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The Canberra Business Podcast
A podcast about all things Canberra Business.
The Canberra Business Podcast
AI Won't Replace Recruiters, But It's Changing the Game
When Michael Minns and Blanca Barreras of Hayes Recruitment stepped into our new podcast studio, they brought fresh perspectives on how digital transformation is reshaping the recruitment landscape while preserving the irreplaceable human element at its core.
"Digital transformation is a technology solution to a business problem," Michael explains, cutting through the buzzwords to the heart of what matters for organizations of all sizes. With Hayes placing around 800 temporary workers weekly across Canberra's government and private sectors, they've witnessed firsthand how digital capabilities have become essential for every business – not just those in tech.
As AI reshapes recruitment processes, both experts maintain it serves as an assistant rather than a replacement. Michael predicts deeper AI integration by 2030 but emphasizes regulation will be the next frontier as capabilities double approximately every 30 days. "Until AI prompting is absolutely black and white, it's going to play a role, but never take over," he explains, highlighting why human intuition remains irreplaceable in matching the right people to the right opportunities.
Whether you're building your team, enhancing your digital capabilities, or navigating the AI revolution, this episode offers practical insights from recruitment professionals who understand both the technical and human sides of business success. Subscribe to the Canberra Business Podcast for more conversations that help you navigate today's complex business landscape.
Hello and welcome to the Canberra Business Podcast, our podcasting to you for the first time from our new podcast studio in Hobart Place. I'm Greg Harford, your host from the Canberra Business Chamber, and today I'm joined by Michael Minns, the National Delivery Manager for Hayes Recruitment, and Blanca Barreras, a recruitment partner for Hayes in relation to projects and change. So, michael and Blanca, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks, greg, very fancy new digs. Very much honoured to be the first to be contributing to a podcast in this room.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great to have you here, so tell us, for our listeners, what is Hayes? I mean, it's a brand name that's been around for a long time, it's big, will be known to people, but what is it that you do? What are the services that you offer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so obviously Hayes is a really large multinational recruitment company here in Canberra. We're probably very synonymous with delivery into federal government in particular, as most of the industry does here in the nation's capital. But we're specialist recruiters so we recruit across the whole gamut of white-collar, blue-collar professional spaces. So Blanca and I are both from our technology delivery here in Canberra, but we've got offices all over the country in every state here Canberra, but we've got offices all over the country in every state here. We also recruit into professional services, hr, procurement, finance, as well as construction and property policy and strategy as well. So a very broad offering. But we're quite a large, well-resourced recruitment agency so we've probably got the privilege of being able to be quite specialised in our own individual markets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how many people? Just to give us an idea of scale. How many people are you placing in Canberra every year?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good question. Plenty is the answer. We're probably looking at, you know, a weekly sort of payment of close to 800 temp workers every week across largely federal government, as I said, but also into the private sector and small businesses, and we also are placing people permanently with high regularity as well. That those processes do take a little bit longer, so not as easy to measure each week, but it probably makes up a good 35 to 40 percent of our business as well, that's a that's a good size kind of placement right now.
Speaker 1:I I mean it's the size of a small town in some cases, so it's not to be sneezed at.
Speaker 2:It definitely feels that way. In Canberra it's very much the happening place for anything to do in the public sector, but it does feel like a very small town a lot of the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and your role, Michael. What's your focus?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I lead up our technology team here in Canberra. Specifically, my role is National Delivery Manager for Federal Government Technology, so that's our primary customer base. We've also got a technology team based in all of our major cities, so Sydney, melbourne, brisbane, adelaide, perth, to name sort of the main ones. But you know, I lead up the technology side of our delivery and also sit on the ACT management team, and that's across the whole spectrum of professional type roles that we discussed earlier.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So, Blanca, how do you fit into the picture?
