managers are finding it much harder to differentiate between genuinely strong candidates and well-crafted applications coming from, let's say, yeah more modestly qualified job seekers.
00:05:07
Speaker
The data suggests a labour market that's cooling, not collapsing, but normalising after several years of extraordinary demand. Employers are receiving more applications, candidates appear more flexible or perhaps more anxious, and hiring managers are now facing new challenges in filtering quality, particularly with AI tools changing how people apply for jobs.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds to me like the headline here is not really a general softening of the labour market. It's rising competition and what is potentially, I think, a long-term shift in demand for white-collar roles, particularly senior ones.
Global Staffing Firms' Financial Trends
00:05:46
Speaker
And on to results. Randstad, the world's largest staffing firm, reported revenue for the fourth quarter ending 31 December 2025, dropped 4.4% year over Operating profit 129 million euros compared to a loss of 13 million euros in the quarter 2024. Net income stood 90 million euros from a of 149 million euros 2024. Revenue in Randstad ANZ for the 2025 calendar year was down 7%.
00:06:07
Speaker
net income stood at ninety million euros up from a loss of one hundred and forty nine million euros in q four twenty twenty four revenue in randstad a andzz for the twenty twenty five calendar year was down seven percent Recruit Holdings, the Tokyo-based fifth largest global staffing firm and owner of local brands Chandler McLeod and PeopleBank, reported a 5.2% increase in revenue for its fiscal third quarter ended 31 December 2025. Gross profit was up operating profit was up and adjusted EBITDA was up 21.5% to US$1.4 billion. us dollars
00:06:48
Speaker
Revenue in the staffing segment was up 1.8%. HR tech segment, which includes Indeed and Glassdoor, was up 8.9% year over year. In the non-Japan staffing segment, which includes Australia, revenue was up 1.1%.
00:07:05
Speaker
The seventh largest global staffing firm, Tokyo headquartered Persol, Reported revenue for the first nine months ended 31 December 2025 increased 6% compared to the same period last year.
00:07:18
Speaker
Gross profit was up 6.4%, EBITDA was up 11% and operating profit increased 11.5%. Asia-Pacific Staffing Business Unit, which includes their local brands, Persol and Programmed, reported a 2% rise in revenue.
00:07:35
Speaker
Will Group, the Japan-based owner of local brands Ethos, Beeth Chapman, Key Appointments, UNU and DFP recruitment, reported revenue for the nine months ended 31 December 2025 was up 3.1% compared to the same period last year.
00:07:50
Speaker
Gross profit was up 8.4% and profit before tax rose to million.
The PALM Scheme Benefits and Ethical Concerns
00:07:57
Speaker
us dollars Next is the Pacific Australia Labor Mobility Scheme or PALM and growing questions about whether it's delivering balanced benefits across the region.
00:08:11
Speaker
For those unfamiliar with the scheme, the program allows workers from nine Pacific Island countries to take up low and semi-skilled jobs in rural and regional Australia on subclass 403 visas. These visas can last between nine months and up to four years. The scheme has expanded quickly in the last three or four years. There are now more than 31,000 palm workers in Australia, up by a factor of more than four from just over 7,000 in 2022.
00:08:44
Speaker
For agriculture, meat processing, hospitality and increasingly aged care, it's become a crucial workforce pipeline. But a new submission into a federal inquiry into skilled migration is questioning whether the model is sustainable long-term. Researchers Dr Morgan Harrington and Dr Matt Withers argue that while palm helps fill Australian labour shortages, it may deliver disproportionate economic returns to Australia compared with Pacific nations.
00:09:13
Speaker
They also highlight structural risks. Palm workers generally can't freely change employers, can't bring family members and don't have a pathway to permanent residency. The researchers say these settings can create dependency and increased vulnerability to exploitation.
00:09:29
Speaker
So the debate is shifting from workforce supply to governance and ethics. The submission from Drs Harrington and Withers notes that Palm has been used to recruit skilled healthcare workers, including registered nurses, to help fill gaps in Australia's aged care sector.
00:09:47
Speaker
While that eases staffing shortages here, it may contribute to brain drain in specific health systems that are already under pressure. For smaller developing nations, losing trained professionals can significantly impact local service delivery.
00:10:03
Speaker
For ah HR leaders, this reframes palm. It's not just a recruitment channel. It intersects with considerations on labour rights and modern slavery. If concerns around worker protections, economic imbalance and skills depletion aren't addressed, the researchers warn the model could become politically and diplomatically fragile.
