Transferable Skills – Hiring recently migrated talent!

How many times have I heard that organisations want to hire new employees who must have local experience. Well, sadly too many!

Personally, I think that it is absolutely OK to consider and hire newly migrated talent, depending on the requirements of the role. While there are roles that sometimes absolutely need to have local experience, a lot of the times the roles can look at hiring newly immigrated candidates.

Considering what skills and experience are needed to perform in the role

If hiring managers were to break down the essential skills needed to do the job and excel at it and then look at how many of those essential skills require local experience. This will help provide clarity and sometimes may even surprise hiring managers as to how many of those skills may easily be transferrable to someone who is new to the country but has extensive experience in the field overseas.

Diversity in the team

Every time an organisation hires someone new, they ideally should be looking at bringing someone from a varied background to what is already present in the team. Hiring someone who is newly migrated will mean getting someone who has worked in an environment unique to how we work in Australia and may bring something new and have an impact. Hiring a migrant usually means there is someone who has successfully proven themselves in their home country and are here to start afresh, and they want to succeed. Organisations can expect them to be always putting in their best and bring fresh perspectives.

Hiring Successfully in a Competitive Market

In a competitive market where employers are usually competing for the same talent, organisations can get creative by understanding which of the open roles they are able to recruit new migrants into. This will mean, they may be able to fill the role faster and not pay 10% or 20% extra remuneration to secure the locally experienced talent and to cut competition and to secure them.

Thankfully, there are many organisations already on this journey to be open to hire new migrants. But there are still quite a few who still are focussed on hiring locally experienced talent and associate hiring migrants with taking risks. Hiring any new employee has a risk element and is not associated with new immigrants only. So, lets change our perspectives and get onboard with opening doors to candidates with the right mix of skills and experience irrespective of where they come from!

Nehal Shah
Divisional Manager, IT & Digital

Having started her career in IT as a Web Developer, Nehal quickly realised that she was missing people interaction and wanted to combine her passion for IT along with her passion for meeting new people from different walks of life. She transitioned her career and became an IT Recruiter in 2002 and after 21 years of Tech Recruitment, Nehal still enjoys the ebb and flow this industry brings. Having recruited in New Zealand for 18 years working both agency side and inhouse, she has recently migrated to Brisbane and is looking to continue building her network. Nehal holds a Masters in Commerce degree in Human Resource Management. She joined Optimum Consulting in October 2023 as Divisional Manager – IT & Digital and is responsible for overseeing a great team of recruiters and to grow the Optimum tech recruitment business across Australia.