Webinars

Talent attraction – keeping it local

Natalie Salameh: Welcome to the Careers at Council, Local Legends: Community Careers Stories webinar series. Try saying that three times fast.
My name is Natalie Salameh, and I’ll be your host for this afternoon.
We’re super excited to have you join us, for what promises to be a very insightful and engaging session.
But before we begin our webinar and introduce our esteemed guest for this afternoon, I just like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and all of the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet today and my respects to Elder’s past, present and future.
So this is our second webinar of the series. It’s focused on promoting a recruitment strategy in response to a critical workforce challenge and I am very pleased to welcome our esteemed speaker, Carly Whitcombe, who is the Shared Services Coordinator, Business and Performance at Port Macquarie Hastings Council, to share that beautiful story.
Carly’s expertise and insights will undoubtedly provide us with a deeper understanding of how we can attract talent from our own local communities.
Before we dive into our discussion, I’d just like to introduce you to the Careers at Council platform also, before I go there.
Throughout the webinar I just wanted to remind you we do encourage your active participation by asking questions and sharing your thoughts.
You can submit your questions using the Q&A feature and we will address them during the designated Q&A portion of the webinar, which is usually at the end.
So, Careers at Council is an initiative of the State and Territory Local Government Associations; created by councils for councils.
It’s established by the industry to inform and attract local government’s future workforce and is much more than simply just a jobs board.
You can access Careers at Council through our website, portable touch screen device and smartphone. Careers at Council also has a dedicated LinkedIn and Facebook page and an active YouTube channel for sharing videos of the various job roles in local government.
I’m very happy to say that a couple of weeks ago we actually celebrated the fact that we had hit over 35,000 LinkedIn followers, so that is a great initiative, no doubt, great work for Devika and Jen James.
All our webinars part of the Council Webinar Series and Candidate Webinar Series are recorded and available for councils and job seekers to watch and read the transcript.
Our first Council Webinar recording and transcript are now available on the dedicated webinar page and YouTube channel.
Apologies for that.
All member councils are provided with the opportunity to shine light on their exceptional work and achievements through the Council Spotlight section.
This section covers a range of topics, including innovative projects, community initiatives and success stories that highlight the positive impact councils have on different local areas.
The Council Spotlight aims to inspire and inform both current and prospective employees, as well as community members about the valuable contributions made by dedicated teams.
Our Job Alert registrations are now growing. We now have 8,875 total job alert registrations. Our job alert registrations growth from January to April 2025 was a whopping 8.6% and growth in the last 10 months was 28.5%; great work from the team there.
We are growing every day and our Member Councils have access to a talent pool of more than 8,000 candidates. Great, great work.
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Joining the Careers at Council community is a great way to explore job opportunities and connect with local government communities across Australia. You can sign up for job alerts, attend our webinar series, view our vodcasts, read our council spotlights, join the CAC Member network and of course, connect with us on social media and become part of the Careers at Council community.
I might just pause the share screen there and Carly, surely you’ve had enough of my voice?
It is now time to hear from you.
I’m just going to stop sharing there.
All right.
We will come back to the Q&A portion, I promise.
But for now, really, this is Carly’s moment. Carly’s time to share with us the wonderful work that has been happening in this space at Port Macquarie Hastings Council. Alright. Carly, welcome.
Thank you so much for joining us.

Carly Whitcombe: Thank you for having me.

Natalie Salameh: Well, for sure. Absolutely looking forward to this one.
Can you share a bit about your career journey? What led you to your current role as the Shared Services Coordinator at Port Macquarie Hastings?

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah. So I fell into the HR space by accident in the UK.
I’ve been over here almost 13 years and done a mix of hotel-like operational roles and HR roles and I relocated to Port Mac in 2019.

Natalie Salameh: OK.

Carly Whitcombe: I‘m one of those very lucky people who, I applied for two Council jobs, both at the same time and landed one.

So first time.

Natalie Salameh: That’s a good joke, but good job.
Ohh, fantastic.

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah, started off in the recruitment space and now I look after recruitment, learning and development. Our HR systems, HR Triage Services and admin for the wider HR team.

Natalie Salameh: Hm, lovely. Lovely.
Yeah, it’s almost like a ‘shoot, she scores’ type scenario where it was. Excellent, fantastic, good stuff.