00:10:24
Speaker
The core challenge for Australia, i think, is clear, Adele, how to maintain a workforce solution that supports regional industries while ensuring it doesn't slip into modern slavery and undermine the long-term resilience of neighbouring Pacific nations.
Hidden Costs in Job Advertising
00:10:45
Speaker
Question of the week. What is the hidden cost of advertising a job 2026?
00:10:51
Speaker
This is a bit of a multi-sided discussion, Ross. Let's unpack it. Yes, and clearly this is prompted by the Robert Half survey that we reported in the news where hiring managers, 500 hiring managers were surveyed and a very large majority of them said they've noticed a substantial increase in candidates that they classify as overqualified applying for vacancies. This was particularly so in IT, t finance in county and and HR.
00:11:23
Speaker
Now my own experience, well not my own, but one of my friends owns an IT outsourcing business. He advertised an IT team leader around 100, 110K. And he said probably a third of the applications were people wanting more than 120K. And that was like May two, yeah, a couple of weeks ago. So certainly the little bit of anecdotal insight I've got would support that survey. Now, Adele, you're much closer to recruitment agencies databases because of your role at Roy AI. So what's been your experience?
00:12:00
Speaker
Well, I have seen that a lot of people have still got a lot of data. It's dirty data, but a lot of data on their on their system. So I met with an agency this week that was about five years old. They had 30,000 candidate records on their database.
00:12:18
Speaker
So that's pretty much, you know, every job they've advertised ever. and and they're filtering that through into their system. Are those candidates qualified properly? Are those candidates likely to take their call? Are they suitable for their business? All of that is unknown. They've populated their database with all of these people, which is, as I said, pretty much dirty data. So that's the number one thing I think about when we ask this question, what's the hidden cost of advertising?
00:12:47
Speaker
The hidden cost is you're actually creating, you know, a system that's inefficient, you're clogging it up with dirty data, you're not really recruiting at that point, you're just collecting information.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah, you're creating a lot more work for yourself. I mean, to me, that that's the first thing I think about. But perhaps the first step is, well, why is this happening? Now, a couple of reasons.
00:13:09
Speaker
Clearly, although unemployment's still low, the market is slowing for more senior candidates. The impact of generative AI is causing companies to make some redundancies, but also not to hire at the same rate. And no surprise when you look at any article about where Gen AI is going to impact jobs and careers, it's IT, t it's accounting, it's legal, HR, they're the four areas that are most
AI Challenges in Recruitment Strategies
00:13:34
Speaker
commonly mentioned. So no surprise. candidates are finding themselves without work. And as we know, candidates when they're either without work or they know they've got a finish date, they start to get desperate and they'll apply for anything. And of course, with Gen AI tools, they can mass apply for many jobs, customize their resumes and all of that creates massive overwhelm for recruiters, whether they're agency recruiters or TA.
00:14:03
Speaker
I think you're really right about the difference in this, I guess, recalibration of the market is is the AI factor because we have seen this before. When we've had other downturns, you know, those that have been around long enough will remember, you know, post-GFC and and other recession type events where, you know, the market turned, as we call turned, and there was that recalibration where we had this influx of candidates coming.
00:14:28
Speaker
but But that was just a volume. That was just usually most, for the most part, the right kind of people applying, a few people with ambitions that weren't quite right, but you just sorted the weight from the chaff and you got to to what you needed to and went on about your day recruiting. This feels really different because you've got, as you said, ai mass applying.
00:14:49
Speaker
You've got to really sort through that noise and you've got to work out very quickly and very ah succinctly where you're going to spend your time and effort in order to find the right candidates and pull them through. and if you're just wading through lots of data, it just slows down the whole process.
00:15:10
Speaker
And that's where agencies will lose. If you're an agency that's got a database that's got a high proportion of pre-qualified candidates, in other words, you've screened them, you've interviewed them, you've checked their qualifications, their right to work, you have a massive advantage over those agencies that when they get a job, their default is to put an ad on their favourite job board.
00:15:32
Speaker
Because if you're working with pre-qualified data, you can focus primarily on assessment rather than just wading through volume. And I know myself and Greg and others have spoken about this for years and years and years and not much appears to have changed. And my basic assessment of that is, well, Recruiters, like all humans, we're basically lazy. We look for the shortcut. And if we can not be that vigilant with our database and then run an ad and get a decent candidate or two or three when we need it, then the cost is really not that high. And so, therefore, no matter what in theory we say about not doing that, we'll just continue to do it. And most agencies have continued to do it that way.