Speaker 3:Yeah, fantastic. So as a recruitment partner in Michael's team, I focus on the candidate care aspect. We are split into recruitment partners and client engagement managers. Client engagement managers take care of our portfolio, whereas I will be on the other side with the recruitment partners sourcing and caring for all of our amazing candidates. I suppose what I find really exciting about the projects and change space I'm able to blend together my more generalist four years of APS FedGov recruitment experience with something a little bit more technical, both kind of creating opportunities for the right people, bringing forth those high-level communication and people skills, and identifying those who have gone forward and upskilled themselves in the technologies required. Some may think that's very technical and a little bit difficult, maybe not worth their time, but you'd be surprised how powerful tools such as Microsoft Office, really competent use of Excel and free, simple learning sources can change someone's whole career trajectory and pay grade.
Speaker 1:I'll have to bear that in mind next time I'm struggling with an Excel spreadsheet. So, michael, building digital capability across all roles is not just important for IT, but it's also important for SMEs right now. Is that right? I mean, why is that? Do you think?
Speaker 2:Well, I think you've got to really define what it is that digital transformation is, and probably the easiest sort of answer or definition that you can give is that it's a technology solution to a business problem. And you know, regardless of industry, regardless of type of business and the subject matter you're always going to be faced with how can we do things better, how can we be more efficient? What is something that's a pain point for us at the moment, and I'd imagine that you know if you cast whatever lens onto it, whether it's public sector or private, the key to efficiency normally lies in some sort of technology solution, whether it's automation, whether it's something that you can utilize AI and I'm sure we'll speak to that over the course of the afternoon but effectively, you know, the importance of it is is how can you have people that a understand the human requirement and B understand what is possible to make that requirement easier to achieve?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what are some of the most effective ways small businesses can upskill their existing teams? Do you reckon?
Speaker 2:I think you've got to look for that sort of condu around product and capability. We're always talking about what it is the amazing spectrum of things that people can do, especially in an IT or a digital landscape and one thing we always talk about is that the IT project or the IT you know requirement of what it is you're trying to achieve, sits right at the heartbeat of digital transformation. So I guess people that can provide a conduit between you know advocating for the business needs and understanding how to implement a technology solution, that's probably your centrepiece. So if you were to put that into you know, role titles, families you're probably talking around project and product management, talking about really comprehensive business analysis and change management as well. But we find that that sort of project family skill set sits right in the middle and in terms of a starting point to really improve your digital capability, as it were, having someone who understands it both from that business side lens and the technology side lens is a really good place to start.
Speaker 1:Have you seen or perhaps Blanca, have you either of you seen sort of significant standout examples where upskilling's made a significant impact on a business's performance?
Speaker 3:I suppose I have seen that within my own self recently, over the past six months. Not necessarily in a business I'm fairly new to Hayes and I came from a much smaller entity previously but even the own time I've spent really thoroughly going through the free resources online, having a go with all of the beautiful Microsoft Office products they allow in my free time. In the moment it doesn't feel incredibly interesting or maybe even that beneficial. But then when you click, open your email and you're able to do a really simple thing with three clicks of a button versus, I guess, google things endlessly to try to figure out how to delete nine different emails all at once or at the same email thread, it is actually really, really helpful. So not necessarily from a business perspective or lens, but I think that everybody needs to be investing just a little bit of time during their weekdays and ensuring they know how to use the resources available to us. I'm sure we'll talk about it in a second, but AI has become my best friend over the past 12 months of my career.
Speaker 2:I think to add to that, digital literacy in general is something that you can be investing in.
Speaker 2:You know, we sit here at a really interesting juncture in time where, at the moment, it's tough to get original thoughts sometimes because people are getting so good at prompting how to provide additional context to something or how to answer a series of questions, you know, using an AI prompt.
Speaker 2:But you know we sit here now in 2025, I'd say, five and a half years ago, nobody even knew what Microsoft Teams was as an example, and now really meaningful engagements and placements are being made of people with, you know, key influence and decision making capability, but it doesn't matter where they are anymore. All of a sudden you can actually log into everything remotely and I think that that's been a really good, tangible example of being able to upskill in digital literacy. And sometimes it's almost like an unofficial test that we have when we're canvassing the market. If people can't quite get onto their Teams meeting first time, which is more common than you'd think sometimes that's a little bit of a how many times have you actually done this over the last five years? I'd anticipate quite a lot and the seamless experience of that.