Carly Whitcombe: Yep.

Natalie Salameh: I understand you recently took a hands-on approach with one of your recruitment campaigns. Can you tell us a bit about this recruitment campaign? And I guess what its objectives were.

Carly Whitcombe: I mean, I guess with any recruitment, the objectives are to hire people.

Natalie Salameh: Absolutely. 

Carly Whitcombe: And it was specifically in our water and sewer space, so it wasn’t an option to slow down that service or scale back what we were delivering.
We have to operate water and sewer and our network is pretty extensive just due to the geographical size of our LGA. So whilst the teams are big, we had a fairly significant number of vacancies that it just didn’t make logical sense to try and recruit one by one or in small groups.

We had about 15 vacancies. And we don’t compete with anybody because there is no other water provider.

Natalie Salameh: Okay yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
And I understand that a part of this particular campaign was engaging directly with the community at the local shopping centre. What inspired that idea?

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah, I guess it was just we needed to try something new.

And what we were doing wasn’t working and you know, we see our Education and Inclusion and Engagement teams out sharing about what Council do and showcasing that, and that kind of came up with the idea, what if we took recruitment out to the local shopping centre and put a stand in there and talked to people about what the role in water and sewer actually do.

Natalie Salameh: Absolutely, absolutely.

Carly Whitcombe: And it’s not all about number twos.
You’re not necessarily going to come across that everyday. And just build interest and understanding; whether that was with the actual candidate or someone’s mum, someone’s wife, someone’s grandma, whatever that is, to just to spread that word.
‘Oh did you know that they do this?’ ‘Yeah, they did that.’
And yet we’re a small town essentially. People talk.

Natalie Salameh: Ohh for sure. Absolutely.
And then I have to say it is a very innovative idea because it’s very, I would have to say, very rare for, you know, one to go shopping, grocery shopping on a Saturday or Sunday or whenever it is and encounter ones, you know, council officials and have them sort of actively promote, recruit certain vacancies.

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah.

Natalie Salameh: Certainly never encountered it in my local government area.
When I go grocery shopping on a Saturday or a Sunday, so it certainly is a very innovative idea. What would you say were, you know, the biggest challenges you faced in sort of filling the vacancies in the waste and sewer section?

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah, just that lack of knowledge and lack of competition.
So we probably get a lot of applications from plumbers and we’re still very much that growing town with lots of new builds and lots of developments.

So there is a demand for plumbers that, we might not always meet salary expectations with the private industry or where private industries have to have those people; they pay that premium. And yeah, we had a challenge with bringing some of the recruitment teams on board and getting them to come and participate as well because as much as Renee, our recruiter and I could go out, we don’t know the intricacies of the role…

Natalie Salameh: I see. Hmm, sure.

Carly Whitcombe: …or what a day looks like. And nor could we remember it for 15 roles.

Natalie Salameh: That’s a monumental task. Certainly, yeah.
How did you overcome that challenge of, if I can say, if I can put it diplomatically, the challenge of resistance.

Carly Whitcombe: I think once we explained it, we kind of had the co-ords on board and to be fair to the co-ords, they probably didn’t participate as much as their operational staff.
And so it’s bringing them on board, and saying somebody from our HR team or from our recruitment team will be there every step of the way, so we will buffer some of the more challenging people.
What we want you to send is just your people that like working here, that are good with people, just to go, “well this is what I do and this is what my team are like and this is why I work here.”

 

Natalie Salameh: Absolutely.

Carly Whitcombe: So we did some rotations, so they kind of did one or two hours each across the three days and we just tried to have two operational staff and then one recruiter there and the guys that put their hand up for it did such a good job.

Natalie Salameh: Fantastic. 

Carly Whitcombe: And really got into it.

Natalie Salameh: Yeah. Nice.
I mean, it’s there is nothing like first-hand testimony, right, for selling something.
I mean it’s, people wanna know how real it’s been for them. What have been the positives of the experience of working with the Council.
And so yeah, you’re not going to get, and having that first-hand testimony delivered in a shopping centre is an exceptionally novel idea.
Can you describe for me a little bit about the planning process that went into this recruitment campaign? Like what it entailed.

