Brief

The University of Newcastle (UoN) is a leader in tertiary education and research and has world rankings that recognises their excellence. As a preferred panel supplier, GWG has been working with the UoN for over 10 years, placing over 150 contractors.

In January 2022 UoN made a significant investment in upgrading their technology infrastructure and applications, resulting in several enterprise scale projects and a high demand for a temporary labour hire workforce. As one of the University’s preferred suppliers, GWG undertook a local and national search for skilled and available talent, with up to 100 vacancies to fill over the 12-month period.

Actions

The following actions we taken to successfully engage with UoN:

• Met with key stakeholders at UoN to understand the projects, challenges, technology stacks, delivery timeframes and essential skills and experience required for each position
• Provided advisory and research to develop role analysis, advertising, and appropriate assessment strategies
• Agreed on interview structure, assessors and process to account for preferred interview practices and technologies whilst ensuring a non-discriminatory and inclusive process
• To respond quickly to the University’s requests, we utilised our custom talent pools – our most active, screened and validated candidates – where we methodically track candidates, to benchmark and categorise talent according to skills, industry, client, or project
• Alongside proactive approaches we developed and delivered multichannel recruitment campaigns reach the target audience and attract suitable candidates
• For this engagement we utilised our Project Manager pool with 600+ candidates, Business Analyst/Test Analyst pool with 450+ candidates and our Change Manager pool with 250+ candidates
• To reduce the risk of project delay or failure, we prioritised any backfill engagements above all other work. This included connecting with our candidate pools, and for some positions, advertising across multiple online job platforms
• For backfill positions, we worked to a very tight deadline and always aimed to submit a shortlist of candidates within 5 working days. All costs associated with backfill engagements are absorbed by GWG
• Offered payroll services for independent contractors and UoN-sourced candidates. Here, we managed the end-to-end payroll process including all required insurances, providing accurate, compliant, and timely payroll processing for every pay cycle
  
  

Results

• During the January 2022 to January 2023 period, interviewed 120+ IT candidates, and invited 70+ IT candidates to attend an interview with UoN
• As a result 43 IT contractors were placed at the University over the 12-month period
• Effectively managed communication with unsuccessful candidates
• Executed on-hire engagement contracts and setup payroll and banking, superannuation, taxation and timesheets, and contractor portal access
• Completed tailored client documentation, safety portal registrations, briefings and policies and procedures
• Ensured each contractor had full workers compensation, public liability, and professional indemnity insurance coverage
• Ensured all placed contractors were vetted with a police check and had completed WHS induction
• Provided ongoing reporting, contractor management, renewal support, contractor care programs, EAP Program coordination, salary packaging, and expense management.