Employment Hero (Recruitment Agent)

It includes a tracker and tells every candidate they face an AI

No outside bias audit, no uptime promise and no identity check

Employment Hero has traded since 2014. Ben Thompson and Dave Tong founded it. It is privately held, and venture investors back it. Its October 2023 announcement put its latest round at A$263 million, led by TCV. It says it has raised over $650 million in total, at a valuation just under $2 billion. No lawsuit naming Employment Hero appears in the US federal court record. No other company has announced buying it.

It suits Employment Hero users in four countries

The standalone price is public, and HR Engage includes it

Employment Hero publishes its prices, which is rare in this market. Bought alone, the entry price is A$199 a month excluding GST, the Australian sales tax, for 50 interviews a month. Pay monthly instead, and the same 50 interviews cost A$249. A plan for 100 interviews costs A$359, and one for 200 costs A$639. A plan for 300 interviews also exists. None of these plans needs an HR or payroll plan alongside it.

Employment Hero includes the Recruitment Agent in its HR Engage plan, at A$14. It is also in the Elite and Employment Unlimited plans. Both are quoted only after a call to its sales team. The entry HR Essentials plan, at A$10, leaves the Recruitment Agent out. Get the billing unit for these prices in writing. Every bundled plan needs at least 10 users. You pay for your agreed user count or your active users, whichever is higher.

What happens once your interviews run out depends on which version you bought. The standalone plan bills every extra interview automatically, with no hard cap. The bundled plan instead fixes a monthly allowance by tier. That runs from 15 interviews a month up to 70 on Unlimited. Going past it means requesting a bigger number from your account manager. Interviews run purely as a test do not count against either limit.

When you leave, Employment Hero’s data agreement requires it to destroy or return your candidates’ personal data. That happens once you request it in writing. While your account stays open, data stays until you delete it or set a rule. An admin can turn on automatic anonymising of a candidate’s profile. You choose after how many months it happens. That strips the name, contact details and documents from a record. You do not need to request it from Employment Hero.

What should you ask before you sign?

1. The interview summary calls one measure sentiment analysis. Does it actually read words, a voice or a face? Good answer: A plain description with no face or voice reading. Its own AI terms already ban that at work.
2. Can you cap the automatic billing on the standalone plan once our included interviews run out for the month? Good answer: A monthly cap, written into the contract.
3. For which of our roles could the Shortlisting Agent move a candidate to interview with nobody deciding first? Who can turn that off? Good answer: A named list of roles, and one admin who controls the setting.
4. Your terms already stop the interview from rejecting a candidate without a person reviewing it. Can that rule ever be loosened for us? Good answer: No. A person’s review stays in every contract you sign.
5. What happens for a candidate who cannot use a camera, or who asks for a person instead of the avatar? Good answer: A named route on our side, and someone who owns answering it.
6. Has anyone outside your own team tested the video interview itself for bias? Will you share that test against our roles? Good answer: A named outside auditor, a date, and a report we can read.
7. If we leave, how long do we have to pull out recordings, transcripts and scores, and in what form? Good answer: A written number of days, and a file format that opens elsewhere.
8. We hire outside Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Canada. When is the interview coming to those markets? Good answer: A named date, or a clear no with a suggested alternative for now.

Ribbon has a fixed overage rate, and buying nothing is also an option

Weigh four other interviewers against this one. They are Ribbon, HeyMilo, Humanly and Maki Mochi. None of them needs Employment Hero’s own HR platform first. Buying nothing, and keeping the screening call with your recruiters, is a fifth option.

Employment Hero is one of three products in this market with a public price. CodeSignal is another, though its price buys an assessment product with the interview inside it. Ribbon is the closer comparison. Its plans start at $499 a month for 100 interviews a month. Every interview past that costs $4.00 an interview. Ribbon’s overage rate is fixed and published. Employment Hero’s is not. Its bundled plan needs a negotiated increase instead.

HeyMilo and Humanly are both built to sit inside a tracking system already in place. Neither brings a tracker of its own. Both can also move a candidate on a score alone, once someone switches that on. Employment Hero’s contract will not let you reject a candidate that way. Pick Employment Hero if a person must decide every reject. Pick HeyMilo or Humanly if you want to stay inside a tracker you already run.

Maki Mochi lets recruiters set filters that reject a candidate automatically. Maki’s own product page says no candidate is ever auto-rejected, so the filters are a setting you choose. Maki built its compliance work for the EU AI Act specifically. Employment Hero’s own regions stop at Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Canada. If hiring runs inside the EU, Maki Mochi is the one built with that law in mind.

Buying nothing is a real option if your hiring volume does not justify a new tracker just for the interview. At twenty screens a month, most of the 50 interviews in Employment Hero’s smallest plan would go unused. Pivotel and Alchemy Saunas both got a real result from this product, at 120 and 80 employees. Both are far smaller than what most of this market expects to sell to.