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah, it was probably a very simple one.
Once we decided on that’s what we were going to do and we’ve already got the connections with the shopping centres through our engagement teams. We already, we were lucky we already have a lot of our recruitment banners and, you know, template brochures and things.
So we did have a template brochure. People in Port Macquarie still like that handout to take with them.

Natalie Salameh: Sure.

 

Carly Whitcombe: And so we had created that; we were very upfront and had all the salaries in there, all the allowances and what each job entailed and what the prerequisites for.
So almost like a very small version of a job advert. So we’re prepared those, but honestly, it was a very low-effort preparation.
Once we decided to do it, the people element was much harder than getting it up and running.

Natalie Salameh: Yeah.
So that I guess the planning of the materials wasn’t quite as a laborious task if I can, if I can put it that way compared to getting the requisite people on board to, I guess to sell the idea.

Carly Whitcombe: Yes.

Natalie Salameh: Okay. Yeah. What was, from your perspective, what was the community’s initial reaction to your presence at the shopping centre?
As I said, it’s very, I’m yet to encounter it in my own LGA and, I would probably go up to. In fact, I’d probably go up to the staff in my in my LGA and say, “Hey, I work for Local Government NSW, I represent you.”

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah.

Natalie Salameh: What was the community’s initial reaction to your presence?

Carly Whitcombe: Ah we had a few people like that.
We’re a tourist town, so they’re like, “ohh, I work for so and so Council, and ohh you pay that much. Ohh you do this.” And just the differences became a talking point.

Natalie Salameh: Exactly.

Carly Whitcombe: I’m like, “So you wanna relocate to Port Macquarie?”

But yeah it was mixed and I think whenever any Council goes out into the community, regardless of what they’re going out to engage about, we’ll get comments around all the level of our service or some kind of network issue or something completely unrelated.

You know, “How do I register my dog?” And so, and I think that was probably, that’s why we wanted somebody from recruitment there that we could just feel those and be like “This is who you need to speak to or this is you know the customer service number.”

So that the guys on the ground weren’t just like “ohh, I don’t know”, but it was good.

Natalie Salameh: Yes. Hmm yeah.

Carly Whitcombe: Um, the guys that came out got really into it and people got really engaged with it.
The length of our pipes and how many kilometres we’ve got and how big the biggest pipes are, and there they go from this big to this big and just yeah, it was really, an educational piece where people wanted the information, whether that was about the job or just about the water network and how many reservoirs we’ve got or how many millions of litres we store.

And one of the yeah, like I said before, one of the challenges we have with recruiting in water is people don’t know what it is or what we do.

Natalie Salameh: Yeah.

Carly Whitcombe: So even though those conversations might not have been specifically job related, there was that knock on effect of knowledge.

Natalie Salameh: Yeah. And those minute details that they were asking you, would you have that information on hand at all?

Carly Whitcombe: Ohh some of it.
And we went out and we’re like, you know what, what are the quirky facts of our networks and our LGA and that we can share and elaborate on?

Natalie Salameh: Okay.

Carly Whitcombe: Um, and we’re really lucky.
Our education team has a very good education website that has some great resources around our pump station and the river and all the different things that we do that to get our water and they do water tours. 

So we had those elements to call upon and refer people to as well.

Natalie Salameh: Oh nice. I mean, does any particular interaction stand out to you from your interactions with the community or feedback from the community?
Anyone particular conversation that I guess we’ll go down in the record books as particularly memorable from your perspective?

Carly Whitcombe: Ohh. You always remember the bad ones, right? And this is being recorded. So maybe I won’t share.

Natalie Salameh: I’m happy for you to share the bad ones.
You wanna share, if you wanna share, one bad one and one good one, I’m certainly open to that and I’m sure our viewers would be as well.

Carly Whitcombe: Umm, there was definitely some abuse, that we’re ‘all a bunch of overpaid somethings.’

Natalie Salameh: Ohh wow, that’s a shame. That’s a shame. Yeah, OK.

Carly Whitcombe: And you know, people have different interactions with council and we’re so broad and I think, yeah, it wasn’t continuous, said his peace and off he trotted down the corridor to IGA.
But, I think what was memorable. It was just that light bulb moment that councils can feel a bit closed door and um, lack that transparency.
So it was just people’s receptiveness to the fact that we were even there talking about it.

