For recruitment & staffing firms
If your software ranks candidates, the new rules apply to you
From 10 December 2026, Australian privacy rules require you to disclose where software makes automated decisions about people. Candidate screening and ranking is squarely caught, and most agencies haven't checked which of their tools are in scope.
Check your exposure (3 min)What's likely in scope for you
- Applicant tracking systems that auto-rank or shortlist candidates
- CV / resume parsing and scoring tools
- Automated candidate-matching and sourcing
- Any tool that filters people in or out without a human deciding
General guidance, not legal advice. The exact scope depends on how each tool is used; the first step is mapping which of yours are caught.
Beyond compliance: the upside
- Handled well, this is also the moment to make your screening faster and fairer, not just compliant.
- AI that drafts candidate and client comms (with a human signing off) recovers real consultant time.
We're an AI advisory and implementation partner, not a law firm. We help you make these systems both defensible and genuinely better, so you handle the deadline once and come out ahead, not just covered.
Common questions
We use an off-the-shelf ATS. Are we still responsible?
Yes. The obligation sits with the agency that deploys the system, not the software vendor. You can't offload it by buying someone else's tool.
Does a human reviewing the shortlist take us out of scope?
Not necessarily. The rules can apply to assisted decisions too, where the software substantially shapes the outcome. It's worth checking properly.
See where your firm stands
Three minutes, plain questions, a map of what's in scope for recruitment & staffing and what to do before December.
Check your exposure