Last week, Peopleconnexion attended the Multicultural Community Centre’s Career Connect event in Brisbane and didn’t fall short of #connecting!
The Career Fair was a great opportunity to network with the community and many other small-to-medium businesses who too, are invested in creating opportunities for the diverse talent in Australia.
We spoke to a wide variety of job seekers, from quantum physics students to emerging civil engineers. Besides being a great chance for these multicultural job seekers to get exposure to potential employers, the career fair offered them the opportunity to establish relationships and build their career confidence through a range of workshops.
Of course we didn’t miss the opportunity to share our own candidate resources with the attendees, including our personalised Peopleconnexion guide to TRIUMPHING an interview and guide to developing an ‘all star’ LinkedIn.
Besides the chance to network and speak with other like-minded businesses, the event addressed a key element sitting in the Australian job market – the continued obstacles for skilled migrants and non-local job seekers to entering the Australian market in their career of choice. Many of the emerging engineers we spoke to were in jobs in the hospitality industry while they battle to obtain the local experience needed. This isn’t the first time we have come across this.
When speaking with our Divisional Manager for Engineering and Construction Recruitment, Richard Christer, he estimated that up to 90% of the senior vacancies he and the team recruit for, expect an element of training or mentorship, intended to give junior professionals the guidance and learnt knowledge these industries require.
“Despite this, there is evidently still a gap too far to close between internationally gained experience and the required local experience”, he said.
“The trend we are seeing is hesitancy. Hesitancy from companies to give someone with skills gained abroad, a chance to be trained in local specifications and operational systems and processes. With commercial and time restraints, it is understandable that companies would rather opt for someone who can ‘hit the ground running’, however with the demand of skilled resources steadily rising, companies that manage to implement a programme that will close this gap will be on the right track”.
Peak body for the industry, Engineers Australia, has begun efforts to decreasing this gap and skills shortage in the market, with their announcement earlier this year for free fast-tracked skills assessments. This initiative will see migrants such as the talent we spoke to at the Career Fair, the opportunity to improve their chances of filling the sought-after vacancies needed to compete projects. This is also the opportunity for visa holders in Brisbane to leverage their opportunity at landing their dream job.
A recent Infrastructure Australia report stated by 2023, the infrastructure workforce will be 48% short of demand for projects, a deficit of up to 105,000 workers.
With the Pipeline of Infrastructure projects both underway and upcoming, this funding to support migration and offshore talent, and increase in skilled streams will go a way to solve for vulnerabilities in our supply chains. But only if the wider industry and market remove the hesitancy and start hiring on aptitude and drive, and using training and mentoring programs to upskill – opposed to the hit the ground running approach.
Consisting of an experienced team of migrants ourselves, we know the benefits of offshore recruitment. We offer integrated recruitment and immigration solutions to connect our Australian and Pacific clients with skilled overseas talent. Visit our Migration Recruitment page for further information.