Attua / Industries / Recruitment and labour hire
AI for recruitment agencies and labour hire businesses
This page is written as pairs: a problem that will be familiar from your own desk, then the thing that actually shifts it. No section claims a placement. The one decision that never moves is who gets put forward, and why.
Book a discovery callThe premise
The asset you already own and almost never work
Every agency I speak to has two businesses inside it. The first is the one on the whiteboard: live roles, live clients, this month's numbers. The second is a database of people and companies built over 10 or 15 years, and almost nobody works it, because a consultant can only hold the last few weeks in their head.
That is not laziness. It is a search problem. A consultant with a new mining services role does not know that somebody placed 3 years ago on a similar site has since finished a contract, because nothing prompted them to look. The record exists. The prompt does not.
Most of what follows is variations on that theme. The information needed to do the job well is already in JobAdder, Bullhorn, Vincere or FastTrack, in an inbox, or in a consultant's call notes. It is just not assembled at the moment somebody needs it. Assembly is what these tools are genuinely good at, which is why the problems below are mostly admin problems rather than judgement problems.
Problems and fixes
Eight familiar problems, paired with what moves them
The database sits there
Thousands of candidates and past clients, searchable only if you already know what you are looking for. New roles get advertised from scratch because advertising is easier than searching.
A re-engagement list per desk, every week
A short list built against this week's live roles, with a drafted message for each person that refers to what they actually did rather than a mail merge. The consultant edits and sends. Specific beats volume every time here.
Job ads written from nothing
A 10 minute briefing call becomes a 400 word ad written by a consultant who was never told what the team is like. The ad underperforms, so the desk pays for more advertising.
Ads drafted from the briefing itself
Record the briefing call with the client's agreement, and the ad draft comes from what the hiring manager said, your previous ads for that client, and the role specifics. The consultant shapes it. The client recognises their own words, which also makes approval faster.
Shortlist write ups eat an afternoon
Four candidates, each needing a paragraph that justifies them against the brief. It is the least enjoyable hour of the week and it happens after 6pm.
Summaries against the written requirements
Each candidate summarised against the requirements the client put in writing, with the supporting line quoted from the application so the consultant can check it in seconds. No score. No ordering. The consultant decides who goes forward and says why.
Reference checks never get written up
The call happens, the notes are scribbled, and the formal reference report is written days later from memory or not at all. On a disputed placement that gap is the problem.
A reference report drafted from the call notes
A short dictated summary after the call becomes a structured report in your own format, for the consultant to correct and sign off the same day. The referee's words stay the referee's words, and nothing is inferred that was not said.
Compliance currency expires silently
Tickets, licences, inductions, work rights and medicals all have dates. A worker whose high risk work licence lapsed last month is on site today, and nobody knows until a client audit.
One expiry register and a chasing sequence
Every document with a date in one register, with the chase drafted at 60, 30 and 7 days and escalated to a person when ignored. Boring, unglamorous, and the single most valuable workflow in a labour hire business.
Monday is timesheet day
Chasing workers, chasing site supervisors for approvals, then finding the discrepancies before invoicing. A payroll officer loses most of a day to it every week.
Chasing drafted, exceptions surfaced
Reminders drafted and sent by a person, then an exception list of timesheets that do not match the roster, the site record or the previous week. Payroll works the exceptions instead of reading everything.
Business development notes die in the car
A good client meeting produces 3 opportunities, none of which reach the system, because typing them up after the drive back competes with the next call.
A voice note becomes a CRM entry
Two minutes spoken in the car becomes a drafted account note, the next action with a date, and any role details worth capturing. The consultant checks it at the next stop. What you gain is a client record that reflects reality.
Rates quoted from memory
A client asks for an hourly rate on the phone and a consultant answers. Superannuation, workers compensation, payroll tax, leave entitlements and portable long service leave where it applies all sit behind that number, and the margin is wrong more often than anybody admits.
A quoting pack with the on-costs itemised
A drafted quote that lists every on-cost for that state, that award classification and that client's terms, with the margin shown. The consultant or manager sets the price. The point is that nobody is doing arithmetic in their head on a phone call.
The limit
Screening is the one place a model must not decide
This is the part of the page worth reading twice. Recruitment is the industry where automated decision making carries the most legal exposure, because the decisions are about people and the grounds you cannot use are written into statute.
Why we do not build candidate scoring
Australian law prohibits discrimination on grounds including age, disability, sex, pregnancy, race and family responsibilities, through the Age Discrimination Act, the Disability Discrimination Act, the Sex Discrimination Act, the Racial Discrimination Act and state law such as the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 in Queensland. A model trained on past hiring patterns can reproduce the pattern without anybody intending it, and can infer protected attributes from things like a graduation year, a career gap or a name.
- No scoring, ranking or automated rejection of applicants
- No inference about age, health, family situation, nationality or anything else a candidate did not choose to tell you
- No video or voice analysis of candidates, in any form
- No filtering on criteria the client has not put in writing as a genuine requirement of the role
- Every candidate not progressed has a reason a consultant can state in a sentence
What remains is still substantial. Summarising, assembling, drafting and chasing is most of the hours in a recruitment business. The judgement is the product, and the Recruitment, Consulting and Staffing Association code your agency likely signed up to expects it to come from a person.
