Over the past four years, Hays has partnered with ATC on our annual Innovation Lab Competition, an exciting live pitch-off between several new talent technologies entering the market.
Each year, the Hays team awards the coveted Hays Choice Award to one standout finalist, recognising the most promising new technology with the potential to revolutionise talent acquisition in their on-site RPOs and MSPs.
Beyond the award, Hays works with their chosen talent technology throughout the year via a comprehensive support program. Leveraging their extensive LinkedIn network of 8 million followers, Hays introduces the technology to a wide audience, building brand awareness and industry credibility. Additionally, they organise a series of collaborative meetings with their RPO and MSP on-site leaders, providing the finalist with direct access to talent acquisition teams across diverse industries. This hands-on approach enables the finalist to refine their product through real-world feedback, accelerating their market entry and positioning Hays as a champion of cutting-edge talent tech solutions.
We asked a few questions to Richard Barnett, MSP Solutions Director – ANZ at Hays.
Of the four finalists pitching this year, why did you select Scotty AI?
We had a voting panel of 12 people across Hays. Each person evaluated the four written submissions, as well as publicly available information on the entrants’ websites, and scored them in order. We’re looking for something innovative that will be relevant to our large RPO, MSP, and agency clients.
This year, Scotty AI scored almost 40% more votes than the second choice, but we always reserve our final decision until after the live pitch-off at ATC, as we want to ensure they can articulate their product effectively.
We felt Scotty provided practical talent applications for AI that we could rapidly incorporate into some of our solutions. What we didn’t realise during the written application phase was that Hays was already evaluating Scotty to support our biggest RPO in Europe, which means testing and due diligence were already under way.
Why is innovation so central to Hays’ business and approach?
Hays is well known as a large recruitment agency, but we also run some of the most innovative RPO and MSP programs in ANZ. These solutions are all enabled by technology, and we use the Innovation Lab to help uncover and support the best new talent tech to make the services we provide more effective.
This initiative also saves our clients time in evaluating new products themselves; they appreciate that if it has won the Innovation Lab, it’s probably worth looking at.
To date, Hays has worked with:
2024 Hays Choice Award Winner: Scotty AI
Scotty allows you to manage up to half a million conversations simultaneously in 140 languages—without bias, prejudice, or unfair judgement. Through simple chats, via text or voice, Scotty sources, qualifies, and onboards ideal team members. It solves challenges such as limited capacity, high response times, lack of personalisation, tedious data entry, manual outreach, and inefficient scheduling.
2023 Hays Choice Award Winner: TALY
TALY provides the insights leaders need when they need them. Its personality insights fuel real conversations and smarter talent decisions. Built on validated psychometric tools that capture the five-factor personality model, emotional intelligence, and a range of other traits, TALY profiling gives users clear direction for recruitment, team engagement, and culture.
2022 Hays Choice Award Winner: equidi
equidi is a world-first platform providing real-time visibility into gender pay gaps and workforce representation across every part of a business on a single dashboard. It automates WGEA reporting and helps create a more equitable and inclusive future for all.
2021 Hays Choice Award Winner: GoFIGR
GoFIGR is a talent insights and opportunity marketplace platform that connects the skills and aspirations of your workforce to internal opportunities for upskilling and growth. It helps organisations mobilise, develop, and retain internal talent.
The year-long commitment that Hays provides to their selected technology encompasses marketing, promotion, lunches, meetings, demos, and more.
Natalie Flynn, Founder & CEO of equidi, says:
“The partnership with Hays has been fabulous. They brought their RPO clients together to hear about the product. They gave me lots of great feedback and had thought about how they could help us get the word out. They organised a breakout series and were generous enough to position it as an equidi breakfast, not just as a guest speaker at their event. We’ve also got some broader plans further down the track where we can work on some product enhancements together. Hays has been such a great company to work with.”
With thanks to our friends and partners, Hays.
Hays provides high-quality outsourced recruitment services, including RPO for permanents, MSP for contractors and statements of work, and contractor payroll. We manage multiple MSP, RPO, and contractor payroll programmes across ANZ on behalf of some of the region’s most recognised employers. These cover multiple industry sectors and role types, both blue- and white-collar, and include national, APAC, and global capabilities.
