By Casey Neill
Jobs and unemployed youth aren’t matching up in Greater Dandenong.
A SEBN Industry Breakfast at Highways in Springvale on Thursday 6 April looked at why.
STREAT founder Rebecca Scott said young people wanted to feel like the organisation they worked for stood for something.
“And young people trust their peers more than they trust authority,” she said.
STREAT is a social enterprise that offers employment and training to youths in need, founded in 2009.
Ms Scott has spent the past eight years working with young people fresh from juvenile detention, battling mental health and addiction issues, and sleeping rough.
She urged businesses to link young employees with a mentor close to their age.
She said today’s workers would have 13 different careers in their lifetime, but often returned to an employer down the track.
“Don’t underestimate instilling skills in the hope they’ll come back,” she said.
Sajda Yakub is studying a bachelor of law, commerce and arts with a double major in sociology and journalism.
Now in her fourth year, she started volunteering during her first with Amnesty International and Muslim Legal Network.
Her long hours and dedication weren’t enough to open doors at legal firms.
They all wanted experience but no one was willing to give her the chance to get it.
She urged the businesspeople in the room to take volunteering into account when assessing an applicant’s experience.
Ms Yakub also urged them to “reject gently” because self-doubt stuck, write job advertisements with young applicants in mind and offer buddy programs to guide younger workers.
Entry level and part-time positions should be easier to access, she said.
“We are raw and we want experienced mentors to flesh out our passions,” she said.
SEBN manager Sandra George said: “If Sajda has had that much difficulty getting a position, think about the people Rebecca’s working with and what they might go through.”
In contrast, Hilton Manufacturing managing director Todd Hartley has 40 positions to fill and can’t find enough candidates.
“We’re looking at 457 visas,” he said.
“We’re just having so much trouble recruiting people.”
The Dandenong South business will experience 30 per cent growth from 1 January to 1 July this year.
Since taking over the business from his father in 2005, Mr Hartley has made a conscious effort to recruit young workers.
He worked with Beacon Foundation and Chisholm to find promising teens and hired them in bulk “so they could hang out at smoko, have a good experience of going to work”.
“We’ve tried to engage with the younger generation and change the perception of the manufacturing industry being a dirty and dangerous industry,” he said.
“Our business was screaming out for young people to come on board and run our most expensive pieces of equipment.
“Our business was falling behind because couldn’t get the next generation on board to run the equipment that would keep leaders in field.”
Mr Hartley held information nights for parents to make sure they were comfortable with sending their kids to work at Hilton.
He paired the teens with young staff who were two or three years into their roles as mentors, and rotated them through different departments to find their passion.
“It’s not easy but we certainly need to do all we can to engage with young people,” Mr Hartley said.
“If we don’t engage with them over the next 10 years or so I see us falling behind purely because of the tech savvy involved in operating our equipment.”
