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| Home Comforts | | Released: 15/02/2003 09:17 AM | | | Having built his business on recruiting for offshore mines, particularly in Indonesia and PNG, John Davidson, in uncertain geopolitical times, is keen to refocus on Australia.
The ex-Vietnam veteran forged his Pacific expertise over 20 years at Rio Tinto's Bougainville copper mine, with ten years in charge of expatriate recruitment.
When an island revolt closed the operation Davidson formed John Davidson & Associates in 1990. Leveraging his Bougainville experience, the firm's early years focused on offshore clients, including ZCCM in Zambia, Kelian and Kaltim Primain Indonesia and Ok Tedi, Porgera and Lihir in PNG.
Since then the company has grown dramatically to 100 staff in three offices in Perth, Jakarta and Port Moresby. This includes five mining engineers, a chemist and a metallurgist.
"Our speciality is servicing remote location mine sites, and they may be in Australia or overseas," said Davidson. "We attract individuals looking for a medium to high income, who are happy to work away from suburbia."
Now, Davidson is intent on re-positioning the firm, and strengthening the Australian component of its business.
"It's getting a lot tougher in Indonesia and PNG, and we are now very focused on returning to Australia," he said. "We'll continue with our offshore clients but we want to be seen as a supplier of professionals and technician level people in Australia."
Davidson noted that in doing this his company would face "cutthroat competition" in the Australian market. In assessing the local scene, Davidson said that it is possible to split the market into professional recruiters, and companies specialising in contract labour at the technician level.
"Lots of companies profess to do both, but normally their database will be geared to one sector," he said.
In terms of supply and demand, Davidson described a shortage of key mining people.
"In general, professionals in the mining industry are hard to get," he said, "whether they are maintenance engineers, metallurgists or mining engineers, especially people that are mid-career, aged late twenties to early forties, and highly marketable.
"And if a mining company or contractor gets a quality- individual in that bracket they'll put the golden handcuffs on them.
"Having said that, the hardest to get are mining engineers. You can advertise Australia-wide for mine planning engineers with good technical services skills and sometimes you won't get a single applicant. That's where our database comes in, and we've got 3,000 plus mining engineers on it."
Davidson also noted a shortage of mid-career metallurgists, although he said that there were plenty of graduates, with one to two years' experience, as well those aged fifty plus "in the twilight of their career."
Pivotal to a recruiter's success, said Davidson, is its database.
"Our candidate database drives the business," he said, "but it can be a millstone as it takes a lot of resources to keep it current. But it's not meaningful unless it's current."
Looking to the future, Davidson foresaw the Internet and new communications technologies having the potential to undercut the role of recruiters.
"There's a danger that recruiters could become irrelevant," he said. "Recruiters need to be very attuned to adding value. Clients won't accept a handful of CVs on the desk any more. They want credible advice on how they structure their staff and internal relationships."
Source: Australian Journal of Mining, January / February 2003 |
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