Natalie Salameh: Ohh. Absolutely.

Carly Whitcombe: And I keep saying the word educate.
But just yeah, that transparency again, that this is what we’re here for.
We don’t compete with people in the market.
This is why we have to be here and people going “Oh, I never really thought nobody else does water.”

Natalie Salameh: That’s true though, right? I mean, council’s at their most fundamental level are community bodies, public facing bodies and so going out to the community makes so much sense, right?

 

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah.

Natalie Salameh: Totally.
You know, how did you measure the success of your engagement activities at the shopping centre? Did you guys have like a know some sort of pie chart that got a tick whenever you spoke with somebody?
How did you? How did you do that?

Carly Whitcombe: I wish we had, in hindsight, on all of the applications we should have asked, “Did you see us at the shopping centre?” and we didn’t. So a lot of what we have is anecdotal.
Um, we had a significantly higher number of applications to the roles or to most of the roles that we has seen in recent history, and the quality, the number of candidates we were able to shortlist and put through to interview again was also much higher and we just haven’t seen that in kind of like the short term history leading up to that.

And we’ve also been able to from that recruit, make use of e-lists and have people in the pipeline. In the pipeline! Waiting for roles to come up.
And a point from that as well. So yeah, the quality was definitely there.
But yeah, if we do another one, that’s gonna be a question on my application form.

Natalie Salameh: Absolutely. I think it’s great that you are taking a retrospective look at this and sort of saying what could we, what have we learned? What can we do differently and how?
How could we, I guess quantify this a little bit better, but I think to your point, I think the fact that you witnessed an increase in the number of applications, surely that would be indicative of, I don’t wanna call it the 100% success of this that campaign, all this initiative at the very least a 50% success rate or you know what, whatever it may be?

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah, we filled 12 out of the 15 positions.

Natalie Salameh: Fantastic! I mean that’s more than 50%. So there you go.

That’s great.
What long term benefits do you foresee from this campaign?
You mentioned the talent pipeline. Anything. Anything else that you can think of from the; it’s nice to have a pool of candidates that you can draw upon, certainly.

But what other, what other benefits do you? And this doesn’t necessarily have to be recruitment related, it could be more community related. It was just nice to spend a day or two on the grassroots, or boots on the ground type thing.

Carly Whitcombe: Yep, we’ve had comments through, I’m going to refer to recruitment cause I see a lot of candidates people coming through saying “Oh we saw you in the shopping centre.

Or we did this”. So the people are talking about it and whilst the recruitment market’s probably changed a lot since we ran this campaign, we are seeing continued seeing good quality water candidates come through. And even, yeah, things like we’ve got we took on three trainees as part of that program, and all three of them are still here! One has completed and has got a promotion. The other two are almost complete and we’ve got another guy who came in kind of like our facilities and catchment space kind of got a feel for it and moved across to our water operations space.

Natalie Salameh: Fantastic.

Carly Whitcombe: So it’s kind of going, “Oh, this is actually quite interesting. What else can I do and where can it take me?”
And so I just feel that the people that came in during this process have had a really positive experience and we did talk at the interview ‘we’re you there?’ oh, should have recorded it, but they know that we did it.
They know that they came in, in this cohort of 12 people from this large scale recruitment campaign and they’re like “We were part of that”.

Natalie Salameh: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And again to your point.
It’s such a great point that you make with, particularly with your, your, your trainees that are, you know, you’re traversing the landscape and making it all the way through the finish line and then staying with the council. I mean, retention is the penultimate aim here, right?

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah.

Natalie Salameh: And the fact that they’re staying, I think speaks, speaks volumes.
Definitely, definitely.

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah.

Natalie Salameh: Sorry, you go.

Carly Whitcombe: Ohh yeah, I was going to say we’re starting to see, we get to the point where will we have a vacancy for these people, as they finish because we did get such a good bunch of people across the board that have settled into the team where we’re starting to see less turnover, which is good.

Natalie Salameh: Yeah, it’s a two-edge sword, isn’t it? It’s a totally valid concern.

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah.

