Seek, the parent company of jobs platforms JobStreet and JobsDB, announced the appointment of Scott Stiles as special advisor of fair hiring in Asia that includes job markets in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
“We’ve been conducting an APAC-wide search to find an executive who can be fully dedicated to this issue and spearhead our efforts for some time. Bringing Scott into our team is only the beginning of our continuous, long-term effort to help end pockets of slavery in the region,” said Seek chief executive Peter Blithos.
Stiles will be responsible for identifying risks and vulnerabilities in Seek’s processes and platforms that could be exploited by unscrupulous actors and work with the relevant teams to address them.
“I have always believed that forced labor and unfair hiring are solvable world problems. The progress we have seen in the last nine years has shown this to be true, but these are deeply ingrained issues that require region-wide market intervention over a sustained period of time. Seek’s platforms make us uniquely well positioned to drive this change,” he said.
Stiles will champion initiatives that can help provide job seekers with clarity and awareness of their rights and warnings about known unfair hiring practices, particularly affecting migrant, manual and domestic workers.
He will ensure that candidate’s interactions with Seek’s employment platforms result in safe and fair employment outcomes.
The new advisor in Asia will also be accountable for leading broader initiatives with partners and governments across the region to promote fair-hiring practices with the long-term aspiration to end modern slavery in all its forms.
Before Seek, Stiles is the co-founder and former CEO of Hong Kong-based Fair Employment Foundation. At Fair, Scott built a group of social enterprises focused on using market-based interventions to eliminate the forced labor of migrant workers across Asia.
Fair’s first business, Fair Employment Agency, has placed more than 6,000 Filipino workers in Hong Kong.