Speaker 1:I think is really important. So when you're hiring for non-tech roles, I guess particularly, I guess in that projects and change space, what digital competencies are you finding that employers are looking for and what should they be looking for?
Speaker 2:There's probably two ways to answer that One's in the public sector and one's probably outside of the public sector. I think from a federal landscape, it's probably knowledge of how that environment works and how to apply, I guess, those sorts of methodologies to delivering something inherently technical. But outside I think it's essentially just an understanding of technology more broadly and the way in which you store information in particular. So records management, I'd say, would be really really important the ability to use things like SharePoint, the ability to share information in a cyber-safe way and you know, you don't have to go too far down the rabbit hole of the internet to see stories that are very much in that cyber breach capacity and really sensitive information is getting out to the market. So having an awareness of that is probably a great starting point. And then just generally, how to tie together probably softer people skills in a digitally safe way.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk a little bit more about cyber security, because that's obviously a flavour of the month almost every month when you pick up the newspaper or go online and see that someone else has been hacked, how are you finding candidates are responding to that? Are people concerned? Do people understand what they need to do to help keep their businesses cyber safe?
Speaker 2:I think from a candidate engagement perspective, certainly because we've got people who are immersed in that technology space all day, every day. So I think that that bit really does resonate home. It's probably more in the client space and you know the general needs out in the market of people's cyber requirements. I think that they've been defined. You can tell when they've been defined really, really well and you can tell when people sort of have it as a bit of an afterthought or it's a oh, I am up to date with current events, so maybe that's something we should look at. There's probably the two different types of levels, but I think just generally it's such an interesting landscape and one thing that we sort of see more anecdotally is both sides of what cyber security looks like.
Speaker 2:And one thing that's of huge interest to our team and we've got specialists who recruit in this space is talk about things like ethical hacking and penetration testing. It's a hugely interesting um, and probably something that people don't realize happens is that people are actually hired to try and break down the security system of what it is. That your business, you know what information you might have, and I think that's a really cool thing to understand because, as the end user. Often you're just looking for the simplest way to get whatever task it is that you're looking for done. You want to complete a web form with as little clicks as possible as an example. I think that everything does work together in a project and a technology software development lifecycle, but more and more than what we've seen before, cyber's being taken into account at every step of the way. You don't want to be able to unfortunately or accidentally click on something and then expose a huge risk to the company. So, yeah, it's definitely a day-to-day conversation as opposed to something that sits to the side now.
Speaker 1:Yeah and Blanca, when you're talking to candidates, are they fully engaged and immersed in this issue? Is it something they raise with you?
Speaker 3:truthfully, greg, no it doesn't come up, should they be I think that people are very vigilant about where their information is going and who has it accessible, which is excellent.
Speaker 3:The benefit that we have at hayes is all of our terms of engagement, and canada application forms really do thoroughly state the protocols that we have in place as a larger entity.
Speaker 3:So I certainly think, especially with the nature of the high-level secured individuals, cleared individuals that we deal with, there would be much further questioning or a lack of engagement. Should we not really wear our protocol like a badge of honor? But we certainly put in the time, effort and awareness training within all our internal staff to really project that image of safe cybersecurity outwards into the community. I feel pretty lucky in that regard. Yet there are certainly still times where we do need to reassure individuals, especially if they are not wanting their current employer to truly find out a single thing, that that will not happen. We aren't going to go and play the game in Canberra where we tap our mate from cricket on the shoulder or from bowls, but outside of that again, we have such a strong branding. We're very lucky and it's very clearly written across most of our documentation that it's all classified information until they're made known otherwise, yeah.