Natalie Salameh: Is there going to be a vacancy? Given the quality of candidates that you’ve managed to garner through this initiative, totally, totally valid concern.
I guess a bridge that you will cross when you need to cross it.

Carly Whitcombe: It it’s a good problem to have.

Natalie Salameh: Indeed, it actually is.

Can you provide me with some tangible examples, Carly, of how you feel this campaign has changed perceptions about the vacancies, about the roles, the water and waste roles?

Carly Whitcombe: I think internally… maybe not perception about the vacancies, but the perception of how our recruitment and HR team support the hiring managers. That we’re not just reactive and admin. Let’s put an advert; let’s wait and see if someone can apply.
We’ve really become a partner to those leaders and there’s been a lot more collaboration since. ‘I’ve got this vacancy. What do you think? Have you got any suggestions?’ And really kind of taking that expertise and knowledge on board. 

They’re definitely willing to get out more. We did a careers fair this week and we had a whole water and sewer stand and they came and spoke to our local year 10 students; bought them pipe-y things, don’t ask me the technicalities, with them and we’re just chatting to the year 10 kids going “Oh, this is what we do, this is the things” and I forgotten your original question now!

Natalie Salameh: I think you’ve answered it beautifully..
I will just touch upon, I guess, two points, really.
Which is that there’s now, as a result of this campaign, there’s now a real openness rather than a resistance, so there might not have been a, I dare say, there would have been a perception shift, but there was also a mindset shift as well, as a result of that, which is fantastic.

 

Carly Whitcombe: Hmm. Yes.

Natalie Salameh: And then also emanating from that, I think a real appreciation of the complexities associated with recruitment, right, it’s not an easy thing.
And sometimes, perhaps, you know, speaking, I hope I’m not speaking out of school here, but perhaps, you know, not perhaps all council staff outside of recruitment appreciate those complexities. So if it’s helped bridge that gap, that divide, then I think it was worth every second that you spent on it. Certainly.
What was the most rewarding aspect for you of working on this campaign personally?

Carly Whitcombe: Just getting out there and not being afraid to try something different.
And yeah, Renee and I owned it from the get-go. We’ve not done it.
We don’t know if it’s gonna work, but nothing else is working.

Natalie Salameh: Sure. Hmm.

Carly Whitcombe: So what’s the worst that can happen by putting ourselves out there?

Natalie Salameh: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Carly Whitcombe: Even if it’s really uncomfortable.

Natalie Salameh: Yeah, absolutely.
Outside the box thinking in terms of, yeah, where to go?
Nothing’s worked, so let’s try something that’s totally rambunctious and outrageous.
Are there anymore campaigns of that nature on the cards at all?

Carly Whitcombe: I think so.

Natalie Salameh: I have a feeling there’s gonna be a need for a webinar part two to this particular webinar because there’s a, I have a feeling there’s some cogwheels churning there and there might be some more outside-the-box initiatives that you guys are… without divulging too much, can you give me a teaser or something?

Carly Whitcombe: Well, we’ve been doing.
My boss hates me calling it this – speed dating or speed interviewing for a couple of roles.

Natalie Salameh: Haha. OK, yeah.

Carly Whitcombe: Anyway, but I’m kind of thinking of maybe like you’re growing that, so it’s not just apply, get invited to a speed interview.
It’s something more interactive that we’re getting out to the community in the lead up to that and that’s how you register for it because you come to speak to us and we kind of do that and we do a lot with our entry pathways with our cadets, trainees and apprentices over that recruitment period.
But I’m definitely thinking Ferring in a little shopping centre visit in there with that one to catch all the mums and dads whilst their shopping.

Natalie Salameh: Yes, absolutely.

Carly Whitcombe: Because that is the way we find a lot of our apprentices and trainees, that mum’s at home and dad’s at home going “Have you got a job yet, what are you gonna do when you finish school?”

Natalie Salameh: Exactly. Exactly. Totally, you know, the concerned parents.Definitely.

Carly Whitcombe: Yep.

Natalie Salameh: And Council being that safe haven, where, yeah, the apprentices and the trainees and the cadets can get some really great formation. So certainly.

How do you think this campaign has influenced your approach to, you know, future recruitment efforts?

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah.

Natalie Salameh: I mean we talked about outside the box thinking but anything else in terms of how it’s influenced, future means of recruitment?

