Small businesses struggling to find the right staff now have an artificial intelligence-powered tool to do their bidding, as Employment Hero launches a new ‘super app’ that it claims will automate the most tedious parts of the recruiting process.
Employment Hero formally introduced Swag on Tuesday, combining tried-and-tested elements of the HR and payroll management platform with fresh AI integrations.
Swag offers workers and employers a new way to access Employment Hero’s traditional rostering, payslip, and leave request functions, along with induction management and certification tools.
But, for the first time, the company is launching its own free-to-use jobs board, giving businesses in the Employment Hero ecosystem a new option beyond Seek, LinkedIn, or Indeed.
SMEs that list openings on the new Swag Jobs page can use AI to generate a first draft of their job description, Employment Hero says.
Swag’s artificial intelligence system, built on technology provided by OpenAi and other third-party vendors, is also geared to tell users about what hiring needs they may face in the future.
AI-generated job descriptions are free to access for all small businesses using Employment Hero, but premium features, like the advanced candidate ranking system, will cost extra.
On the job applicant’s side, AI systems will cook up draft cover letters and will present job hunters with openings relevant to their employment profile and listed skills.
Automated systems will parse their resumes and CVs, Employment Hero adds, allowing what the company calls ‘one-click’ job applications.
Ben Thompson, Employment Hero co-founder and CEO, told SmartCompany the system poses a more advanced candidate recommendation system than those offered by the incumbent job platforms.
“Swag uses a more holistic approach than traditional keyword-based systems by considering a candidate’s skills, verified work history and qualifications to determine whether they are a good fit for a role,” he said.
It will dig into the “verified work history data for millions of Australians” to “accurately assess a candidate’s skills and experience, which is essential for making good hiring decisions”.
Using that kind of rich data will help Swag avoid the pitfalls faced by some AI chatbots on the market, which are shown to occasionally produce facts out of thin air, Thompson added.
“This enables us to go beyond mere keywords and tap into comprehensive datasets comprising over 1 million existing employees, millions of previous employees, and data from more than 200,000 organisations.”
Employment Hero will seek feedback from Swag’s users to ensure its AI functions meet their expectations.
The system won’t entirely eliminate the human element intrinsic to job applications, Thompson continued.
Instead, Swag is designed to carve out the most time-intensive and laborious aspects of the process, he claims, allowing SMEs to invest time in “discovering your next great hire and speaking 1:1 with interested applicants, to forming meaningful relationships with talent for future recruitment.”
While Employment Hero is now rolling AI into its systems, artificial intelligence is already being used by some of the nation’s biggest employers to streamline the recruitment process.
Victorian startup Sapia.ai offers a “smart interviewer” chat system, which automatically screens candidates and provides candidate rankings to hiring managers.
Qantas, Woolworths Group, and Suncorp are among the businesses to have adopted Sapia.ai’s systems to date.
Beyond the payroll, leave, and job application systems, the company says Swag contains tools designed to boost employee retention.
The app facilitates access to Instapay, a service granting employees access to the earned portion of their paycheque before payday.
Separately, employees can use a new Swag debit card to access savings across brands like The Iconic, Uber Eats, JB Hi-Fi, along with separate cashback offers.
Senior Business Journalist
Focused on the small business sector, David’s work covers the political, regulatory, and economic issues facing Australian entrepreneurs. Prior to joining SmartCompany, he was a reporter for Business Insider Australia. You can follow him on LinkedIn.
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