00:16:18
Speaker
I am dumbfounded at that, Ross. Surely not in 2026 after, as you said, Greg Savage has been saying it, you've been saying it. All of, you know, the major commentators in our space have been telling recruiters to stop being transactional and to look at ah building relationships and, you know, he who has the candidate wins and all of this, um you know, information has been out for so long now actually surely recruiters aren't recruiting this way anymore in 2020.
Importance of Relationship-Based Recruitment
00:16:49
Speaker
Well, the chickens are coming home to roost, Adil. That's kind of how I'd explain it. Because yes, although people have known about that, they've still sourced candidates the same way. But I think this year will be the turning point where agencies and agency recruiters will truly experience the cost of having to go to market on a job board
00:17:14
Speaker
Every time or um almost every time they need to fill a job compared to those agencies that don't need to do that. And i suspect for those agencies that have had high reliance on job boards, they're going to see their job fuel rate decline across this year.
00:17:31
Speaker
And those agencies that have got clean data and a lot of pre-qualified candidates, I suspect as high as their job fuel rates might already be, i suspect they will climb.
00:17:42
Speaker
Well, music to my ears, of course, as you said, having my involvement with Roy. But you're saying this is this is not a cycle. This is not a cyclical you know turn of the market. this is the This is it. This is the change.
00:17:53
Speaker
Absolutely. Now, am I forecasting the death of job boards? No. But clearly what we've seen for seek share price in the last week where it's gone down by about 30%, revenue stream is starting to slow. It's not as profitable. And all those our companies in the SEEK investment funds are not growing sales and profit at a rate that gives the analysts and fund managers confidence that it's going to replace the declining flow from the job so job board side of the business.
00:18:27
Speaker
And we've spoken about this before on the podcast and over a period of time around you know, the death of the industry and and why we're able to sustain all sorts of tech that's come and gone, everything from job boards and LinkedIn and yeah um you know, air tasker type sites. And, you know, we've survived all of those.
00:18:49
Speaker
And we've probably known this all along, the real difference being the human element. But that's what this is really speaking to, isn't it? It's going to be relationship based more than we possibly understand even sitting at this point.
00:19:01
Speaker
Well, classic example, I wrote about it in my blog last week. Amanda Chisholm, who's a recruiter at Kaizen Recruitment in Melbourne, she recruits in funds management, financial services. She'd spoken to a candidate who's referred to her. The candidate was the sister of the candidate that Amanda replaced. Candidate was a graduate, very frustrated, being applying for jobs, 35 jobs, not even an interview.
00:19:25
Speaker
Amanda spoke to her and... Found out one of the companies that she'd applied for in a grad role was a company that Amanda knew quite well. And the candidate had got a thanks but no thanks email, not even a call, nothing. And Amanda contacted TA because she had a relationship, said, hey, nothing in it for me because you've already got this candidate who's applied to you directly. But frankly, i think you're making a mistake. You should at least interview her. They interviewed her and guess what, Adele?
00:19:52
Speaker
She got an interview. She got a job. She got the job. She got the job. She got the job. Right. this is just an example of a really good recruiter can see something that the tech is not screening for adequately or TA or the recruiter doesn't understand.
00:20:11
Speaker
And that's the thing that makes the difference. And that's why I'm still very um bullish about the future for agency recruiters in the world of generative AI.
00:20:22
Speaker
And I think recruiters listening to this would all have stories like that. I know certainly in my career, you would have the same, Ross, many stories where we referred candidates who were not going to get a look in in in any other way, shape or form without that referral from us or, you know, were we were able to put them in front of the right person at the right time. Yeah.
Future Outlook: Recruitment in 2026
00:20:42
Speaker
This is a good news story in some ways, right? What's the hidden cost of advertising a job? ah It's huge. is There's a huge hidden financial cost. There's a hidden implication to time and to outcome as well. But the good news is that this major change Sounds like it's going to be what we knew all along about the recruitment industry of where we need to sit.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yes, I think 2026 is the year where things dramatically change in terms of candidate sourcing. And some agencies just won't be prepared or unwilling to change.
00:21:19
Speaker
And they're not going to have a business within two or three years. Certainly not a profitable one, that's for sure.