The Founders showcases the inspiring journeys of visionary entrepreneurs who turned ideas into thriving businesses. Dive into captivating stories and insightful interviews with founders and CEOs, as they share their challenges, triumphs, and industry insights in this ongoing series.
Looking for a job? WorkPro wants to help.
The Melbourne-based online platform, launched in 2008, streamlines candidate screening, onboarding, and compliance management. Today, it works alongside the Australian and New Zealand governments, and welcomes more than 22,000 users each month.
Recruitment software is worth US$3.02 billion worldwide, according to September estimates by Coherent Market Insights. The market is also expected to expand significantly in the coming years, with a 9.2% compound annual growth rate projected through 2031.
“We believe we're the only platform that brings all of the elements of employment into one place for a candidate,” CEO and founder Tania Evans tells Azzet. “Our differentiator is that we're looking at it from the candidate's side and educating them on the type of role that they want, helping them understand what skills that they have — so that when a customer or an organisation is looking for them, we can quickly match those two together.”
Origins of a Pro
In 2008, the year WorkPro launched, the Australian government had agreed to harmonise work health and safety laws across states and territories. This required all employers to offer training on the subject.
“Most employers don't start running a business to be work health and safety experts. It's a really niche market. And yet every employer was expected to deliver this information to their workforce,” Evans says. “My thinking was, why don't we build a platform?”
Evans’ background as a marketing manager for recruitment company Spherion also helped fuel her ideas for WorkPro. “My office was outside reception, and I saw lots of people walk in ready for their interview with our recruitment consultant. And they were filling out information on a clipboard and handing that back to the receptionist, who would have to then compile it, type it, and file it in a filing cabinet.”
“In some industries, there is an awful lot of steps to have to go through. There's an awful lot of paperwork that needs to be completed. There's lots of background checks. All of these processes all take an enormous amount of time,” says Evans. “It can really impact a business' operations and productivity.”
The online revolution
The internet has come a long way since WorkPro’s founding. In the platform’s early days, WorkPro quickly discovered the need to build trust among job seekers who were concerned about uploading their documents online.
“People had concerns about this internet thing, and they felt that they were more secure and safe by having paper,” says Evans. “It was one of the challenges we faced with candidates.”
“Companies have made it really, really difficult to remove information from their databases,” she says. “Whereas we've gone the other way, made it extremely transparent, and given [users] that individual control. That's definitely helped us attract, engage, and build trust.”
Now, as the artificial intelligence boom echoes through the technology sector, WorkPro has embraced AI with its Digital Identity Solution tool. Around 35% of small and medium-sized Australian businesses had adopted AI as of September, according to the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, with the number increasing across the quarter.
Digital Identity Solution uses a AI large language model to extract information from jobseekers' documents, which it then verifies against government databases. It also builds a WorkPro profile for a candidate, complete with their experience and qualifications, and indicates skills that correspond to their desired career.
Thanks to AI, “all of their information on their resume has now been populated automatically to build a profile of that individual that they can then use to find work in the future,” Evans says.
The future of work (and WorkPro)
WorkPro’s main priority for the rest of the year will be expanding its Digital Identity Solution, according to Evans. These new capabilities will connect job seekers to future career paths.
“That includes allowing someone to come into WorkPro and tell us about their dream job,” she says. “What would you like to do tomorrow? What does your future look like? And through predictive analysis, being able to provide them with really clear pathways of how they might be able to get into that job.”
This analysis will include recommended qualifications and accreditations required for a user’s career plans, as well as institutions that provide those certifications.
Australia is seeing a softer labour market, according to the Federal Government’s June 2024 update. Employment increased by around 444,400 people across 2024, with the country’s employment-to-population ratio hitting a record 64.5% in December.
“We need to look at, more broadly, skills and tasks,” says Evans, as organisations are preparing for flexibility across job roles in the years ahead. “They're looking at keeping their current workers, but maybe looking at how they can quickly pull teams of people together to complete projects, rather than that's your job and you sit at a desk and just do that job.”
