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Beating the market benchmark is never easy, with 72 per cent of Australian actively managed global equity general funds trailing the S&P World Index in the six months to June 30, 2024. Domestic equity funds performed slightly better, albeit against a significantly lower bar set by the S&P/ASX 200 Index.
Hiremii shaking up the labour hire and recruitment sector
The Inside Network spoke with the managing director of Hiremii Group Limited (ASX: HMI), Chris Brophy, about Hiremii’s much-anticipated IPO, which is set to shake up the labour hire sector’s fast-evolving digital revolution. Listed on Tuesday (11 May), Hiremii is at the forefront of the transformation of the employment industry.
For investors looking to take a position on the stock, here’s what you need to know from Chris Brophy:
Chris, tell us a bit about Hiremii – what does it do?
Hiremii has two core business components, a fixed-fee recruitment business (operated via its wholly owned subsidiary, Hiremii Recruitment Pty. Ltd.) and a recruitment and full-service labour hire business, providing digitised employee onboarding and labour hire services (operated via its wholly owned subsidiary, Oncontractor Pty. Ltd.)
Both businesses utilise Hiremii’s propriety cloud-based platform (Hiremii Platform) which uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to remove the tedious manual tasks associated with the recruitment and onboarding process, pre-vetting and shortlisting candidates based on employers’ specific requirements.
So why would a candidate or employer choose to use Hiremii? What are the benefits?
Firstly, Hiremii aims to provide a net benefit to both sides by providing an ‘all in one’ solution to both candidates and employers. For clients, we aim to simplify the process of recruitment and labour hire by reducing the administrative burden, costs and lost time associated with the traditional agency approach, which relies on back-office support and overheads. For candidates, we match their skills and experience to the appropriate positions, remove bias in the shortlisting process and provide transparency, where traditional job boards are opaque in nature.
Further to this, using a traditional agency approach means that clients and candidates can be certain of only one thing and that is, more of the same thing. Whereas, Hiremii considers that the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities of the Platform provide both sides of the market with immediate advantages, but continued application and enhancement of technology including Machine Learning and AI will create more opportunity for both sides of the market rather than remain stagnant.
How is your process different from the traditional process of hiring an employee?
We are an online recruitment company that offers a marketplace where potential employers and employees are matched through our digital AI-driven platform. We use AI-based technology, matching unique profiles to positions based on skills and experience.
Hiremii digitises this entire process. First, post your job vacancy: completing a job vacancy on our platform takes less than ten minutes. A candidate will have already created a profile. Review top matches: we shortlist available candidates based on your unique requirements. Conduct interviews: once we’ve setup an interview it is over to you.
We can help with any questions you may have to ensure your success. Issue digital contracts: all contracts are issued and stored digitally, upload your own, and enjoy the ease of e-signatures. It’s that easy.
You say you are more effective, how exactly?
The Hiremii Platform, which can be accessed via a computer or on a mobile device (utilising a web browser), provides: 1) flexibility to clients when creating a scope on the Hiremii Platform – clients can add multiple skill requirements, responsibilities, and certifications to ensure that the right candidate is matched to the relevant position; and 2) clients with a pool of candidates with detailed profiles, including a list of their prior experience, skills, and certifications. It also seeks to ensure the right fit for the role/scope in less time than manual data review and/or database searching, and provides automated matching and ranking of a candidate’s credentials/experience to a client’s scope.
It then eliminates unconscious bias in the shortlisting process via the matching process it applies (removing the need to sanitise candidate CVs and profiles, as would be required under traditional recruitment, means in seeking to mitigate bias and undertakes automated candidate verification checks and, as part of this process, can validate candidates email addresses and phone numbers and also performs an automated ID check and working rights check via an integration with National Crime Check (NCC) to ensure each candidate is verified and has the right to work within Australia; and
Finally, it applies a streamlined approach to the verification and matching of candidates and also automates the employee on-boarding process, ensuring personal information is always kept safe and secure, reducing manual handling and error rates. All employee contract, tax form, banking information and superannuation details are digitised on the Hiremii Platform, with e-signatures removing the need for manual forms.
Do you have clients on the platform?
We sure do. The Hiremii Group has expanded its client footprint from six clients in June 2019 to 31 registered clients (ten of whom are active) as at end of January 2021 (an approximate 500% increase) active clients include, among others, PwC Australia and UGL. Currently we have approximately 100 employees deployed with various clients of the company (on a casual basis).
How will Hiremii achieve scalability?
The total market size is $15 billion for Recruitment and $25.7 billion for Labour hire. We have 9,000 participants. It is a saturated market. For the current participants, scalability is an issue. Why? Because they all operate in a bricks-and-mortar business model. “Boiler rooms” can only grow as quickly as they can open new regions or acquire other firms. This is an old model.
Our historical investment in technology means that the Hiremii platform is scalable and can process a large volume of candidate profiles and client positions without needing to acquire other businesses or buildings, as well having to hire hundreds more recruiters/representatives and overhead personnel to grow.
Now the IPO. Tell us about the listing, why, how are you spending the funds etc?
Hiremii is listing Tuesday (May 11) on the ASX after raising $6 million, resulting in an estimated market cap of $14 million.
With the IPO bedded down, the company intends to focus on its growth strategy and will continue to further develop the Hiremii platform’s existing machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, with a focus on the candidate selection and matching process. Further to this, we will establish a customer support services team to assist clients and candidates using the Hiremii platform as well as increase client engagement and sales. To augment Hiremii’s operations team we will be placing a support team in Victoria and New South Wales to service existing clients as well as assist with additional client acquisitions.
All in all, we are confident that our platform will cause a long-awaited structural shift in the recruitment and labour hire sectors; so watch this space.
