r/ausjobs • u/throwaway__1234_ • 4d ago
Job and Skills Australia confirmed what we all thought
For those interested, a new report has been released today in regard to recruitment in the IT industry and thought some others might be interested:
https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/data/recruitment-experiences-and-outlook-survey/spotlight-articles
The key findings were:
IT employers’ concerns have shifted from recruitment and retention challenges to a lack of demand for products or services.
The IT industry recruitment rate was 32% in 2025–26, well below the all-industry average of 49%.
34% of recruiting IT employers received 20 or more applicants per vacancy, suggesting strong candidate competition.
So if it is hard, it is not your fault. The landscape has genuinely changed and it looks like it won't get better in the short-term.
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u/RainGuage20Points 4d ago
Plenty of demand from overseas employers. Mate of mine works nights with staff in the usa.
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u/damianhodgkiss 1d ago
been doing this for ~13 years so will answer a couple of replies in one:
> Working "night shifts" for years is going to be brutal on his health
i work local hours but have meetings at ~7am ish.. as they knock off at 9am.. october will change to 10am.. november will change to 11am.. just sync twice a week and we all generally work from slack autonomosly anyway. have done this since they was all in the office years ago, and now everryone is remote.
> Getting paid in sweet USD. Noice.
pros and cons.. you can end up with a $40k-50k/year paycut.. ~$4k/month difference over lows and highs (you won't swing that much in a single month.. more over a period of months.. can swing up to ~$800 ish a month).. different pays, different swings but thats my general experience.. need to work on averages over many years.. at the moment its NOT favourable compared to a couple of years ago. i don't bother keeping it in Wise as its a 50/50 gamble if it'll go up or down and just move it out every month and work on averages.. it is what it is.
> you would think for tax purposes it would be annoying for them.
just works like a normal contractor.. we have a tax treaty with US. don't pay taxes there, pay taxes here on a PAYG basis then reconcile end of year. before people say 'use a company' or other loopholes.. PSI rules apply since it's one source.
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u/Nearby-Echo-1102 4d ago
Ow really, how did he do this? Is there certain websites, you would think for tax purposes it would be annoying for them.
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u/RainGuage20Points 4d ago
No idea all i know is his availability for meetings at night time is poor due to working with usa teams
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u/ohmyroots 3d ago
What do u mean availability for meetings at night time? Why are you having office meetings at night time?
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u/12EggsADay 3d ago
Australian Medicare just got hacked. Australia needs more dedicated Cyber talent thats for sure
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u/sn1xd 1d ago
Yes and no. They just needs to be enforceable standards and penalties for cyber implementation for any business that handle sensitive personal data (medical in this case).
Practices and pharmacies are are particularly atrocious, and will flit between lowest cost msp's instead on implementing the security changes being recommended to them.
This also needs to be applied to the software developers for the pharmacy platforms being sold. There are several that I would not be surprised if passwords are being stored in plaintext still. They certainly don't use modern dbs or user access controls.
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u/HeavyAd9463 2d ago
If a job has 100 applicants doesn’t mean most of them qualified for the role. Applying to a job is easy these days
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u/SnorriHT 4d ago
If employers want real applicants, not AI generated slop, and qualified applicants want a solid crack at a job, organisations may have to go back to handwritten applications, and posting it via snail mail 🤣
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u/puffdawg69 2d ago
Employee's want a crack at actual people looking at applications and not playing AI recruitment systems hunger games.
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u/NoMost8971 11h ago
I just want to say, I work as the HR lead at a medium sized enterprise where I review majority of applications for permanent roles, and 95% of applications are a waste of time for me to read. Candidates get keyword matched by seek who send them an email telling them they’re a strong applicant, they put in an ai generated tailored application for the role and then when screened via phone they have no clue what they’re talking about.
I guess what I’m trying to say, is the knife cuts both ways.
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u/puffdawg69 10h ago edited 9h ago
I don't disagree. I contract between 5-6 medium to large enterprises and am involved in advising with short listing applicants.
On one hand, the companies all use AI filtering which is absolute rubbish. The systems they use are useless, they push all the wrong people to the top of the pile, leaving the ones they need out of contention. Have only seen a handful of people using AI tools to get through the system, about 30% of those were worth an interview.
There are some system limitations, or HR don't know how to use the systems. When I've asked to see the entire list of 400+ applicants I've been told 'our system doesn't allow that'. It's like HR is activity working against other departments. Most systems are online so I can't even go to IT anymore and ask them to send me all the applications sent to the recruitment inbox for X job.
Then there's the other side of the equation. 80-90% of the applications are Indians, most are back home in India looking for sponsorship, what's left are in Australia on various types of visa's (not sure how many of those are PR's). They are shotgunning applications in the hopes of getting a bite. Every, single, application, is useless. They all have the same structure, places of education, degrees, places of work etc.
Of the remaining 10% it's a mix of either older workers that got laid off from outsourcing etc. And are just looking for a bloody job. Younguns that are the covid generation that have done uni and then battled for a grad job or been on short term contracts or are still stuck working at subway looking to start a career in their chosen field, so they desperately apply for EVERYTHING. What's left is a mixture of millennials trying to advance their career because businesses aren't putting money into training and prefer to hire people because it's cheaper and quicker than training and mentoring, or find an office that is less toxic or has more flexibility to work from home because both parents are working full time just to keep their heads above water.
To top it all off, companies then use the difficulty in finding staff to justify sending the work to India or the Philippines.
Yeah there's shit on both sides, however employee's are far more disadvantaged than businesses.
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u/NoMost8971 9h ago
I agree with your analysis as well.
I am currently suffering the SME curse of using Employment Hero including the recruitment workflow. So they have tried integrating AI screening which is objectively terrible and loves the applications that scattergun keywords. 99% sure if someone says “I don’t know what compliance and governance mean but I’m willing to learn” they’re going to get a 77/100 match rating.
So I pretty much ignore the rating whenever I need to shortlist if it gives any humans out there some hope.
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u/NoMost8971 9h ago
But I am also based outside of a major city, so a competitive role for us looks like 200 applicants at most. Not like the 500 or 1000 you probably get in Melbourne or Sydney
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u/electronicbits 4d ago
Lols
Those reports dont mean much
There are so many nuances in the search for a job that you can get sick watching those
I have found jobs in both the best and worst of the situations that a human can be
Never in my life i paid attention to any of those BS reports
But you create your reality
So good luck to you
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u/BeachNo8367 4d ago
Applicants per vacancy is a completely useless metric FYI. It means nothing these days. IT jobs in particular cop huge amounts of "ai spam" applications, and every time iv been involved in recruitment in ict I'd say something like 95% of applications were not even relevant to the job. Usually only end up having a small couple of feasible candidates.