Questions With Answers
Are you migration agents?
No.
Why not?
We prefer the strategy and planning of finding jobs for people, rather than the more technical and administrative activities that make up migration work. Migration agents can be confident that we will not try to take over their client...
What happens if my client provides misleading information?
Where it is accidental such as outdated information, we ask that this be corrected. Where it is deliberately misleading such as false information on a CV, the client case will be immediately closed and any entitlement to a refund will be cancelled.
How should we pay you?
There are several choices including direct credit to a bank account, Paypal, credit card, cheque in Australian dollars or money order. This page explains it all. The payment structure is first half paid at commencement, and second half paid prior to the first interview.
What guarantee do you offer?
None. The employer has the final say about who gets employed and we do not control them. Nor can a migrant guarantee that they can find their own employment at a good level. It all relies on knowing where to look and how to market a set of skills to an employer, and finding ways to overcome employer resistance or competition for the job.
Our fees are much cheaper than a client coming to Australia and chasing a job by themselves. The calculations show that Do-It-Yourself costs will amount to at least $12,000 over three months for a migrant to do it “solo”.
Migrants only need to start work one month earlier than expected, and the search fees will be recovered via salary. Migrants who choose to stay overseas and work while we search for their employment will not be facing a major interruption to their income streams.
Migrants who start us searching just before their move can spend the first few weeks post-arrival getting settled in with houses and schools, without deferring the start of their job search activities.
Do you work to a Payment on Success formula?
Not quite. Legal opinion tells us that a success fee payment deducted from salary may breach the gazetted salary minimums for some jobs. Some migrants also do not take up their job offers, mostly for personal reasons like cold feet (!) or another visa format became an option, and we do like to be paid for the work we have done :-)
A split fee payment of a fixed amount is also easy to understand. Migrants can work out exactly what the employment search and associated visa costs will be, whereas a fee calculated as a percent of salary can lead to huge costs for the migrant. There is also the risk that DIAC may deem the percent-of-salary as a deduction from salary rather than a separate payment, and this could make the actual salary fall below the minimum necessary for visa grant.
It would be a shame to go to the effort of finding an employer who would sponsor a migrant before lodging the visa application (consuming weeks of time and significant costs), only to be refused on the grounds of inadequate total salary offer. The employer will most likely NOT increase salary to cover something that was agreed to privately, and they could be quite frustrated that their hand picked candidate is going to fall at the last hurdle.
We think a split fee system is the fairest for everyone.
Are you Recruitment Agents?
No. The recruitment industry is generally reactive rather than proactive, and acts as a filter for employers rather than as a promotion channel for candidates. Traffic in this model only flows one way, and migrants are going against the flow. Recruitment agents wait to be given the vacancy before ruthlessly excluding candidates who cannot “start next week.”
Payment structures build on temptation to get the candidate into the first place that is willing to offer employment, not the best place for the candidate to be. This pressure encourages the consultant to NOT sell the employer on why they should wait a few more weeks to recruit a highly skilled overseas applicant. It also allows the migrant to become restless in the employment and seek change later. This can be difficult fort some visa holders and sponsors.
We think the best solution is to find the right job for the migrant, by proactively seeking employers who need the migrant skills, and helping the employer understand the process and risks.
This also saves the employer the cost of recruitment consultant fees, around 15% to 25% of salary plus advertising expenses, which encourages the employer to think more favourably about cost sharing and underwriting of sponsorship obligations.
But to be fair, sometimes and usually only for exceptionally strong candidates, a recruitment agent will contact an employer and put forward an applicant where no job is known to exist. This is a rarity in the recruitment industry, as recruitment agents generally work under commission contracts for their income and usually stay well away from dealing with candidates who do not yet hold a visa.
Besides, only one quarter of jobs are ever placed with recruitment agents or online job portals, hence the need to go direct to the employers. Why? Many of the small to medium business just cannot afford recruitment agent fees - yet this segment is where the greatest numbers of jobs are being created. Until recruitment agents find a way to work for lesser commissions, it is unlikely they will ever be satisfying the needs of this employer segment. Hire A Migrant has no difficulty doing this.
Overall, we think the recruitment industry is very short sighted as their usual system minimises the pool of suitable candidates that they have to work with, and this deprives keen employers of choice when recruiting skilled staff.
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