Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Extended transcript for the video presentation:

Part 1 - Mind the Gap!

All over the western world people are using a phrase that is becoming more common in many if not all of the major industries. In fact its an every day term that managers, directors, human resource and personnel managers and others all the way down the line to the shop floor are aware of and feeling the effects.

The problem they are referring to is a phenomenon that is widely felt in boardrooms in Australia, America, Canada, United Kingdom to name just a few and in industries such as I.T, Construction, Hospitality, Ship Building, Manufacturing, Health Care, Financial services, Engineering, Transport, Landscaping and Aviation industries, and the list doesn't end there.

The term we are referring to is phrase widely referred to as the Skills Gap, the effects of which can be counted in lost business due to lower production ability, overworked staff, low morale, lost contracts and even losing more staff as they struggle to keep up demands made on them to work extra hours, until they finally have enough and leave creating a further problem for your business.

The Skills Gap creates higher costs through having to pay more money to attract and keep your best workers in order to maintain your productivity and keep up with the competition. It creates higher costs through workers taking more time off sick due to being overworked where essentially you may be paying them for time not even worked, and where there is no tangible benefit to your business and ultimately leads to high staff turnover. And so the cycle goes on.

Whilst governments are creating various types of schemes to promote training of low skilled applicants, further education, bring pensioners out of retirement, raising the retirement age to keep people working longer and encouraging graduates and school leavers to do this or that program and whilst in continual talks and discussions with industry, unions and even other governments, the fact remains that the people they will attract through these schemes are limited in numbers and all major industries are competing for them. Any solutions or benefits from these high level discussions, schemes, programs and government policies may take years or decades before anyone feels any real tangible and viable improvement if ever at all for some industries.

The Skills Gap is here to stay for the foreseeable future, it will be thorn in the side for industries and companies all over the world for quite some time and is not going to go away any time soon. The reasons why this phenomenon has occurred is debated in parliaments, boardrooms, staff rooms, industry discussion groups and on the Internet on web sites and blogs regularly but this is not what we want to discuss here, we are here to tell you that there is a solution. Its a simple solution if done properly its often inexpensive if the benefits are calculated properly, and its an extremely effective solution.

There is a solution and the opportunity is there for forward thinking businesses to take advantage of it. In fact, many are already doing so and very successfully, other businesses are looking into it as you may well be doing right now at this moment as you have visited our web site and you are now taking the time to read this article. Many managers and directors don't understand it and may avoid it because they don't ask questions about how it works and how it is done legally, and others may be struggling onwards in the hope that things will get better soon.Some businesses are even hiring illegal workers to try to take their businesses forward or trying to survive and taking a huge risk that they could get caught and face enormous fines and face prosecution!

There is a solution and we have that solution for you and that solution is to recruit from overseas. To recruit workers who already have the skills needed, who may be available in large numbers and who are willing to come to America, Britain, Canada or Australia to work and earn better money than they can at home for an honest days work, to send money home to their families to improve their standard of living, to take further education for themselves or their loved ones or to start their own businesses when they have saved enough, whilst they may also be increasing their skills due to being able to have further training and use new, more modern and advanced tools, equipment and systems.

The skills gap is hitting hard, it is a reality that has to be faced and it is not only skilled workers that businesses are short of, it is the lower skilled positions too…..food servers, housekeeping staff, landscapers, cleaners and many more positions are going unfilled every year and statistics show a lot of seasonal and permanent needs are not being met & some companies are in fact going out of business as a result. As we just mentioned it is a simple solution if it is done properly, and to do this properly you have to take a few things into account and evaluate the benefits before you make a wrong decision that could cost you dearly and discourage you instead of helping your business. In the next post we will describe the 7 main points for doing things properly if recruiting workers from abroad on a work permit or guestworker program.

Part 2 - The 7 essential Steps

Step 1….

Establishing which type of Visa or work permit is most suitable for your needs, and what you have to do to qualify as an employer.

Every country has rules and regulations that an employer has to follow to legally recruit overseas workers from other countries. For example In America there is the H2B visas which are for skilled and low skilled, seasonal temporary overseas workers for up to 10 months per year. To gain a H2B visa you would have to prove you have a seasonal or one time need and an attorney advising you would need to see your payroll to help you establish what your peak times are and what your quiet times are.

In the UK there are work permits available only for skilled workers, unless you are recruiting from Romania or Bulgaria and you are in fish or meat processing industries, or mushroom farming. Although you are free to recruit from the other 25 states in the new Expanded European Union without too much difficulty.

