Australia’s official ‘jobs board’ website is ‘unworkable’ and fails those seeking employment, a frustrated recruiter who has abandoned the service says.
Graham Wynn, who is the founder of Superior People Recruitment, told Daily Mail Australia that the Federal Government’s Workforce Australia jobs portal, which the unemployed use to apply for advertised vacancies, was an example of ‘bureaucracy gone mad’.
The glaring flaw with the website is that it does not provide recruiters with contact details for job seekers, rendering it almost pointless.
Mr Wynn claims the site, which replaced the JobActive website on July 1 last year, is so bad ‘many recruiters are just not using this service’ and his own firm no longer posts vacancies on it.
‘They have made it much more difficult for people to find work and made it much more difficult for us to find candidates because of how it functions,’ he said.
Superior People Recruitment founder Graham Wynn says the new job-matching website is so ‘horrendous’ he and other recruiters no longer use it
‘That to me is the real challenge we are facing right now, it’s just unworkable.’
The previous JobActive system sent an email to a recruiter with an application and resume attached when someone applied for an advertised job.
However, now recruiters must log into the system to see if applicants have created a profile, which does not provide contact details.
The only chance a recruiter has getting in contact using the site is if the job seeker has attached a resume, which is optional.
‘They might have some good experiences but if we don’t get a resume there is no way to get in touch,’ Mr Wynn said.
Job seekers who have been tracked down by recruiters through LinkedIn and other means have been startled to find out the Workforce Australia site does not give out contact details.
‘No one has explained that to them, so if they are looking for work they’ve made it more difficult for them,’ Mr Wynn said.
Despite ‘numerous discussions’ had by recruiters with the Department of Employment about fixing the glaring flaw the bureaucrats won’t budge, citing ‘privacy reasons’.
The Federal Government’s Workforce Australia website was launched at the start of last July and replaced the previous JobActive site
‘They were worried about having too much personal information in case of hackers but it’s a secure website, it’s a government website, you would think it would be secure,’ Mr Wynn said.
‘It is detrimental in trying to get people back into work and for those genuinely looking for work they have made it harder for them.’
He pointed out that private recruitment websites such as Seek always include a jobseekers details with an application ‘so how can this be a privacy issue?’
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A blog posted last year by Superior People Recruitment noted a number of other frustrations with Workforce Australia.
It called the website the ‘slowest in existence’ and said it took on average 4-5 minutes to download any application.
While recruiters could advertise that applicants must be vaccinated against Covid to be considered, the manual outlining the question recruiters could ask forbid them from enquiring about the jab as it was ‘discrimination’.
So jobs could be advertised as requiring the jab but recruiters could not ask applicants if they had received it.
Mr Wynn said another problem was Workforce Australia asked for street addresses for the vacancies but that was against standard recruitment practice because it could reveal a client.
‘The work-around, is simply put a random address in, that is in the same area the job is located,’ he said.
‘So if we can put a random address in, what is the point? Previously, you could just add a suburb.’
Recruiters had also complained the job categories was too basic and did not describe the specialist roles they wanted to advertise.
Mr Wynn said it was ‘a shame the people that make these decisions on how to set up such systems, never actually speak to the people that use them’.
Australia has suffered a chronic labour shortage since the pandemic shut the nation’s borders and sent many long-term visa holders home.
Sky News host Paul Murray pointed out on Thursday there were 438,500 job vacancies in Australia as he questioned why 40,000 people had been on JobSeeker for 10 years or more.
‘Now I have no doubt some of those people are chronically unemployable for a whole collection for different reasons,’ Mr Murray said.
‘But I refuse to believe that a football stadium of people (40,000) are unemployable in this country.’
Recruiting agency Maxima says sectors that are particularly crying out for workers include food production, retailing and deliver, healthcare, IT, transport and warehousing, call centres and mining.
The Business Council of Australia on Wednesday highlighted the disturbing statistic of 40,000 people languishing for more than a decade on welfare payments and argued it represented a failure to get the long-term unemployed into jobs.
Council CEO Jennifer Westacott said in such a tight labour market there was something ‘very wrong’ with the job services system that could not get people into the workforce.
‘This needs to focus on improving the job services system, to drive greater incentives for people to enter and stay in the labour market,’ Ms Westacott said.
The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations has been contacted for comment.
