Any Decent Recruitment Companies out there?

Lionel,

Hello again.

I guess that clears up where you have been lately with all of this.

Sorry it hasn't been working out so far - I guess there might be fairies of good fortune out there somewhere and hopefully one will cross your path sooner than later.

Unfortunately, your kind offer to carry my bags in Africa could soon be a highly contested one - the firm was in the process of laying off 300 people (correct number of zeroes) only to have a second thought after the budget on Tuesday and decided to up it to a nice round number of 800 (correct number of zeroes again). So, between that and the fairly substantial cut in foreign aid which underpins part of the work, and assuming I am still taking bags across the great waters, there will be 800 prospective bearers soon beating a path to my door...

Cheers,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by S3ute

Lionel,

Hello again.

I guess that clears up where you have been lately with all of this.

Sorry it hasn't been working out so far - I guess there might be fairies of good fortune out there somewhere and hopefully one will cross your path sooner than later.

Unfortunately, your kind offer to carry my bags in Africa could soon be a highly contested one - the firm was in the process of laying off 300 people (correct number of zeroes) only to have a second thought after the budget on Tuesday and decided to up it to a nice round number of 800 (correct number of zeroes again). So, between that and the fairly substantial cut in foreign aid which underpins part of the work, and assuming I am still taking bags across the great waters, there will be 800 prospective bearers soon beating a path to my door...

Cheers,

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Holy snapping turtles Batman, that sure is grim news there S3Ute. I can only say it is moronic that Australia is close to the lowest rate per capita of R & D than other OECD countries already. So the government's response is to lower it even more! Now that is really smart thinking!

All except in one realm of Medical research that is getting a rise of R & D funding - probably the beneficiary of cuts to lots of other research.

AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Australia currently invests 2.2% of GDP in research and innovation from both private and public sources, the equivalent of about $900 per person per year. This is well behind regional competitors Korea and Japan, behind the United States, and even further behind world leaders such as Israel, Finland and Sweden.

Australian investment in research and innovation ranks only 13th among OECD member countries, significantly below the OECD average.

Worst of all, our public sector investment has been on the decline in recent years; the Chief Scientist has recently warned it may go as low as 2% in the coming year, one of the lowest national values in the OECD.

Sourced on 15th of May 2014 from http://greens.org.au/science-research

Australia's leading scientist in 2012, Alan G. Pettigrew stated that Australia's rate of R & D ..." is significantly less than that of smaller Scandinavian countries. Spending on R&D in the Australian higher education sector is just over half the rates of Sweden and Denmark."
Pettigrew concluded that ...

The data indicate that some nations with less than half the
population of Australia, particularly in Scandinavia, achieve
significant impact in their R&D through a number of
different avenues. They have higher rates of R&D spending
overall and in higher education; greater employment of
researchers in business, manufacturing and services; higher
levels of collaboration in R&D; and they attract more foreign
investment to support their R&D activity (p.4).

Accessed 15th of May 2014 from http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/wp-...-web-FINAL.pdf

Kind Regards
Lionel

Lionel,

Hello again from Brisbane.

You are correct to point out that while Australians like to kid themselves that we are the clever(est) nation, the simple reality is that we spend diddly squat on R&D - either in the public or private sector. What we do is generally excellent, but a fair proportion of the best goes overseas.

Anyway, it would be convenient to blame the present crew in Canberra, but the facts are that the rot really set in back in the days of the Hawke government when public R&D budgets started to get seriously cut - the private industry has typically bought its technology off the shelf and screamed for protection to keep it profitable well past its use by date - and had not really changed much from thence. Science remains a junior ministry well outside cabinet and ranks well below sport and probably tourism (or tiddlywinks for that matter).

Enough of the negatives - off to a vintage truck and tractor show and general bush mechanics weekend tomorrow. So, for now the sunny face is shining.

Cheers,

As someone who has been made redundant 4 times in the last 12 years (just call me lucky) I would say recruitment companies can be divided into 2 broad categories:

1/ CV farmers who place lots of adds (many with no actual position behind them) so as to have a large pool of potential candidates for when a position does come up.

They know little or nothing about your skill set just use key words to find people on the data base. They then send these on to employers on the basis that if you chuck enough CVs at an employer one will stick.

You as the prospective employee are a commodity and their relationship is with the employer. Think of them as like real estate agents who represent the seller not the buyer.

It is from these people that I regularly receive positions where they want me to call them back immediately as I am such a strong candidate where I have never been involved or have few if any transferable skills.

2/ The specialists who work a sector and know the key players and what is involved in a detailed way. These tend to be smaller operations who have been built by someone with a passion for the sector. Hard to find but well worth the time spent to track them down. You are treated as an individual and given realistic feed back on your CV and job prospects.

Some of these specialists will work on the basis that they will promote you to potential employers. These can open doors where no one else can as they have a relationship based on trust rather that the next deal.

You do sometimes find CV farmers establish a specialist division pretending to be this however they just cannot throw off the chuck CVs at it approach.



That said you have to play the man not the ball as there are good and bad on both.