Workforce Australia – Making it even more difficult for Job Seekers to find employment!
Workforce Australia, which replaced the previous JobActive system, is designed to ideally assist those unemployed find employment. Those receiving benefits are allocated a consultant from one of the many Government funded Workforce Australia offices, with the view of assisting them finding employment.
There is a JobBoard allowing recruiters and employers to advertise their current job vacancies. Despite the challenges, difficulties and problems with using the previous JobActive site, Superior People Recruitment have always tried to support the unemployed by advertising our job vacancies on this site. However, we will be unable to continue to do so in the future, for the following reasons.
The new website is arduous and mostly, if not completely, unworkable for an agency like ours who advertise multiple job vacancies on it. Previously, when people applied for a job that had been advertised, we would receive an email with their application and resume attached. But no more! All we now get is an email advising that someone has applied. We now need to access the Workforce Australia website, find the person who has applied, and then download their resume to review, assuming one has been supplied, which happens less than 50% of the time, if suitable for the role they have applied for. As this particular website is one of he slowest in existence, this process takes on average 4-5 minutes to do, each time. So as you can see, we do not have the time to waste waiting for web pages to open up.
Graham Wynn, having spoken to the support people for Workforce Australia that we are allowed to, and have access speak to, realises they are obviously not those that decided how the new site would work. Those that have designed the new site, we are unable to speak to, to understand their decisions and reasoning for certain changes, to voice our concerns.
- Recruiters no longer receive resumes direct, as this is apparently a privacy issue. Really? If a person applies through Seek, Indeed, etc, we receive their resumes, so how can this be a privacy issue?
- JobSeekers cna have a blank proifile, and no resume, so clearly Employemtn servie rpoviders (Govt fudned) are not monitoring this.
- There are no longer any contact email addresses or phone numbers on job seeker profiles. So, if no resume included, we cnanot contact any job seekers. Again Worforce Australia say the have removed this information, as a privacy issue, not understanding without this information, we cannot contact anyone.
- The list of job categories we can “select” is too basic. So many vacancies Recruiters have that do not fit any of the job categories now available to select from.
So unfortunately, we will no longer use this site to advertise job vacancies. Who does this punish? The JobSeeker, the person we are all, in theory, trying to help. A shame the people that make these decisions on how to set up such systems, never actually speak to the people that use them. Bureaucracy gone mad, again!
Author: Graham Wynn
#employment #unemployment #workforceaustralia #jobactive #careers #jobs