Every week we receive resumes from capable people for roles they cannot get. Not because they lack the skills, but because the role requires Australian citizenship and they are permanent residents, or because it requires an active security clearance and they are "willing to obtain one". It is uncomfortable to say no to good people, and it is one of the most important things we do.
Why we are stricter than the document
An Australian Government ICT labour-hire request will often say a candidate must be "able to obtain" a Baseline or Negative Vetting clearance. Read literally, that opens the door to uncleared candidates. Read in the light of what actually happens, it rarely does. The buyer's questions-and-answers page frequently clarifies that an active clearance is required at submission. Even where it does not, a contract cannot start until the clearance is granted, and that can take months the agency does not have.
So our default is to treat any named clearance level as a requirement that must already be met, unless the buyer has said in writing that it need not be. We would rather miss a role than put a candidate through weeks of effort for a contract that cannot be issued.
Citizenship is not negotiable
Only Australian citizens can hold an AGSVA security clearance. Every one of our Commonwealth roles requires one. That means every advert we publish on our careers board and every brief we send says, near the top, that the role is open to Australian citizens only. We publish it that prominently because the alternative, letting people apply and then rejecting them, wastes their time and ours, and because an evaluator who sees an ineligible candidate in a submission does not forget it.
What we owe the people we say no to
- A fast answer. We read every CV within a day and we tell people straight away if the gate is closed.
- A reason. "You are not eligible because the role requires an active NV1" is more useful than silence.
- A next step where there is one. Permanent residents become citizens; Baseline holders can be upgraded by a sponsoring agency; we keep in touch.
- Honesty about competition. If an agency will take one candidate from us and we have three, we say so before anyone writes a pitch.
And the people we say yes to
When the gate is open, we go all in. We verify qualifications, clearances and referees ourselves. We give candid feedback on pitches, because evaluators score criterion by criterion and a pitch that reads like a position description will lose. We produce a branded presentation of the candidate for the agency, and we treat them the way our worker charter promises. And we lodge on time, complete, to the character limit. That is the deal: we are hard to get through, and we are worth it once you are.