Carly Whitcombe: Definitely watch what other people are doing as well.
There’s councils on either sides of us that you know, we watch what they do because we think they do great things.
And yeah, there’s a few things that we’ve kind of gone ‘Oh, maybe we should try that.’

Natalie Salameh: Hmm okay. Can you give me an example?

Carly Whitcombe: So. I can name them. Do I name and shame? No, there’s no shame!

Natalie Salameh: It’s not a name and shame, certainly. It’s something, actually, when you, they say emulation is the best form of admiration. So no, certainly not name and shame at all, but can you give me an example?

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah, well, the council in question is Lake Macquarie. Don’t know if anybody on the call is from Lake Macquarie. Hi.

Natalie Salameh: Your, your neighbour! Hello, Lake Mac!

Carly Whitcombe: I’m but certainly from the outside, they just seem to have their stuff together.
It’s organised, it’s cohesive and it’s consistent.
When I look at their social media messaging and you know, I look after our entry pathways program and that’s probably one of the things I’ve been on that website a lot looking at again, what are you doing? Oh yeah, we should do something like that.

Natalie Salameh: Right, excellent. And it’s good. It’s good to collaborate with your, you know, your neighbouring councils, your sister councils.
Certainly, that’s the beauty, really, of local government. There is, I’ve found. I’ve worked in the industry for quite some time. It’s coming up to cumulatively 6 and a half years next week.
And the beauty I find in local government is that collaborative spirit; that collaborative nature so, certainly, certainly.

What advice, before we go to our Q&A, or before I throw in a few curveballs of my own.
What advice would you give to other councils sort of facing a similar recruitment challenge as you were in this particular section where you had 15 vacancies, a very large number of vacancies. What would you, what advice would you give to the councils facing a similar challenge with vacancies in a particular area?

Carly Whitcombe: Yep. I guess for me it’s about taking the vacancies to the people.
So if you are targeting or you believe that your market is local, how do you reach those people, that is proactive, whether it’s a shopping centre, whether it’s a crazy idea like one of those vans that drives around with a sign on the back during elections saying ‘vote for so and so’ you know, just yeah, just don’t be afraid of doing something crazy.

Natalie Salameh: Hmm. Right, yeah.

Carly Whitcombe: The intention is right and I know every community and the perception of every council can vary, but it’s pretty consistent. There’s some cool, cool thoughts about councils and communities. So yeah, identify how you can get out to them.

Natalie Salameh: Yes. Sure, sure.
So, not necessarily, it doesn’t necessarily have to be relegated to the shopping centre.
It could be, yeah. Okay, would you think about going anywhere else other than a shopping centre? That’s one of my curveballs.

Carly Whitcombe: Oh, I mean, we could try the local market as a few local markets and the Port Macquarie area, but they’re getting rained off at the moment.

Natalie Salameh: OK, OK. Yeah.
OK, when you say the local markets, like a farmer’s market, you mean?

Carly Whitcombe: Yes, and yeah, just local and people that make and sell.

Natalie Salameh: OK, OK. Yeah, definitely. Definitely a possibility.
Um, one more question from me if I could. Another curveball. 

Did you find during your stints in the shopping centre that certain times and certain days were more efficacious than others, like going out at 9:00 on a Thursday morning, you’d get no one approach you whereas on Saturday, just after the local cricket, you’d get these swarms of people approaching you?

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah, I’d love to go back and do a weekend one.
I think that probably would be a step too far for our crews this time around.

Natalie Salameh: OK. Yeah, fair enough.

Carly Whitcombe: But yeah, you definitely feel those peaks and troughs.
Yeah, that morning, that lunchtime kind of rush as people were going out to run errands during the lunch break, it was definitely there.

Natalie Salameh: Sure, sure.
Carly, you’ve been magnificent. I’ve asked you a plethora of questions. I’ve bombarded you with questions. I note that we are exactly at 10 minutes out from our closing.
So I would like to at this point, if you’ve got sort of nothing else in terms of Q&A from me, I’d like to now invite our beautiful audience to submit some questions for your consideration.
So I’m just gonna open up the Q&A here and see what’s happening.
OK, I’ve got a question from Devika, who says can you tell us more about the entry pathway program?

