HR Pulse

SA recruiter taking the Australian talent market by storm

Vanessa Raath (pictured alongside), general manager of IT recruitment agency, It’s About People, has been invited to speak at next week’s Australasian Talent Conference (ATC) on contingent workforces.

When I spoke to her before she jetted off down under, she said that when she was originally approached to speak at this conference, she was asked to speak about easing South Africans who were moving to this country into Australian life.

However, as she is vehemently against the proverbial ‘brain drain’ that flows from South Africa towards Australia, she refused to speak on the proposed topic and the conference organisers, who were very keen to have her on board, adjusted the topic to suit her beliefs.

So, the ATC came up with a different topic for her to speak on, namely the possibility of decentralising your workforce and thus streamlining your workflow – very similar to the US concept of teleworking:

“The offshore, contingent candidate pool is an untapped source of talent that could help recruiters and employers to fill skills gaps,” said Raath in an article written by Esther McClaren.

When I asked her if the concept of teleworking is popular in South Africa, she replied that it isn’t but she is trying to get employers – especially in the IT space, as IT employees don’t really need to be onsite if they have the proper connectivity where they are stationed – in South Africa to buy into this concept as she feels that South African employers will benefit from having access to a greater pool of candidates, and not just being limited to candidates in South Africa.

The ATC Conference runs on 27 and 28 August.

Author: Lia Marus is the editor of HR Pulse. She has a BA in French, Italian and Linguistics from UCT, an MA in translation from Wits and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Wits Business School. She is currently studying towards her LLB through Unisa. Lia started her career off in corporate communications, where she worked as a sub-editor, researcher and marketing coordinator. She then heeded the call of the publishing world and went into the business-to-business publishing field. She worked as a sub-editor as well as a chief sub-editor. Before joining ITWeb, she managed an HR guidebook at a leading international publishing company.