What are they and are they worthwhile from a candidate perspective?

As you are doing your research into organisations that you might like to work for, you may be a little disheartened if they don’t have many roles available or if they don’t have the type of work you are looking for advertised.

In the current job market it is more important than ever be actively engaged with organisations that you would like to work for as many are reducing their spend on recruitment advertising in part due to financial restraints as an impact of COVID-19. This is also due to the high volume of applications received through traditional channels such as Seek due to the current high unemployment rate.

There are a couple of things you can do in this situation,

• Follow them on social media, especially LinkedIn
• Register for Job Alerts with specific organisations both on LinkedIn and on an Organisations’ Career site so you will be notified when they do advertise new positions.
• Apply for Expression of Interest, Registration of Interest, and Talent Pool/ Talent Register / Talent Bank positions. Many organisations may post open adverts on their careers page or allow you to create a profile and upload your resume to their system without applying for a specific position.

So what exactly is a Talent Bank in an application system?

These tend to be set up like a non-specific job advert; they allow people interested in working for an organisation to provide their details even if there isn’t a current vacancy. What this allows organisations to do is when they have a new position available their first step is to search their system for potential candidates, this saves the organisation both time and money, they can move directly to interview stage without incurring the additional cost of advertising.

Organisations may also have a Temporary register or Non-Ongoing register, these are for short term or fixed term positions, again these are a Talent Bank for an organisation to utilise to fill positions quickly. Although we acknowledge that permanent positions are the preference for many people contracts are frequently extended and they can be a foot in the door with an organisation as many will treat those on contracts as internal candidates and given priority when new positions become available.  

Many of the organisations who are part of the DFA Defence Partner Friendly Employment Program along with the Defence affiliated organisations mentioned last week have methods to register your interest in working for them.

Good Luck!

Nejula Blake
DFA Project Officer – Employment

The information contained in this post is general in nature and does not take into account your personal situation. You should consider whether the information is appropriate to your needs, and where appropriate, seek professional advice.