Over the last few years, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) have seen the rise of several HR tech startups that help organisations improve the way they attract, engage, and retain talent. With the global human resource technology market projected to grow from $24.04 billion in 2021 to $35.68 billion in 2028, ANZ has proven itself to be one of the most emerging markets across the Asia Pacific. 

Cherie Curtis, President at Criteria, echoes this and says, “We predict that Australia will continue to be an attractive market for new entrants in the immediate future.” 

The Australia-based emotional intelligence and game-based assessments company has acquired Revelian in February 2020. Cherie is the President of the company who is responsible for the strategic and operational ‘go-to-market’ efforts Cherie drives marketing, sales, customer success, customer support and consulting IO psychology departments to deliver high-impact and data-driven people solutions to a broad variety of customers globally. 

Cherie has also been instrumental in facilitating Criteria’s acquisition of Revelian in 2020 and now serves as a member of the combined Criteria Executive Leadership Team.

Here are the edited excerpts of the interview with Cherie:

How do you see the HR tech market grow in Australia in 2022?  

While the Omicron impact at the start of this year has presented challenges for business, indications are that the economy will continue to bounce back and that hiring demand will continue throughout the year – fueled either by organisational growth or by employees making jobs and career changes. 

In the current competitive market for candidates, internal talent mobility is getting an increased focus alongside improving the efficiency and effectiveness of talent acquisition strategies.  

Demand for HR tech providers who can innovate and refine their offerings to reflect changing market needs, and do that in a way that doesn’t compromise the quality of outcomes, ethics, or the candidate experience, will continue to be strong.

How do you plan to leverage the new market opportunities that lie ahead in 2022? 

We’ll be continuing our strategy of bolstering our product functionality and adding innovative products in 2022 and beyond.  We launched our integrated video interviewing product in late 2021 and are already seeing solid demand from employers for a solution that includes both psychometric and video pre-hire assessments.

We’ll also be launching our first post-hire assessment, Talent Insights, into the APAC market in the first quarter of this year.

How has the rebranding of the brand playing out for you? What are the major lessons you have learned?

Coming together globally under one brand is a natural evolution for our business. We’ve been operating as a global enterprise since Criteria acquired Revelian in February 2020, and we’ve seen some significant advantages in terms of our speed to market for new products, operational efficiency, and the ability to understand and respond to what customers need on a global scale.

The Criteria brand carries with it a lot of strong sentiment in the market, complimenting and extending what we already had with the Revelian and Alcami Interactive brands. Unifying the brand globally and simplifying what we stand for means we’re now in a great position to amplify our go-to-market efforts even further.

As companies in Australia continue to battle the talent crisis, how can tech help them build a stronger talent pipeline?

Two really important things underpin a strong talent pipeline in this environment: potential and diversity. The employers who are getting this right, and who are prepared to be flexible on what traditionally constitutes the profile of a ‘good candidate’, are the ones in the best position for talent success.

HR tech, and pre-hire assessments, in particular, have a huge role to play here as they are the fastest and most proven method of building a holistic knowledge bank about a candidate. 

We’ve found that using assessments helps employers break away from their mental image of what the ‘ideal’ candidate should look like by highlighting qualities that aren’t readily apparent from a resume or interview, and can help to surface outstanding candidates that may have been overlooked based on a resume alone.

This also means talent decisions have less risk of unconscious bias and enables employers to build a talent pipeline that is more diverse, and opens the door to a wider, richer talent pool.