Carly Whitcombe: Of course. So the term entry pathway program is quite new to us. It’s just kind of bringing a lot of what we do under one umbrella. And so bringing together our apprentices, our trainees, our cadets and our graduates, with a dedicated support person, both for them and their leaders and the people that kind of like day-to-day mentoring and that person acts as the go-between between the university, the RTO, the apprenticeship provider, whoever those people are. But yeah, it’s a growing program. So we’ve got the resource there, I guess just keeping people on track with their studies, with their work, trying to iron out any difficulties, particularly more so in that apprentice and trainee space, so yeah, the first time roles this is kind of how you potentially behave in a workplace, this is, for want of a better phrase that, that mothering element of that, that’s not acceptable.

Natalie Salameh: Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely.
No, no, I hear you because you’re, you’ve got some, they’re newbies, right?
They’re fresh and you’ve gotta teach them what’s work, right?
I mean, it’s because they don’t. Like, the concept is totally foreign. Perhaps they would have just graduated from school or what not. And so the workplace is a foreign entity.
Perhaps working hours is a foreign entity, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, I like the word mothering. There’s a maternal aspect to it so certainly.
Can I just bundy off Devika’s question and ask how many recruits do you have in the entry pathway program?

Carly Whitcombe: We’ve between 20 and 25, depending on where we are in the cycle.

Natalie Salameh: Fantastic.

Carly Whitcombe: So, yeah. But we are, we want to get up to, or above, the 30 mark is the long term plan.

Natalie Salameh: Ohh yeah. Definitely noble, noble intention there.
We have another question from Arshdeep.
Who says, who asks, rather, does council use any AI software to short-, I assume that is shortlist applications, rather than sortlist applications.

Carly Whitcombe: We, we don’t. So I guess particularly for kind of those more entry level roles, we use a lot of qualifying questions which kind of helps with the short listing process, those, yes or no, I’ve got this, I haven’t got that, and we would kind of score them.
And if it was a truck driver that said ‘No, I don’t have a licence’, that’s an automatic failure, so they pull out.

And when we say we had over 105 applications, that was across 15 roles.

 

Natalie Salameh: Yeah.

Carly Whitcombe:And so you know, some roles would have had a handful, and other roles would have had a few more. But we’ve had multiple people in there kind of making up, not making up, like going through the shortlist and making those decisions. So nothing too strenuous.

Natalie Salameh: Yeah, so it wasn’t artificial intelligence, it was human intelligence in that.

Carly Whitcombe: Yes, they were – they’re very intelligent.

Natalie Salameh: That’s great.
We have another question from Sumedha, which I hope Sumedha I have pronounced your name correctly. Please accept my apologies if I have not.

And Sumedha asks, were candidates able to submit their applications directly at the stand, or were they redirected to the Council website to address the selection criteria? And Sumedha goes on to say, by the way great idea to have a stand at the supermarket.

Carly Whitcombe: Thank you.

Natalie Salameh: Glowing, glowing feedback there.
So applications at the stand or on the council website?

Carly Whitcombe: We directed everybody back to the Council website just so that people could address the selection criteria and that was the purpose of the brochure, to take that away, be able to digest it and without going online as well about the roles that they may or may not even want to consider applying for.
And then be able to go online, we’ve included an application support page, so when you’re putting your application in, we want a copy of your resume, you’ll be asked a couple of questions. Here’s some hints and tips as to how to answer those questions and what we’re looking for. So when they went online, they were they were ready to.

Natalie Salameh: Yeah, absolutely.
If I could just again bundy off perhaps Sumedha’s question… 500 applications is a voluminous amount of applications.
Were you bombarded at any point with emails about whatever it might be, the selection criteria or the information page or what not?
Because sometimes having knowledge of recruitment, some applicants need a point in the right direction.

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah, there was definitely an increase of emails in the jobs inbox.

Natalie Salameh: Yes, alright. I imagine they would be OK.

Carly Whitcombe: But yeah, nothing that was too technical or too time consuming in responding to.

So a lot of standard questions that we were able to draft some responses and have them on hand, just to tailor.

Natalie Salameh: Okay. Fantastic.
We do love the cookie cutter responses, don’t we?
One more question from Suchi.
How do you measure ROI of employer branding initiatives in recruitment?

