At our recent Australian customer event in Melbourne, more than 50 TA leaders spent a day sharing their experiences on what’s working, what’s not, and where TA is heading. The highly collaborative sessions brought together a keynote session from Jo Vohland from ATC Events & Media, panel insights from leaders at David Jones, Symbos, Sportsbet and Scope Australia, and open peer-to-peer roundtable discussions that generated some of the most candid conversations of the day.
One message cut through every session: the days of TA operating as a reactive, transactional function are over. Here’s what’s replacing it.
ALT FOR ATTENDEES:
At our recent Australian customer event in Melbourne, more than 50 TA leaders spent a day sharing their experiences on what’s working, what’s not, and where TA is heading. Thank you for being part of what turned out to be a great day, full of candid discussions.
We wanted to is capture the themes that kept surfacing across the keynote, the panel, and especially the roundtables and send them back to you in a form you can share with your team. Some key ideas stood out across every session – here’s what the room told us:
The AI reality check
AI adoption across Australian TA teams is real, but not uniform, and in some cases moving faster than teams can handle. Many organisationsorganizations now have AI embedded across sourcing, screening and job description drafting. Others are still in early exploration. Most are somewhere in the middle, genuinely uncertain about whether the tools are delivering or just creating a different kind of busy.
One unintended consequence that emerged across the conversations: the sheer volume of applications has surged. AI has made it dramatically easier for candidates to apply which means that TA teams are now sorting through a lot more “noise” to find the right fit.
Ben Stevens, Head of TA at Symbos, captured the internal tension many teams are experiencing: “We’re being asked to bring in new tools and new tech, but you also need people to manage those tools and tech. AI doesn’t really solve that problem.”
And while the excitement around AI is real, many in the room were still working out how to measure whether it’s truly delivering. Many were left considering: are the tools we’re adopting genuinely moving the needle, or are we getting swept up in the hype?
Ben Roberts, Head of TA at David Jones, was clear that AI is not about reducing headcount. “I’m not a believer that AI is to strip talent from the team, quite the opposite.” He shared a practical change management approach he calls ‘remove and replace’ conversations. This means being transparent about what is being automated, and what higher-value work will replace it. As he put it: “If we just focus on removing, removing, removing, there’d be a sentiment of, ‘what am I here to do’?”
Even when AI is well-embedded across the recruitment process, teams are still working through the implications, particularly around candidate experience and inclusivity. When one part of the process accelerates, the rest has to keep up. Roundtable discussions reinforced this too: AI-assisted speed at the top of the funnel simply creates downstream pressure if the rest of the process isn’t set up to match.
Overall, the consensus surrounding AI was that it should be treated as a strategic colleague, not a plug-and-play solution. Teams must avoid accepting outputs without thinking critically about what’s produced. The “easy button” mentality introduces risk that can easily compound across the hiring process.
Key takeaway: Before implementing a new AI tool, define the specific problem it is aiming to solve. Build your process around that need, not around the technology.
In-person is back (and for good reason)
As candidates use generative AI to optimiseoptimize resumes and navigate assessment, this has introduced new challenges for verifying skillsets. Hiring managers are reporting a “halo effect”, where candidates appear flawless on paper, but struggle to meet expectations in a live interaction. What’s more, Jo Vohland’s keynote flagged a significant rise in hiring fraud that many TA teams are underprepared for, from AI-generated fake credentials and deep fake video interviews, to proxy candidates completing online assessments on someone else’s behalf. In response, many organisationsorganizations have shifted back toward in-person interviews as a core validation step
Overall, the room agreed on a balanced approach: if TA teams are leveraging AI to optimiseoptimize workflows, it is only fair that candidates do too. The solution lies in designing recruitment processes that expect AI usage while incorporating human-in-the-loop validation milestones to verify authentic skills.
Key takeaway: Review your assessment processes and identify the best places for human validation. If the first live interaction is the final interview, that might be too late to surface any misrepresentations.