In Australia you would have to check if the positions you wish to fill are listed on the DIMIA web site (skilled occupation List - SOL) and so on. As a company, we would establish the requirements very quickly, and would be able to advise you immediately what your options are.

There will be some documents needed from your side no matter what country you are from, which our immigration attorneys will guide you through and explain exactly what is needed. The quicker you get these documents the better, especially in America for H2B visas as there is a limit to the amount of visas issued each year. After an initial discussion with you, the ball will be in your court and getting documents to our attorneys in a timely manner is your responsibility and allows us to move on to the next step.

Step 2….

Be very clear about what you want There are rules that we like to follow when recruiting from overseas, the first rule of the recruitment process that really matters is that an employer is able to provide us with a detailed job description, we will spend time with you on the telephone or in person to understand exactly what you are looking for, the numbers required, and what the salary, benefits and working hours are. On top of this we would go through other requirements you may have, for example which country you would like us to recruit from, what work experience or background would ideally fit in with your team, do they need to bring uniforms or tools with them and so on.

You should also consider the accommodation needs for these overseas workers, they are highly unlikely to be able to find or afford accommodation for themselves and you need to be able to help them in the initial stages of coming to your country to work. The accommodation should be near the work place, and if you are recruiting large numbers you could think about transporting them to and from work. Once these two points are established, we are able to start the process for the immigration and visa processing and recruitment of your workers.

Step 3….

Choosing suitable applicants from a suitable source Osrec have a specialized recruitment team, we travel the world and interview every applicant face to face who have been pre-screened prior to us traveling, and who we are very interested in because of their skills, experience, language ability and qualifications.

The pre screening involves reference checking, telephone interviews, collecting certificates and criminal background & medical checks. I can tell you now that many local recruiters do not do these steps and when choosing a suitable source for applicants you would be wise to take this into account, the local recruiter may have a lack of knowledge or training, they may be lazy, or be a one man band who hasn't got the time, your source of recruiting from overseas has to be working for your interests first and not just passing resumes of whoever will pay them the amount of money they are demanding, that should be a non negotiable fact. This should be a question that is raised and something you should insist on being done. To put it simply, any other way is not a proper recruiting process, especially when recruiting from abroad. If you have people turning up to work for you and they cannot pass a drug test or if they steal a car and take it for a joy ride you would be in a position of losing workers and reputation, as well as being out of pocket for your troubles.

Osrec no longer use local recruiters in many of the countries we recruit from, that may sound like a contradiction given our name but too often we have found that we end up doing the work ourselves and too many of these agents are slow, dishonest or just not up to the job. We cannot have them using the association name when they are not living up to the standards required, and more importantly we cannot take the risk that you will get anything less than the best available workers in a timely manner.

Step 4 ….. Skills testing

When recruiting overseas workers you may not as an employer have the ability to travel, meet and interview applicants face to face, when you recruit locally this is normal, you can see and speak to people in the comfort of your office, but with overseas workers this is where things can and do go wrong far too easily. Osrec are aware of this and we do this for you, and we do it as well, if not better than anyone else in the business. If you need skilled workers we can set up skills testing, you can travel to the destination so you can witness these tests, and choose the workers of your choice. If the numbers of workers needed are high enough we would recommend this, and if you do not have time we can fly out an appointed quality assurance inspector to do it for you.

If we are doing skills testing without your own quality assurance inspector we will use an independent testing center and we will also appoint our own inspector who is familiar with the skills requirements that you have. Our inspector will oversee the testing is done properly and according to your specifications by the testing center to ensure you are getting the best available workers.

We can also have skills assessment videos done, this is popular with hospitality employers where they can get to see the applicants speaking English, in their work uniforms and doing their jobs. As we mentioned before, we are always looking to go the extra mile because we don't do disappointment!

Step 5……. The Embassy

The embassy stage can be a very traumatic experience for some applicants, in fact we have known applicants to forget their own name bacause they get so nervous. The feeling of being under the microscope, the thoughts of this is where their future is decided and having all their hopes and dreams resting upon this one situation can become a very frightening experience.

Osrec will request an appointment with the consul to visit each embassy before the applicants have their appointments if we are doing H2B or J1 Visas in large groups for America, or if we have large orders for any employers in the UK, Canada or Australia.