Carly Whitcombe: We do it really badly, or don’t do it at all.

That’s the short version.

Natalie Salameh: OK.

Carly Whitcombe: We haven’t got a tool or metrics in place to be able to do that at this point.

Natalie Salameh: OK, that’s fair. That’s fair.

Carly Whitcombe: If you’ve got any ideas Suchi, I’ll take them.

Natalie Salameh: Ohh yeah absolutely.
We were just talking about the spirit of collaboration amongst councils. Certainly, yeah. If anybody can help Port Mac out then that would be greatly appreciated.
Got another question here from Sayed.
What is the career growth opportunity in council jobs?

Carly Whitcombe: Certainly from our perspective, we have been a growing Council.
We’ve gone from 650 to 750 headcount in the time that I’ve been here. 

Natalie Salameh: Amazing.

Carly Whitcombe: But I’ve also seen a lot of movement.

One of my recruiters, um, don’t think ‘complaining’ is the right word, but she says “every time I fill a vacancy I’ve got another one” because it’s been, there’s been so much internal movement this year, this year alone, and whether that’s permanent opportunities or project, or secondment work. It’s definitely there and some of that is linear. You know, one of our outdoor team leaders moves up to something else or moves internally.
The truck driver gets the team leader role, then the labourer gets the truck driver role and then you go external. Or whether it’s a lot more cross divisional and, you know, snakes and ladders kind of thing to get to where you want to go.

Natalie Salameh: Hmm.

Carly Whitcombe: And we had an electrical apprentice who went into a labouring role because there was no electrical roles available, ended up coming back to do that with some kind of team leader role and then kind of works his way up through water and sewer and now is in our infrastructure team managing projects with an engineering degree under educational assistance.

Natalie Salameh: Fantastic. Wow. Yeah.

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah, opportunities are definitely there.

Natalie Salameh: Oh definitely it’s, and it, also again to just to elaborate on that beautiful point, what a diverse portfolio for that employee, I mean that’s just great, right?

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah.

Natalie Salameh: OK, I think we will take one more question before we thank Carly for her time and it is again from Sayed who says, who asks rather, how is the life like in regional areas? For those of us who are city slickers, yes, we are indeed interested in what life is like in the regional areas.

Carly Whitcombe: Be careful how I answer this one.

Natalie Salameh: You are being recorded. It’s true, isn’t it?

Carly Whitcombe: I spent a lot of time in Sydney and was very central, and you couldn’t pay me enough money to go back and live in the middle of Sydney.

Natalie Salameh: Yeah, right.

Carly Whitcombe: But yeah, no, it’s good. It is different. It is, yeah, I guess some people say slower.
That’s less things to do, potentially less opportunities for that kind of diversification, but it’s only four hours down the road. Short 40-minute flight from the airport and but yeah, I can’t comment on working for councils in Sydney because I didn’t, but yeah.

Natalie Salameh: Hmm. Yeah.
And Port Mac is, it’s such a lively area. As you said, as you mentioned, you’re already alluded to this earlier in the webinar, but it does attract a lot of tourists and I imagine a lot of traffic that are on their way up north to say Byron or Ballina or Queensland.
And so I imagine it would be quite a vibrant town.

Carly Whitcombe: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been visiting for 10 years, but it’s definitely changed a lot in 10 years.

Natalie Salameh: Sure, absolutely.
And again that I think that’s a testament to the growth of the area in addition to and you can see that that parallel process growth of the area equals growth of the council and beautifully so.

Carly Whitcombe: Yes.

Natalie Salameh: So we are right on time, Carly.

Carly Whitcombe: Go us!

Natalie Salameh: Go us, is right!
I would like to thank you very much for volunteering your time. Divulging that information so graciously and so generously to us here and also to our viewers.
Very big thank you to our viewers who joined us this afternoon for this very informative and insightful webinar.
Again, please have recourse to our social media where you will get the latest updates and of course a recording of this webinar should you be so inclined to go back and watch us and also an update on when the next webinar is up. 

Carly, thank you again and thank you to our viewers. Have a great afternoon.

Carly Whitcombe: Pleasure. Thank you so much.

Natalie Salameh: Take care.