Speaker 1:I guess, as you talk there, I'm sort of reflecting on the similarities perhaps between the recruitment market and the intelligence community, because ultimately, I guess you know you're all about finding information and there's a significant degree of confidentiality and sensitivity around the work that you guys do, right.
Speaker 2:It does feel like that sometimes there's, you know, the old Sherlock Holmes afternoons where you actually know that there is something that's really important to understand about a requirement or a candidate and you possibly have to go to a few different lengths to try and find that information. And the power of the informal reference in a town like Canberra, I think, can't be understated.
Speaker 1:So from a small business point of view, like I mean, are you are most of your clients? Obviously you've got some big federal government clients, but in the private sector, are you mainly dealing with smaller businesses or larger ones? It's?
Speaker 2:a pretty good mix, to be honest. And you know, we probably see it more in some of our professional HR, finance type markets where we have that smaller business engagement Sometimes, you know, I think the ability to attract candidates to a really key position is possible, that the job boards that exist in this marketplace do make it possible to attract candidates. But I think being able to you know if I can link it back to technology it's all about business understanding, right? I think if you can have a specialist stakeholder, ie a recruitment agency, involved to really, truly listen, to understand your requirements not just listen to provide you solutions, but really understand what your pain point is you can run a really dedicated campaign. And when you're delivering in small business, recruiting additional headcount is not a huge part of your day-to-day operation, but from our side it's 100% of what we do. So I think the ability to really critically understand what it is that people are looking for and then supply a tailored solution to that is absolutely key to what we do.
Speaker 2:But, to answer your original question, a really good mix. I think. You know Canberra is bound together by its major industries, right? You've got your white collar, you've got your public sector federal government. You've got your construction and property is absolutely massive here probably got the Canberra airport group which sits to the side is almost like the defense equivalent of the Canberra market and you know, within there you've got a lot of really good, you know industry specific, small businesses and I think our offering, the beauty of it, is that you know it's relevant to anyone in that category you know it's relevant to anyone in that category.
Speaker 1:So you talk about the need to understand a client's requirements, which obviously is important for any business. But do you often do you ever find yourself thinking, oh well, actually we could put a person into this role because they think they've got a vacancy here, but there might be some tech solutions that might be a benefit? Do you? Do you kind of have those conversations with some of your clients sometimes?
Speaker 2:yeah, we do, and sometimes that's part of the art form, right? I think if, if something's always been done a certain way, then you know, it might be um nature for that client to say we need to replace a really like for like of someone that we've lost. I think that's probably the most common type of recruitment, right? Is we used to have this capability and now we don't, because that specified personnel is left, so we need to replace them exactly like that.
Speaker 2:I think, when things come to problem solving and technological advancement, how it worked when that person, original person was hired versus how it works now could be two different things.
Speaker 2:So from our perspective, we might get asked to recruit a project manager and what they actually need is someone to actually just understand the business and technology nuance of what they're trying to do. So maybe they'll need a business analyst instead, or perhaps they think that they need a change manager, but what they actually need is someone to write a schedule for them and keep people on track. So I think it's the open-ended questions that we ask. I think what we want to really steer away from is what I'll describe as highly transactional recruitment, where you just listen to what you're told and then try and matchmake and and pattern, recognize and provide something to that. I think you can actually think a little bit more critically and look beyond the position description, so to speak, and sometimes the solution that you might come to is something that you didn't necessarily think at the start. And having watch Blanca in action, that's something that she's very good at.
Speaker 3:And what I will add on to that as well is that is truly my favourite part of the job you can be talking to a client, engaging actively. Reading the position description, I will always beg the question of is there anything on here that is not as important as it's highlighted in formal writing? And you need to tell me right now all the other things that you can't write down that are extremely important to you and your team. Tell me about the people that you already have in there. How many of you are there? What's the dynamic like? What kind of things do you guys enjoy to do together? As little as it sounds, that is going to be a huge component of not only the initial success at interview after the resume is read, but it's really going to be make or break in the person's integration and longevity in the team. Whether it be a contract or permanent engagement, you need the right person, not just the right resume.