At the embassy we will ask to have a brief meeting to explain who we are, what we are doing, and the recruitment process we have gone through up until this stage and about your needs as an employer. We have found this makes a positive impression; we don't try to oversell ourselves, just state the facts and make ourselves available for any questions or to answer any concerns the embassy may have. We have a very high rate of visas issued, we believe the embassy visit, and our applicant's embassy orientation is the key.

We take applicants through a very detailed process which includes the questions they are likely to be asked and because we have pre screened them to make sure they are suitable before we have even met them for the face to face interviews, we assert the reasons why they should not be nervous, remind them about why they were selected and the reasons why they should be confident at this crucial stage. If the embassy has agreed to our request and met with us previous to the appointments, they are aware of the all facts of everything that has been done to ensure we have quality applicants and they are going to work for a good company who have also been properly prepared for accepting and employing overseas workers. We ease their worries and we get success!

Step 6….. Travel to your country.

We need to be very clear about this stage to employers.

When an applicant has been given a visa, the one question any employer wants to know is how soon they can come. Please understand there is a time line involved here and there are things that have to be taken care of by the applicant. Until they have their passports stamped, they maybe limited in what they can do and are willing to do. Applicants are requested to have flights reserved before their embassy appointments for 1 week after the date given by the embassy. In some cases this may not be possible as they may have to work notice at their current employers, as you would expect from anyone leaving your company too. In most cases however, this is acceptable.

We have had employers who expected the workers to fly out the next day, but we have to ask any employer with those thoughts… would you do that without properly taking care of your essential business before leaving? Would you run home and tell your family you got a job in a foreign country, that you will see them in a year's time and leave the next day without properly saying good bye. Imagine not allowing them and yourself come to terms with what is happening? There are a lot loose ends a worker has to take care of, please be reasonable and allow them to do what they have to do. They may be traveling half way across the world to come and work for you, it is a major commitment. The realization of what they are leaving and what they have to do before they leave often hits them after the visa is approved, and not before.

Osrec will request at this stage that you purchase a sim card for a cell or mobile phone with $20-$30 credit on it so that the workers can have their families call them and they can get in touch with us or you if they need to. This cost will be deducted from your fees at the time of invoicing. One final point about travel, when they arrive at the airport they will not be familiar with their surroundings, even if they speak fluent English it will be a task for them to understand how to get to where they are going. They have traveled a long journey to get to this point and become your employee, not just in physical terms! Please have the courtesy to have someone collect them at the airport and we would strongly advise you not to charge them for travel from the airport to where you want them to go. First impressions is a two way thing, its not just about if the employee is suitable for an employer, but also if an employer is suitable for an employee, if you want to get the best out of your workers who have come from overseas please treat them with a little respect and they will quickly become an asset to your company.

Step 7 …. Your overseas worker has finally arrived.

They will have questions, often many questions!

Your country will be something they are not familiar with, it will be a source of great intrigue, fear, new people, different accents and a far cry from what they are used to, please bear this in mind and try to be patient, understanding, and as helpful as possible during this time.

They will need help with things that you take for granted…. to open a bank account, they will want to know where they are living, how things work regarding their transport to and from work, what to do if they ever need medical attention, in short they will need time to settle down. Osrec will help with this of course, at the time of writing we are having ebooks for every country we recruit for written and these will be recorded onto Audio in Mp3 format for applicants before they travel to your country.

We have knowledge of employers who have prepared very badly from the outset, their source of recruitment was poor, they have received their overseas workers and within three hours of them arriving they have started their skills testing. This is after a long journey to get to their employer. They may have been collected at the airport only to find that a travel fee of $200 will be deducted from their first salary if they don't have the cash to pay it immediately, and they are in shock, they are already anxious and wondering how they will buy food, or how they can contact their families. They have been taken to their accommodation only to find that there are 4 people to a room as indicated at the time of applying for the job but that there are two men to a bed.

The industry of international recruitment is growing, unfortunately, like in any sphere, there are some bad characters whether it is the recruiter, employer or middle man …sometimes more than one, and there has been a lot of publicity in the media highlighting the bad points. Osrec's intention is to stand as a beacon and shine the light of how things should be done at every stage, to make sure employers get the skills required, and workers get the jobs with the conditions they have been promised. To make sure the shocking but true stories we have just highlighted are not repeated and that everyone gets a fair deal in every sense.

We have 95% rate of returning clients, and we are proud of the approach we have to the job, the systems we have created and the employers we work with. If you are seriously thinking of recruiting foreign labor we welcome your inquiry and we will work with you in a friendly, methodical and professional manner at all times.