Hiring and the Human Touch
Debbie Morrison • July 27, 2021

Hiring and the Human Touch

Are software-driven candidate assessment tools a useful addition to the Executive recruiting process?

Candidate assessment tools have been used for many years by recruiting firms and hiring companies alike to – in theory – introduce some scientific validation to the otherwise subjective process of determining whether someone would be a good fit for the job and the company. Their promise is an enticing one, to be sure. What hiring manager wouldn’t want a crystal ball, of sorts, to take away the guesswork, and tell them whether a prospective hire will ‘gel’ with the rest of the team, whether they have a leadership style that will fit well into the organisation, and whether they’re likely to be a long-term high-performer?


So, are they worth it? My answer is: ‘maybe, it depends’. I’ll explain what I mean below.


As with any product or service, there are good assessment tools and bad, and some are better for some situations than others. I will say that the science behind these assessments has greatly evolved over the years, and the tools available now are far more robust than those available even a decade ago. If you do plan to incorporate them into your hiring process, there are a lot to choose from, and it makes sense to shop around and ensure that the product you select is the best for your specific circumstances.


The other question – and an equally important one, in my experience – is how a company puts these products to use.


No assessment tool can, or should, ever replace human decision making in the hiring process. No software algorithm can reliably predict an uncertain future. Aren’t people liable to make mistakes, though? Sure, of course we are. But so is technology. A software program is no more or less fallible than people using solid interview techniques, plus good judgement and reasoning skills. Putting those elements to work together, though, can be highly effective.


People are most likely to make errors resulting from subjectivity. Simply put, we tend to want to hire people that we like. If someone is friendly and engaging, and builds rapport quickly, it can lead us to exaggerate points in favour of their candidacy, and overlook things we shouldn’t. A good evaluation process mitigates this by using well-designed questioning techniques, applied consistently, to get as close as possible to comparing ‘apples to apples’ when shortlisting and selecting final candidates.


This is where assessment tools have their greatest value. When employed in the later stages of the hiring process, these programs can unearth useful, objective, and data-driven insights that may not have surfaced in the interviews. Once again, I stress that these insights shouldn’t be interpreted for the purpose of ruling out candidates. Instead, they should point towards additional probing questions that can be asked in final interviews: questions that are unique to each candidate, and whose answers can help hiring decision-makers make better – and still human – decisions.


(As a side note, I’ll acknowledge that in an increasingly litigious labour law environment, it can be helpful in some cases to have the objectivity that these assessments provide, in order to defend hiring decisions when necessary. I still maintain that the assessments should complement, rather than replace, the decision-making of the people involved.)


Finally, really intelligent organisations use these assessments long after the day an employee first starts working with them. The insights and information the best of these programs provide can help you align your new hire with the right team, the appropriate supports, and the kind of leadership that will result in the highest level of performance and job satisfaction possible.


Algorithms will never take the human touch out of human resources. Whether you already use a tool to assess candidates, or are thinking about starting, we’re happy to work with you to ensure that a well-structured hiring process complements – and makes the most of – the insights and information you receive.


Want to know more? Get in touch and let’s talk.