Your best candidates probably aren’t on job boards
Up to 65% of top candidates are not actively browsing job ads. Tapping into this passive market requires TA teams to think like growth marketers: pinpoint where your target candidates live online, go to them directly, and speak to them in a way that truly resonates.
Start simple, start small and just start somewhere. Don’t let a lack of budget or expensive production assets stand in your way. Attendees agreed that teams must ditch polished corporate jargon in favour of raw, authentic storytelling.
Kate Reid, Head of TA at Sportsbet, pushed back on the idea that employer branding requires a big production budget. “It’s most authentic when it comes from people themselves. If you don’t have money for high production content, you can get out your phone. At the end of the day, that in itself is even more authentic.”
David Pitko, Workforce Strategy Manager at Scope Australia, shared what happened when they asked hiring managers to post simple values-based content on their personal LinkedIn networks: “It’s driven our applications and referrals from LinkedIn from 4% to 47%, for free.”
One more consideration: your EVP needs to work in AI search, not just on your career site. Around 50% of candidates are now using tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to research employers before they ever look at a job ad. Search your own organisationorganization and see what comes back, then check what your competitors look like. The gap might be bigger than you think.
Takeaway: Employee generated content is an authentic way to connect with candidates. It’s a low-cost way to make your brand more approachable, real, and the compounding effect on your pipeline can be significant.
TA needs to be a strategic workforce function
The most challenging theme of the day was also the most important: TA is moving upstream, whether teams are ready or not.
Jo Vohland put it plainly in her keynote: “The ability to redesign organisationsorganizations as interconnected human and agent systems: that’s likely to become one of the most valuable strategic capabilities in talent over the next decade.”
Future TA teams won’t just fill roles. They’ll help businesses decide how work gets done – by a person, a contractor, or an AI agent. A skills-first approach to that question could increase your available talent pool by nearly eight times. But it requires a different kind of thinking than filling a vacancy.
Attendees described their version of this shift as moving TA away from being “keyboard warriors” toward genuine strategic advisors. Legacy metrics like time-to-fill, that incentivises speed over quality, may not survive the oncoming transition. As TA moves upstream, the measures of success need to adapt as well.
Takeaway: Encourage your team to ask not just “how do we fill this role?” but “why does this role exist, and what is the best way to resource this work?”. That shift in framing is a foundational step towards TA as a strategic function.
Wins from around the room: what smart configuration can do
Alongside these bigger strategic themes, roundtable participants shared operational wins from their existing PageUp environments – proof that significant impact does not always require new tools:
- Simplifying internal mobility: One organisationorganization streamlined casual work pickups across 51 regional schools, removing the need for part-time staff to complete a full application cycle every time.
- Ditching the paper trail: A manual email ticketing system was replaced with digital forms that automatically trigger approvals and create job cards on submission.
- Enforcing decentralized compliance: Platform constraints were used to maintain governance across a model where line managers independently handle all screening, shortlisting, and referencing.
Top 5 tips to take back to your team
- Define the problem before you pick the tool. AI works best when it is solving a specific, understood problem.
- Pick up your phone and start filming. High production values are no longer a prerequisite for employer branding. Authentic, unpolished video from real employees builds more candidate trust than any corporate content team can manufacture.
- Lean on your team to amp up your socials: Move away from generic job advertisements. Have hiring managers post simple, values-driven messages on their personal LinkedIn networks explaining why they love leading their teams.
- Build AI governance before you need it. The “easy button” mentality is one of the biggest risks in AI adoption. Partner with HR, risk management and IT to set clear usage policies and embed human oversight.
- Stop plugging holes and start getting strategic. Encourage systems thinking across your team now before the shift happens around you.
Final thoughts
As Jo Vohland quoted: “Uncertainty is not a flaw in the universe needing to be fixed. It is simply the natural condition of a mind that doesn’t know everything yet.” For Australian TA professionals, navigating the ongoing uncertainty with technological fluency and authentic human connection will be the defining capability of the next decade.
Want to explore how PageUp can help your team build a more connected, strategic recruitment function? Talk to us today.
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