A Quick Tech update from TechXpo

I recently attended the recruitment TechXpo in Sydney put on by the RCSA. It was part of the broader RSCA conference. There were some interesting speakers and insights and I’ve put together my notes from the day in this video for you.

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Techxpo

Belinda Kerr

Hi there, Belinda Kerr here from recruitment garage. I recently attended the Tech Expo, which was part of the CSA conference in Sydney last week, and I thought this quick video would be a nice summary really, it’s just my notes from the day but I thought it could give you a little bit more of an insight into what’s happening with tech and recruitment these days. I heard an interesting stat the other day, there are 22,000 pieces of tech that are applicable to recruitment. So no wonder we’re all a little bit overwhelmed sometimes.

So there was a few different things that we spoke about. There was a focus on automation, I guess, which is a hot topic at the moment, you know, how we really leverage our time and our resources for better results. And the first thing that came up was chatbots. So they did a quick poll of the audience and from memory, they were saying that only four of the people had tried a chatbot and 37 of them hadn’t so that was quite interesting to me, I thought it would have been higher. And then they discuss some of the applications and some of the different things that they have done with chatbots. So let me kind of give you a little bit of an overview of what that conversation was about.

Yeah, so chatbots, there was a couple of interesting things. And what I think interesting about chatbots is they’re becoming more acceptable and more commonplace. I think all of us now expect to, you know, we go on to a new site, we sign up for something we kind of expected a chatbot to try and help us do something. And we’re all we’re almost getting, we’re getting used to it. So Mark from people to people was, in fact, saying that they’re finding it very good for those low-level admin processes and there was a particular focus on temp, but you could certainly use this right across the business. So things like people submitting or updating their licenses or filling in timesheets or, you know, just asking low-level questions and letting people know when they’re available. Those sorts of things seem to work very well.

So a pitch fest on the day, which was interesting that had four or five different companies pitching and one of those companies was an AI business called Smart AI and what they’ve got three parts to their business, but one of them was really driving, really working with people’s databases and AI and making sure that they are really leveraging what they can do there. So maybe you want to check out for some more information on what’s happening with some of the companies that are doing that. And in fact, they won the pitch fest. So it was that was pretty interesting. Actually, something else that was interesting with chatbots before I move on to the next thing was an example of an Australian company that had put a voice chatbot in but it had an American accent and what happened was it potentially alienated the audience a little bit. So I guess if you’re doing a live chatbot, you need to make sure that the accent is probably the accent of where your company is because it just seemed to be a little bit of a disconnect. Sometimes with automation, we need to maybe bring it just back a little bit. So I’m sure that will change and develop over time. But that was interesting that they said that they felt that, you know, literally, it was the accent that just wasn’t quite right in that instance.

And then, of course, closely linked to chatbots, you have live chat. And there was another example again, from market people to people where they had certainly tried live chat and, you know, big company, so probably lots of lots of people coming through. And they actually had grads at the back end, managing that, but that ended up being a little bit not as cost-effective as they had hoped. So, I guess, again, you know, these are all things that you potentially want to try in your business. But be mindful that sometimes, you know, if we’re looking for more automation and trying to save money, we don’t want to be spending more money to do that. So certainly people are trying it and testing it. But that was feedback from Mark.

And then moving more into automation and how can we use Tech and outsourcing to, you know, really cut back on the hours in our business and the cost in our business. And it was more than the guys in the pitch fest there was a reference checking business, there was a profiling business where they put together the profile for you. Now, when I was recruiting, I remember, it used to take me, I don’t know, like 45 minutes fighting with PDFs and word and all that kind of stuff to get these, you know, put your summary with CVS and send it across it look nice to the client. And now you can, you know, you can outsource this to these clients. And I’ll do it for you at a much more cost-effective rate, then you can do it on your own. And these companies have thought about all the problems that come up, like, you know, security or, you know, doesn’t give an accurate representation of the person themselves, that sort of stuff. So, the good tech companies out there are working with the industry to ask them all the right questions. So if you’ve kind of got any preconceived ideas about why these things may or may not work for you, I would still explore them because more often than not You’re gonna find that the tech companies have thought about those problems and have very good solutions.

The other example was a reference-checking company called a reference. And again, there’s there’s more of them. But they had been working closely with the industry. And, you know, the questions that had come up about security and different things had all been managed very well, very well. So you know, what if my, you know, my mate, you know, their mate fills it out for them, those sorts of things. They’re all covered off. So if they seem like a good option for you on the surface, they may well be and I would invite you to check out some of these technology solutions because a lot of this tech doesn’t mean big changes to your business. It’s just something that you can try if it works for you. Great, keep it and embedded into your business or not.

So yeah, there were two really interesting pieces of tech than I thought and you know, all moving toward automating your business. Step by step. I guess something else that was interesting, too, was around customer experience. There’s a really Increase in people sending out surveys on different things, you know, how did you find our experience, all that sort of stuff, getting Net Promoter scores, all those sorts of things, which are great. But really the thought was, there is so much of this, if you’re going to be sending out surveys, make sure that they’re easy to complete, you know, not overbearing, not too many often because people to, you know, every time you get a support call, you’d have no feedback, how was their support, happy face advice, etc. So just something to bear in mind, I thought.

Then, of course, there was that lovely topic of candidate acquisition, one that we all love to talk about and find the magic pill to solve. And really what it boiled down to is there is no one solution. You know, over here, you’ve got indeed you’ve got boolean searches, you’ve got your databases, you’ve got all these different ways that you can find candidates job ads, LinkedIn, etc, etc. and very, you know, traditional, mostly very traditional methods and then over on the other side, you’ve got your marketing piece, and really all these things are working together. So in marketing, you’ve got you to know, your website, your SEO, you know, driving, driving traffic to your site. And, you know, all these things should be working together. So there is no one solution. But what we are really looking to do is to drive everybody into your database so that they are nurtured. They’re there, we can communicate with them regularly.

So that was the I guess, overriding thought there is really what we want. And it doesn’t really matter what channel as long as they’re coming into your database, you know who they are, where they are, and how to communicate with them so that you can put the right people obviously, in front of the right clients. One of the interesting things I heard there, Chris, who runs a recruitment marketing agency called prominence, had a client recently that did a Snapchat Snapchat campaign rather, with blue-collar workers that worked incredibly well. So it’s interesting to see how different people are using social media. So you know, Facebook, Instagram, all those sorts of things that, you know, just a few years ago, we weren’t really on the radar. So that was interesting, I thought. So that’s it. Really just a quick side. summary of the notes I took on the day. Hope you find it interesting and have a great week.