The Quiet Collapse of Australian Vegetable Farming

By John Elliott • June 26, 2025
You don’t hear about it on the nightly news. There’s no breaking story. No panic. No protests. Just rows of vegetables being pulled out of the ground with no plan to replant. Just farmers who no longer believe there’s a future for them here. Just quiet decisions — to sell, to walk away, to stop. And if you ask around the industry, they’ll tell you the same thing: It’s not just one bad season. It’s a slow death by a thousand margins. 1 in 3 growers are preparing to leaveIn September 2024, AUSVEG released a national sentiment report with a statistic that should have set off alarms in every capital city: 34% of Australian vegetable growers were considering exiting the industry in the next 12 months. Another one-third said they’d leave if offered a fair price for their farm. Source: AUSVEG Industry Sentiment Report 2024 (PDF) These aren’t abstract hypotheticals. These are real decisions, already in motion. For many, it’s not about profitability anymore, it’s about survival. This isn’t burnout. It’s entrapment. Behind the numbers are people whose entire identity is tied to a profession that no longer feeds them. Many are asset-rich but cash-poor. They own the land. But the land owns them back. Selling means walking away from decades of history. Staying means bleeding capital, month by month, in a system where working harder delivers less. Every year, input costs rise, fuel, fertiliser, compliance. But the farmgate price doesn’t move. Or worse, it drops. Retail World Magazine reports that even though national vegetable production increased 3% in 2023–24, the total farmgate value fell by $140 million. Growers produced more and earned less. That’s not a market. That’s a trap. What no one wants to say aloud The truth is this: many growers are only staying because they can’t leave. If you’re deep in debt, if your farm is tied to multi-generational ownership, if you’ve invested everything in equipment, infrastructure, or land access, walking away isn’t easy. It’s a last resort. So instead, you stay. You cut your hours. Delay maintenance. Avoid upgrades. Cancel the next round of planting. You wait for something to shift, interest rates, weather, prices and you pretend that waiting is strategy. According to the latest fruitnet.com survey, over 50% of vegetable growers say they’re financially worse off than a year ago. And nearly 40% expect conditions to deteriorate further. This isn’t about optimism or resilience. It’s about dignity and the quiet erosion of it. Supermarkets won’t save them, and they never planned to In the current model, supermarket pricing doesn’t reflect real-world farm economics. Retailers demand year-round consistency, aesthetic perfection, and lower prices. They don’t absorb rising input costs, they externalise them. They offer promotions funded not by their marketing budgets, but by the growers’ margins. Farmers take the risk. Retailers take the profit. And because the power imbalance is so deeply entrenched, there’s no real negotiation, just quiet coercion dressed up as "category planning." Let’s talk about what’s actually broken This isn’t just a market failure. It’s a policy failure. Australia’s horticulture system has been built on: Decades of deregulated wholesale markets Lack of collective bargaining power for growers Retailer consolidation that has created a virtual duopoly Export-focused incentives that bypass smaller domestic producers There’s no meaningful floor price for key produce lines. No national enforcement of fair dealing. No public database that links supermarket shelf price to farmgate return. Which means growers, like James, can be driven into loss-making supply contracts without ever seeing the true economics of their product downstream. But the real silence? It’s from consumers. Here’s what no one wants to admit: We say we care about “buying local.” We say we value the farmer’s role. We share those viral posts about strawberries going unsold or milk prices being unfair. And then we complain about a $4 lettuce. We opt for the cheapest bag of carrots. We walk past the "imperfect" produce bin. We frown at the cost of organic and click “Add to Cart” on whatever’s half price. We’re not just bystanders. We’re part of the equation. What happens when the growers go? At first, very little. Supermarkets will find substitutes. Importers will fill gaps. Large agribusinesses will expand into spaces vacated by smaller players. Prices will stay low, until they don’t. But over time, we’ll notice: Produce that travels further and lasts less. Fewer independent growers at farmer’s markets. Entire regions losing their growing identity. National food security becoming a campaign promise instead of a reality. And when the climate throws something serious at us, drought, flood, global supply shock, we’ll realise how little resilience we’ve preserved. So what do we do? We start by telling the truth. Australia is not food secure. Not if 1 in 3 growers are planning to exit. The market isn’t working. Not when prices rise at the shelf and fall at the farmgate. The solution isn’t scale. It’s fairness, visibility, and rebalancing power. That means: Mandating cost-reflective contracts between retailers and suppliers Enabling collective bargaining rights for growers Building transparent data systems linking production costs to consumer prices Introducing transition finance for smaller producers navigating reform and climate pressure And holding supermarkets publicly accountable for margin extraction But more than anything, it means recognising what we’re losing, before it's gone. Final word If you ate a vegetable today, it likely came from someone who’s considered giving up in the past year. Not because they don’t care. But because caring doesn’t pay. This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about sovereignty, over what we eat, how we grow it, and who gets to stay in the system.  Because the next time you see rows of green stretching to the horizon, you might want to ask: How many of these fields are already planning their last harvest?

Recession Is Coming for FMCG and Most Leaders Are Pretending It’s Not

By John Elliott • June 20, 2025
If you're leading an FMCG or food manufacturing business right now, you're probably still talking about growth. Your board might be chasing headcount approvals. Your marketing team’s pitching a new brand campaign. Your category team’s assuming spend will bounce. But your customer? They’ve already moved on. Quietly. Like they always do. The illusion of resilience FMCG has always felt protected, “essential” by nature. People still eat, wash, shop. It’s easy to assume downturns pass around us, not through us. But this isn’t 2020. Recessions in 2025 won’t look like lockdowns. They’ll look like volume drops that no promo can fix. Shrinking margins on products that no longer carry their premium. Quiet shelf deletions you weren’t warned about. The data’s already there. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, consumer spending is slowing in real terms , even as inflation eases. The Reserve Bank confirmed in May: household consumption remains subdued amid weak real income growth . And over 80% of Australians have cut back on discretionary food spending , according to Finder. They’re still shopping, just not like they used to. A managing director at a national food manufacturer told me recently: “We won a new product listing in April. By July, it was marked for deletion. The velocity wasn’t there, but neither was the shopper. We’d forecasted like 2022 never ended. Rookie mistake.” That one stuck with me. Because I’ve heard it before, just in different words.