Hire expectations: CEO Andrew Hornby discusses using AI in recruitment

Hiremii Limited (ASX:HMI) Managing Director and CEO Andrew Hornby discusses revolutionising recruitment through AI integration, touching on the company's revenue growth, international expansion, and opportunities in the resources and energy sectors.

Hamish McCathie: Welcome back to Table for Two, where we delve into the minds of industry leaders shaping the future. Today we're joined by Andrew Hornby, CEO of Hiremii (ASX:HMI), an ASX-listed company revolutionising recruitment with its AI-powered platform. Welcome, Andrew.

Andrew Hornby: Thanks very much. Hamish. It's good to be back in the studio again.

Hamish McCathie: Fantastic. Well, let's start with the basics. For our viewers that are unfamiliar with Hiremii, can you give a quick snapshot of the business?

Andrew Hornby: Yeah, sure. So look, Hiremii are on a mission to, I guess, revolutionise the way that organisations recruit.

We're currently deploying AI technology into our recruitment business, which is our subsidiary, Inverse Group. Inverse Group is a white-collar recruitment company that mainly works in energy, resources and technology.

So, we've been working for some time in developing our own in-house AI products. The core focus at the moment is getting those integrated into a platform, getting that platform to be used by the Inverse Group recruiters, and, by default, our Inverse Group clients as well — which, again, mostly sit in energy and resources.

Hamish McCathie: Okay. Well, the recruitment landscape is constantly evolving, and even more so with the enhancements of AI. How do you see the market environment shaping up? And what opportunities are you really excited about?

Andrew Hornby: Traditionally, as a recruitment company, you would have to generally double the size of your workforce to double the size of the business. So, it's kind of an inefficient growth, and that's because it's sort of high volume, lower-margin work. I think, with the adoption of AI and the creation of automation, you can grow much more efficiently. So, if we double our business, for example, I think the actual cost to achieve that can probably be reduced by 75, 80 per cent. And I think that's something where I think investors in Hiremii are looking at, how do we improve our margins, how do we achieve that over time? We're obviously focused on growth, and we don't want to do that sort of just organically. We'd like to look at inorganic growth there as well, so basically creating big opportunities through automation and cost reductions and things like that.

Hamish McCathie: So just on that, what are the key features and benefits of the Hiremii platform, and what makes it so different from competitors in the market? And what are those competitors in the market?

Andrew Hornby: Yeah, look, I think, if you look at, say, the two biggest competitors out there to what we are doing, it's probably LinkedIn and Seek, to be honest with you, and they both sort of complement our business, but they're certainly monopolising the spend for organisations, no matter who you are, sort of large and small.

The products that we're building and the platform that we're building are being built by experienced recruiters, so I think that's something that's a bit different. What we have the opportunity to in front of us is we have a technology team that are working with a recruitment team.

The great thing about having Inverse in is it really sort of matches an external recruitment team in a let's say, a Woodside (ASX:WDS), or a BHP (ASX:BHP), or someone like that. So, you're able to deploy the technology into the team. We can do that without making mistakes in the market. We can sort of inform the tech, and we can pivot and change that as we need to, based on the experience that our recruiters are having. So, it's a bit different.

Also, what we do, and we're focused on energy and resources because we know and we understand that market. So, the technology is being trained, the AI is being trained, on the nuances of what goes on in the energy and resources sector, whether that's project development, for example, or projects have been built and you're in production of iron ore, you're in production of LNG. So, it's really smart AI, designed predominantly for energy and resources. Our technology will understand it, and our recruitment people also understand it. So, you've got the best of both worlds. You've got the efficiency and automation piece, and then you've got highly skilled recruiters that complement that as well.

Hamish McCathie: And Hiremii delivered some impressive revenue growth in full year '24, and narrowed the losses. Can you elaborate on the business outlook and what investors can look forward to?

Andrew Hornby: Yeah, look, absolutely. It was good to see the same delivering increased top line again. Look, market conditions have been pretty good recently. Being able to reduce those costs is the hard work that the team have put in.

