Qld companies scheme to attract IT workers
Faced with growing competition for experienced IT staff, three Brisbane-based companies are expanding a scheme to attract potential employees to Queensland by highlighting the increased job mobility opportunities in the state.
Airline manufacturer Boeing, enterprise software developer Mincom and banking and finance provider Suncorp teamed up on the scheme to collaborate on IT recruitment and training opportunities earlier this year.
"What we are trying to achieve is we don't want to be competing with one another for the same people -- we want to be attracting new people to the IT sector in Queensland," said Paul Beesley, executive vice-president of R&D at Mincom.
To date, the group has concentrated on ensuring that graduates in Queensland universities recognise the job opportunities available locally, rather than immediately decamping south to Sydney, Canberra or Melbourne.
"It's working reasonably well for us at the moment in terms of talking to the universities -- we're at least stopping the leak of resources out of Queensland," Beesley said.
At the end of October, the three companies will meet to plan how the scheme can be expanded to attract existing workers from out-of-state locations. The aim was not to promote any individual company, but to emphasise that relocating to Queensland would not result in limited job choices further down the track, Beesley said.
As well as attracting more new recruits, the scheme has also proved useful in getting better deals on training schemes for existing staff.
"It means we can leverage the power of three organisations when we're negotiating with the training companies," Beesley said.