Speaker 1:So I mean that's a really interesting point. There's often a whole lot of secrets the wrong word but unwritten stuff that goes alongside a position description. How forthcoming do you find clients are when you ask them that question?
Speaker 3:I find them to be very transparent, very forthcoming, almost excitable in moments at the fact somebody has asked the question. I'll do it a little bit more carefully, depending on how I've read the room. What type of person is this that I'm speaking with? Is this a project management officer for a highly technical space? That will depict the type of person who leads those people? Or is it a high-level program manager, coming from a business acumen background themselves, who's brought some other people across, might be more fluid communication and like to have a bit more of a laugh. There's a right and a wrong way to say everything in this world, but that's another nuance that I enjoy about the job. You figure out what feels right and you can kind of gauge what people are going to tell you right off the bat. Wouldn't you say so, michael?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it underlines the human centricity to this market because I think anybody could just read it as it was demonstrated on a page and then try and make their own assumptions and find people that just match what's written there. But to your point earlier, greg, if you don't ask the question of the client, you can't ask that exact same question of the candidates, and you know there's probably going to be one pain point. That's never advertised because sometimes you don't want to put that forward. But you know part of our role is to really nail down what it is. You know what is that pain point and you know you can hypothetically ask a prospective candidate how would you solve this If they give a really detailed answer? And often that sort of answer is something that where you can understand, they can make you understand something inherently technical in a really simple way. Often, if that can sort of happen, you normally feel pretty good, like you're on to a bit of a winner.
Speaker 1:Now we've talked a little bit about the human centricity of the recruitment market, but it wouldn't be a conversation about the workforce in 2025 if I were to ask you about AI and automation. What role do you think those tools are going to play in shaping the workforce of the future, especially in that small business market?
Speaker 2:Well, as we've talked about a couple of times, I think the key to driving forward anything from a business perspective is having really clear requirements, so requirements gathering in where you're at and also what you want to achieve. I think until the prompting of artificial intelligence is absolutely black and white and spot on every time, I think in this particular industry it's going to play a role, but it's never going to take over. I get asked quite regularly you know, how do you have a team of 11 recruiters and why wouldn't you just use Copilot and chat, gbt and the best two? Good question. But again, what we sort of talked about earlier is that the way information is fed out into what a business requirement is is not the most accurate picture of that. So if you're trying to, you know, prompt a platform to give you the solution for something that hasn't been well identified well, you're probably not going to get the best result either.
Speaker 2:So I think that's the art form there. It's heavily used from our team, from an administrative assistant perspective. It does cut down a lot of time on tasks that have taken a really long time in the past. But the other thing is Blanca made a really good point on the way here. This is virtually free platform If people don't have to pay anything to get there. We've got absolutely no way of knowing what this information is being used for, where it's being shared and what the long-term impacts of that is, and we're not going to know what impact that is being had right now and when it comes to AI, until years from now, and so I think it's it's something that you can use to your benefit, but it needs to be used like that. It almost needs the hierarchy to be in place that it's your assistant, not the other way around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, or we get down to fairly dark territory, I guess, particularly for fans of science fiction movies. Do you think SMEs are adopting AI tools? You know, as far as you're talking to them at a high rate.
Speaker 2:Oh, look, anecdotally, it's different everywhere you go. I think that it is certainly saving time on things that maybe weren't a glamorous part of performing a business function. In terms of the actual adoption for core business delivery not in every sector, I wouldn't have thought, certainly not at this point. I think it's good from a governance or a framework to how you deliver things, so what your structures look like. I think you can really use it to a high effect in there. But in terms of actually what you're putting out to the market, you know the social media component. I you know. I probably noticed you can notice who uses AI on LinkedIn in particular, because the same set of graphics appear on every post for one. It's bold and in the same general spot of the post. So I think that it has its place, but I think it's also still at the phase where it's obvious what it is being used for and what it's not, and I think the most cut through that I continue to see are those ones that, for want of a better expression, come from the heart.
