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Build your AI literacy: Key takeaways from our webinar
Australian recruitment agencies ranked AI adoption as their number one business priority this year. Yet Australia ranks last globally in their interest to learn AI. That gap is costing agencies in productivity.
In a recent webinar, Aaron McIntosh, Regional Vice President at Bullhorn APAC, and Lee Whitaker, Co-founder of Hyper Automate Consulting Services, set out to close the gap by walking recruiters through practical prompting techniques they could apply everyday, how to build master prompts that deliver consistent output, and how to keep growing AI skills as the tools keep evolving.
Three things to take away:
- AI literacy starts with a problem statement, not a chat window. Define what you’re trying to solve.
- You don’t need to be a prompt engineer. Start a chat with “What can you do for me?” and build from there.
- Sharing AI knowledge across your team is the highest-leverage move available right now. Stanford research puts the average productivity gain at 14% and it’s actually higher at 35% for junior staff.
The AI literacy gap hiding in plain sight
Australia’s relationship with AI is a sea of contradictions. We rank 7th globally for Claude usage and 3rd across all generative AI tools on a per capita basis. But when the Reserve Bank of Australia surveyed the market, it found that while two-thirds of Australian businesses had adopted AI, 40% were using it only for basic admin: summarising emails, writing simple documents, looking up recipes.
Only 24% of Australians have done any formal AI training. We rank last globally in interest to upskill.
For recruitment agencies, that disconnect has a direct cost. Bullhorn’s GRID research found that agencies’ top two priorities for the year are both AI-related. These included using AI and automation to grow revenue, and infusing AI into daily workflows. But the barriers are clear: around a third of agencies cite data quality as the limiting factor, 29% say they don’t have a clear implementation plan, and just over a quarter lack an AI strategy altogether.
AI literacy isn’t about chatting, it’s about problem-solving
Lee Whitaker opened by explaining what AI literacy actually means.
“AI literate isn’t about chatting. It’s really about thinking about it as a problem statement. What is the problem I’m trying to solve? Can AI help me solve it?”
Lee Whitaker, Co-founder, Hyper Automate Consulting Services
The shift matters. Most Australian businesses are using AI reactively: type a question, read the answer. AI literacy means going in with a defined problem, a clear picture of what a good outcome looks like, and the ability to guide the tool toward it.
Aaron said you don’t need to be a technical expert to get started. “You don’t have to be an expert on prompting. You don’t have to be this prompt engineer. You can just ask the system what you can do.”
That’s the first prompt Aaron demonstrated in the session: typing ‘What can you do for me?’ into Bullhorn Amplify. The system returns a clear list of capabilities including searching ATS data, benchmarking team performance, drafting comms, logging activity and you build from there.
From blank desk to Friday call list in minutes
The centrepiece of the session was a live demo showing what practical prompting looks like inside Bullhorn Amplify, and how it compares to a generic AI tool.
The scenario: a junior recruiter has just taken over a new desk focused on technology, digital, and data roles across Sydney and Melbourne. They need to build a BD pipeline from scratch.
Inside Amplify, Aaron ran a single prompt asking for 10 companies not currently in his database that he could pitch to. Amplify pulls from four data layers at once: ATS records, team analytics, live job feeds from company career pages, and a broader web search. Within minutes, it returned 10 targeted companies with context on why each was worth approaching, and suggested next actions for each.
From there, the prompts kept building. Aaron asked Amplify to surface the top open roles at those companies, match two to three candidates from the existing database to each role, and then generate a task list and call script ready to action by Friday. “I’ve got a lot of work to do on Friday now, from just a few quick, simple prompts,” Aaron said.
Lee ran the same starting prompt in Claude to show the contrast. The output was useful: a similar company list, some market context, even a contact name and call script for one target. But without access to the agency’s database, it couldn’t identify which companies were already in your system, which candidates to pitch, or what the logical next step was.
The comparison made the context advantage clear. As a recruiter, generic AI gives you a starting point, Bullhorn Amplify gives you a full workflow. As Lee said, “combining these things together to solve the problem is creating one of these master, really powerful prompts to give an incredible output for a new recruiter on your desk.”
The fastest way to lift your whole team
The session’s most common attendee question was ‘how do you spread AI capability across a whole team?’
Lee cited Stanford University research that answers it clearly. Sharing AI knowledge across a business lifts average team productivity by 14%. For the least experienced staff, junior recruiters or people new to AI, that lift rises to 35%.
Lee said, “There’s no place you cannot do this. Teams, Slack, Google channels, your town hall, your daily stand-ups. Sharing AI knowledge at this point is the best and fastest way you can grow everybody.”
Don’t wait for a formal training programme. Start a channel where people share prompts that work. Build a knowledge hub or create a working group. AI is changing fast enough that informal, continuous sharing beats a once-a-year workshop.
Aaron summed it up simply. “A rising tide rises all ships. If everyone shares this information, it creates a new level each time.”
AI literacy builds on itself. The prompts that feel unfamiliar today become second nature within weeks. The best time to start is now.
Want to see the full session in action? Watch the recording here.
