SEEK’s Smart Use Of AI Improves Kiwis Job Prospects

One year since launching, SEEK, New Zealand’s most visited employment site, reviews the success of its Smarter Search function, designed to help job seekers expand their job prospects by using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to predict their top matches.

Receiving more than a quarter of a million search sessions by Kiwis each day, Smarter Search has already delivered a double digit increase in applications submitted each month since being introduced in February 2019.

SEEK’s Smarter Search enhances the candidate and hirer experience by navigating the job search and talent sourcing process at SEEK.co.nz.

Smarter Search is a purpose-built search engine which utilises AI to learn from the way candidates’ search and interact with hirers’ job ads on SEEK. The outcome helps to deliver more relevant search results from each time a candidate searches the platform.

Janet Faulding, General Manager, SEEK New Zealand, says, “The introduction of our Smarter Search capability, has helped candidates discover and apply to all the relevant opportunities in less time, aligning to their preferences and behaviour. These intuitive capabilities have enabled hirers to focus on writing job ads that clearly describe the opportunity in a way candidates will understand, leading to improved candidate response rates and reduction in time to hire.”

“In the last 12 months, SEEK placed more New Zealanders in jobs than any other source and Smarter Search has significantly increased the amount of job applications submitted per session, meaning we’ve helped even more Kiwis find meaningful work this year,” adds Ms Faulding.

The project was led by a team of highly skilled search experts from SEEK’s AI Platform Services team. This team is headed up by Kiwi, Grant Wright, SEEK ANZ’s Director of AI and Platform Services. Grant led the team specialist data scientists, software engineers and product managers across four global locations.

“Developing a bespoke search engine from the ground up, instead of relying on ‘off the shelf’ technology was a big challenge and required significant investment and demand on employee resources required to be successful. At SEEK, we are committed to empowering candidates in their job search, which means creating and developing the technology features and products we know will achieve this objective.

“I’m extremely proud of what the team has achieved with this project, and it’s rewarding to know it is helping Kiwis find the best employment opportunities available for them,” adds Mr Wright.

Smarter Search demonstrates SEEK’s prioritisation of technology innovation, with SEEK investing an incremental cumulative sum of $190m in ANZ product and technology CAPEX over the past 7 years.

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