I want to say market conditions have been good. I think long-term fundamentals, as we sort of touched on earlier, still remain strong in Australia. You know, we have an abundance of commodities that exist. I think our business is exposed to a little bit of the ups and downs. You might get a softening in commodities, like your iron ore sector, but maybe the gas sector picks up. We've got, obviously, exposure to new energies, which is really exciting as well. So, I think, from a growth perspective, look, we are really excited, and we're focused on that going forward.

Hamish McCathie: And a good segue into the enhancement of existing businesses. You recently raised $600,000 at a premium to further develop your AI platform and expand recruitment services. Can you elaborate on the priorities for these investments?

Andrew Hornby: Yeah, look, we were super happy to get a really quality raise away with Sequoia (ASX:SEQ). Really pleased that we got a premium as well. So, we've always been, I've always been about supporting those investors. We've got two, three, four that have been with us for a long time. As I said, an exciting time for us.

In terms of how we're deploying the capital, the focus at the moment is, we've built the AI products, and we've talked to the market, and it's been a longer dev cycle than maybe we would have liked, and maybe some of our investors are getting enthusiastic about when are we going to start deploying this. So, certainly, a priority for the AI side of our business is to get that platform completed, get that deployed into Inverse, and get that deployed into, initially, Inverse customers. Then we can start to also go to the wider market. As soon as you start deploying tech, it always costs a little bit more money as you start to support customers there as well.

Now, when we look at the other side of our business, AI works really well with scale, so we're constantly trying to scale the recruitment business that we have. So, we've just launched our first overseas hire. So, we brought in a head of energy transition that currently sits in the UK, been on board for about two weeks. Fantastic asset to our business, has already picked up a fantastic contract, actually with an Australian business, who are building a battery recycling plant.

So, as we're all familiar with lithium as an upstream here, we do a lot of that mining in WA, one of the big industry challenges now is, how do we recycle? How do we make sure that it isn't just becoming landfill? So, really interesting Australian business. They're currently building a battery recycling plant in my part of the world, actually, in the UK, in the Midlands. So, awesome start to that business unit.

I'm really excited to be working in that part of Europe, because if you look at supply chains, particularly in energy transition, new energies, you can see Europe being sort of a really key technology driver, through Asia and through into Australia as well. So, that should help our business, who's already exposed to some of the larger LNG, oil and gas, traditional energy sector clients, so start to pick up those new energy sector clients as well, so exciting times.

Hamish McCathie: And we discussed the raise through Sequoia, and you obviously got some new investors there, so what is your message to both the current investors and the new investors, the potential investors, about the long-term vision and proposition for Hiremii?

Andrew Hornby: Near term for both existing and new investors is really around seeing the deployment of our AI and seeing how impactful that is. Now, hopefully, we can see that both being impactful for the Inverse subsidiary, but being impactful in our clients as well. And I think that's where the market would love to see us drop a name or two. Okay, we've got a trial with Chevron, we've got a trial with Woodside. We're demonstrating the value that we can bring to those types of organisations.

As a new investor coming on board and having a look at what we do, we're sat on the ASX, we've got a six, seven million market cap, we've done a raise at a premium. When you look around at peers in that space, have they done what they said they were going to do? I don't know, but we certainly have. We've demonstrated growth top line, we've demonstrated increased gross margins, we've demonstrated a reduction in cost, and we've got a pretty high-value recruitment business. So, when you look at what you're getting for six or seven million, and I think the ability for us to get into your blue sky, 50, 100 mils, I think we're well on the journey to achieve that, so exciting times.

Hamish McCathie: Well, that's very exciting times, and congratulations on hitting those milestones, because, as you say, a lot of companies say they're going to go do things and actually don't fulfil those promises, and I think it's all really looking very bright for the future for Hiremii, and I just want to say thank you very much for coming on to Table for Two.

Andrew Hornby: Yeah, thank you very much, Hamish. Really appreciate it.

Hamish McCathie: Thanks, Andrew. Cheers.

Andrew Hornby: Cheers.