Speaker 1:And it'll be interesting to see how that evolves over time, I guess. What's your prediction for 2030? How far do you think AI is going to have penetrated into the business environment?
Speaker 2:Quite deeply. You know, I think one of the main sort of rules or theories about technology, and especially in the artificial intelligence space, is that it can. You know it used to be that technology could double in its capability every 18 months, but from an artificial intelligence perspective, it doubles in its capability every 30 days. So I think that the next wave that we're going to see of AI is going to be the regulation of it, and again, we're not going to go down into the conspiracy theory path on this podcast, greg, but you know how that's regulated from government entities is going to be the really fascinating watch for the next little while, because you know what we don't know is you know where people are geographically tagged, what biases it's building up in terms of the information that's being fed in there, and I think some people just go all out and and use it for absolutely everything.
Speaker 2:I know my wife uses it as google. Now it's like I'll just ask chat gbt. I think that language has changed from I'll google it to I'll just ask chat gbt now. So it's building up all this information on people and we've already seen the power of social media and what it can have by pushing a certain agenda um through, and obviously there's been, you know, news of of what's happened in the states over the last um couple of days. I think that that's a a really poignant time to think about what impact all of this is happening. But in terms of what a prediction is, I think that there'll be, uh, an eternal struggle for the regulation of these platforms, because at the moment it's highly accessible and there's probably not a heap of rules attached.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's probably fair to say that governments have been trying to regulate technology for close to 1,000 years and have not got it right, probably in many cases, so I guess we'll have to see what happens. Blanca, you're relatively new to Hayes. If your team at Hayes had a mascot, what do you think it would be?
Speaker 3:Yeah, fabulous. Honestly, I've been thinking about it, greg, since we got here today. I'd have to say a pangolin, pangolin, a pangolin, yes I can't wait to hear this. Not to be mistaken with a penguin. Yeah, so perhaps for those of our audience who don't know a pangolin would.
Speaker 1:For those of our audience who don't know a pangolin, would you like to just tell us what it is?
Speaker 3:Yes, certainly my awareness of what a pangolin is is a small, strange, very unique, endangered little animal that runs across the ground, found in very few countries, which I won't dare to try to rattle off. It's got spines and also a funny little snout. It's very good at digging around in the dirt and very endangered species. Anyhow, the reason I think that would be our mascot is because the first time one of my friends told me about the existence of a pangolin, I was probably in my mid-20s and I didn't believe it was a real thing. What I've found in my own team at Hayes every single one of us is incredibly unique, skilled in a very different fashion, and to find us all together doing our best work as a collective is probably an anomaly of some kind.
Speaker 3:To be exaggerative about it, I feel very lucky to sit around the people I do each day, but at this exact same time. It's a very interesting collection of individuals that you'd be hard-pressed to just go and find in the wild. Again, you could visit most countries. Pangolins are around and about and never see one. I watched a documentary, which is why it's terrible. I don't know a little bit more. A few months ago, with my partner and some people that live in the native lands of the pangolin have never seen one in their entire lives.
Speaker 1:Excellent Michael without wanting to get into your internal team dynamics. Do you have a view on that?
Speaker 2:I've got to be careful of what I say here. Uh, I I wrote, uh, when you sort of gave me the heads up on this question 20 minutes ago, I wrote what's the most transparent and caring animal that I can think of. So, um, I think we'd probably be almost the golden retriever, I'd say would be our mascot in terms of being really pure to itself and unapologetically empathetic and caring and transparent about how it's feeling. And I think, if I try and loop this together as nicely and neatly as I can, that's how we try and perform in the marketplaces, in a way that is unconditionally caring about both the needs of our candidates and clients, but also really transparent about what we understand and what we need from those people as well.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining me here on the podcast. I'm Greg Harford from the Canberra Business Chamber. I've been joined today by Michael Minns and Blanca Barreras from Hayes Recruitment. Thank you so much for joining us. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast platform for future episodes.