Real Job Successes through Job Services and AEC Partnership
Sarina Russo Job Access has been involved with the Australian Employment Covenant since it started. Together Sarina Russo Job Access, the AEC and a number of dedicated employers have been making inroads into the tremendous challenge of Indigenous employment.
SRJA Indigenous Services Coordinator and Wurundjeri woman, Liz Allen is proud of the success she and her team have had placing people into jobs, including a number found through the AEC’s job management system.
“We have successfully placed a number of Indigenous candidates through the AEC’s job management system into good jobs. Recently this includes 3 truck drivers and 2 warehouse people at Linfox, 2 retail trainees at The Body Shop and 7 people at Crown Melbourne,” Liz said.
“The AEC has also helped me establish a number of great employer relationships that will help provide a steady stream of real jobs for our applicants.”
“AEC employers have a signed up commitment to Indigenous employment and a number of our Indigenous candidates have started to view them as employers of choice.”
“Sarina Russo is also signed up to the AEC as a corporate employer and we have employed 10 people directly as part of our commitment. We practice what we preach,” Liz says proudly.
Liz said “Sarina Russo saw the importance of this great challenge and made sure our whole organisation came on board, and now we also have a dedicated Indigenous services team to help drive this commitment right down to site level.”
“We’ve had Syd Jackson as an Ambassador for some time and we have a number of Indigenous consultants.”
Liz counsels that the challenge of getting people into jobs and keeping them there is more than matching candidates to vacancies. She says she has also been involved in helping employers make their jobs more accessible to Indigenous applicants.
“One employer had a real commitment and a number of good jobs, but their jobs required an on-line application which a lot of Indigenous people don’t access. So the vacancies were going begging.”
“So we do site visits and a number of our candidates then get to see what the jobs look like and hear directly from the employers. They often then say that they’d like to work at that place.”
“It can be a bit slow at first, because you need to work at ground level in the community, but we end up with better outcomes. We took our first tour of 14 people to Crown in late 2009 and we got six people employed. We built on that and now have a great level of contact and trust with Crown.”
“Working together we could shortcut the on-line application system, we could expedite Police checks while their recruitment processes were going.
“Crown Melbourne, along with several others has become an employer of choice to our job seekers.”
“One fellow hadn’t worked for four years. He had a number of challenges, but he went on a site tour, liked what he saw and that gave him a goal. We helped get him a license and about 4 months later we could get him into a job where a dedicated employer had good post placement support, that worked hand in hand with ours, to help this fellow with his job and his challenges.”
Liz says that Sarina Russo Job Access work with other groups as well, but she has no hesitation recommending the AEC to any JSA.
“Not only do they have real jobs on offer, but I have built an excellent relationship with 5 new committed employers in a matter of months through the AEC connection”
“The AEC and its employers mirror our company’s commitment to improving Indigenous job outcomes. Working together is good for the communities, good for us and good for the employers.
“And because it has a regular flow of real jobs with committed employers, we ask our consultants to access the AEC job board routinely as a valuable work resource. We introduce it to consultants during their induction and we have a person at each site routinely following up.”
“As a consultant working with Indigenous job seekers, you’d have to be mad not to look at the Australian Employment Covenant’s job board,” Liz Allen says.
Sarina Russo Job Access has been a partner and corporate employer with the AEC from the beginning. You can access the current job vacancies on the AEC site here.