Compliance
Labour hire licensing and the documents with dates on them
If you supply workers to another business in Queensland you need a labour hire licence, with periodic reporting to the regulator, and Victoria and South Australia run their own schemes. On top of that sit modern award coverage and classification, the casual employment information requirements, work rights verification through the Department of Home Affairs, workers compensation cover, superannuation, and in construction the portable long service leave scheme. The same job same pay changes to the Fair Work Act have added another layer for regulated labour hire arrangements.
None of that is work a model should interpret. All of it generates documents, dates, reports and chasing, which is work a drafting workflow handles well. The split is simple: software assembles the evidence and surfaces the date, a person reads the obligation and decides what it means.
If you want the sequence mapped before building anything, that is AI strategy, with the build in AI implementation.
Systems
Platforms a recruitment business already pays for
- JobAdder, Bullhorn or Vincere
- Candidate and client records as the source for re-engagement lists, shortlist packs and drafted notes written back after a consultant confirms.
- FastTrack360, Astute Payroll or foundU
- Timesheet exceptions, compliance expiry registers and the data behind a quoting pack with on-costs itemised.
- SEEK, Indeed and LinkedIn
- Advertisement drafts per role from the briefing, plus a plain read on which sources are producing candidates you actually place.
- Outlook or Gmail
- Inbox triage by desk and urgency, with drafted replies where the answer already exists in the record.
- Employment Hero or your onboarding tool
- Placement paperwork assembled, induction documents tracked, and the chase drafted when something is missing.
- Xero or MYOB
- Invoice query answers from the timesheet and placement record, and a weekly read on margin by desk and by client.
How it runs
A first project on one desk, not across the agency
A Diagnostic comes first. Several days with your consultants, listening to how a role actually moves from briefing to placement, and sitting with whoever runs payroll and compliance because that is where the unglamorous value usually is. Owners generally expect me to recommend something on the front end. Just as often the answer is the expiry register.
Then one desk, two workflows, 4 to 6 weeks, with the old method still running. The measure is whether a consultant uses the draft or rewrites it from scratch, which is a harsher and more honest test than asking whether they liked it. Rolling out to a second desk is quick once the first one holds, because the systems are already connected.
Illustrative example, not a client story
Example scenario: 180 workers on site and 2 people keeping them compliant
Picture a labour hire business supplying 180 workers across civil and industrial sites, with 2 staff holding the compliance and payroll function together. Tickets, licences, inductions and medicals live in a mix of the payroll system, a shared drive and a spreadsheet. Expiries are found when a site turns somebody away, which costs a placement and a client conversation.
In this example every document with a date is pulled into one register, the chase is drafted at set intervals and escalated to a person when a worker does not respond, and a weekly exception list shows who is at risk of being stood down before it happens. Timesheet discrepancies are surfaced rather than hunted. The 2 staff still make every call about whether a worker can be placed. Illustrative example, not a client story.
Data
Candidate information, references and background checks
An agency holds a lot about people who never became employees: resumes, references, criminal history check results, medicals, visa documents, bank and superannuation details. It is personal information under the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles, some of it is sensitive information, and candidates are increasingly willing to ask what you do with it.
How we set it up: business grade accounts with training on your data switched off, each workflow given read access to the one system it needs, and background check results, medical information and identity documents excluded from workflow scope entirely rather than handled carefully. Your collection notice should describe what actually happens, including that drafting software prepares summaries a consultant reviews. Where a client contract imposes its own data handling terms, that client is excluded unless their terms are met.
Consultants also need a rule they can apply on a busy Tuesday about what may be pasted where. Writing that and training the desks on it is AI training, and it usually surfaces a few habits worth stopping regardless of this project.
Every job is scoped up front after a Diagnostic. Sam is based in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, and travel is charged at cost from Brisbane. See the cost guide.
Questions
Common questions from agency owners and managers
Can it screen and rank candidates for us?
It can summarise a candidate against the requirements the client actually wrote down, quoting the evidence from the application. It does not score, rank or reject. Ranking people is a decision with discrimination exposure attached, and a consultant who can explain why somebody was not progressed is worth more to you than a sorted list nobody can account for.
Our database has 40,000 records and most are stale. Is it useful?
That is usually the single biggest opportunity in the business, and the staleness is the point. Consultants work the last 90 days because that is all they can hold in their head. Building a short, specific re-engagement list per desk, with a drafted message that refers to what that person actually did, is where most agencies see something first.
Do we have to tell candidates we use these tools?
Your privacy collection notice should reflect how you handle applications, and if software prepares summaries that a consultant reviews, say so plainly. Candidates mind far less about drafting assistance than about being assessed by something they cannot question. Since no assessment happens, the conversation is straightforward.
We run labour hire, not permanent recruitment. Does that change things?
It changes the priorities completely. Permanent desks care about candidate flow and client proposals. Labour hire lives or dies on compliance currency, timesheets and on-costs, so the first workflows are usually the expiry register, the timesheet exception list and the rate card quoting pack.
Will it write job ads that sound like every other ad?
Only if you feed it nothing. Drafted from a recorded briefing call, your own previous ads for that client and the specifics of the role, the result reads like your agency. Drafted from a job title alone, it reads like every other ad, which is a reason to insist on the briefing call rather than a reason to avoid the tool.
Can it submit candidates to clients automatically?
No. A submission is your professional opinion that this person suits this role, and it is the thing you charge for. The pack can be assembled and the covering note drafted. A consultant decides who goes and presses send.
Talk it through with Sam
Book a 30 minute discovery call about how your business runs today.
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