ASX-listed Seek to hire exec to help it eliminate unfair hiring practices in SEA

Australia-based online employment marketplace Seek has established plans to stamp out unfair hiring practices in Southeast Asia, which starts with the hiring of a “chief abolitionist and head of fair hiring practices.”

The Seek team/ Photo credit: Seek

The successful applicant will be in charge of performing regular audits of the company’s employment practices across full-time jobs, part-time jobs, contractors, and the end-to-end supply chain.

Seek aims to appoint an executive with a minimum of 10 years of work experience in Asia or other developing markets. The ideal candidate is also expected to have experience working in areas like worker rights, anti-slavery, or labor rights, with a strategy consulting or VC background.

More than just looking for a chief abolitionist, Seek is aiming to form initiatives that would help it establish fair hiring practices for migrant and manual workers and foreign domestic staff and end pockets of slavery in the region.

The chief abolitionist will report to Seek’s chief marketing officer and will have regular interactions with a group that includes Seek group CEO Andrew Bassat, CEO of Asia Peter Bithos, and chief marketing officer of Asia Ramesh Rajandran.

“After more than a decade of living in Southeast Asia, I’ve seen firsthand truly awful things that can happen to people across the region when trying to find a job,” said Bithos.

The operations of Australian Securities Exchange-listed Seek spans markets including Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. The company operates through two platforms, JobStreet and JobsDB, engaging over 400 million visits a year.