At a recent Geelong Business Club dinner, I asked a question that didn’t quite land. It followed KPMG’s presentation of the Geelong Risk Landscape Report: a thoughtful summary of insights gathered from 31 in-depth interviews with local business leaders, mapping out the region’s growth trajectory, structural vulnerabilities, and proposed economic safeguards. When the floor opened to questions, I posed one to the room:
Are we really short on talent, or have we simply become too accustomed to the idea that it should walk in gift-wrapped through the front door?
There were a few furrowed brows, a few polite nods. But mostly, it was met with the glazed civility you’d give an acquaintance explaining crypto at a wedding.
To be clear, the themes presented that evening echoed what many are feeling. Workforce shortages remain a dominant narrative, and, on the surface, the data seems to support it. Like much of regional Australia, Geelong has felt the pressure of limited candidate availability. It’s true that more than 300,000 international students exited during COVID, many of whom had formed the backbone of our service industries. It’s also true that TAFE and university enrolments have dropped in several critical fields. And yes, the national data confirms that regional roles, particularly in healthcare, trades and education, have far lower fill rates than their metro counterparts. But what those figures don’t reveal is the role our own systems, assumptions and signals might be playing in who sees our opportunities as worth pursuing.
In my world of executive search, strategic recruitment and talent advice, I regularly speak with clients who say they can’t find the right people. And in many cases, they can’t. Not through the traditional channels, anyway. But the next layer usually reveals something quietly consistent – in that the same methods, used again and again, are having thinner returns.
The assumption is often that Geelong’s candidate pool has simply dried up. But in a region where the professional population has grown steadily, the issue is rarely scarcity. It’s alignment. If we continue pointing to macro-level shortages without truly examining what is happening within our own businesses, and across our own region, we risk misdiagnosing the issue entirely. Worse still, we overlook the one lever that remains fully within our control – how we attract, engage and retain talent in this city. We can’t have a conversation about talent shortages without also interrogating how employers are showing up to the hiring table. A leadership team struggles to fill a role they’ve under-invested in for years, and suddenly it’s framed as a market issue. A generic ad goes up, attached to a stale value proposition, and the applicants underwhelm? There’s a drought. It’s easier, of course, to call it a shortage than to reckon with what’s really happening. That the way we recruit, and how much ownership we take over it, is still stuck in a pre-pandemic rhythm. If our methods haven’t moved forward, it’s no wonder our results keep pulling us back.
While the absence of international students was felt most acutely in hospitality and retail, it’s important to note that the years since have also seen structural adaptation. Some businesses closed entirely. Others rebuilt with leaner teams. Many introduced QR codes, app-based ordering, online bookings and rostering software, deliberately reducing reliance on frontline staff. According to Deloitte Access Economics, more than 30 per cent of hospitality and retail businesses adopted digital ordering automation between 2020 and 2022. At the same time, Geelong’s CBD saw a marked drop in lunchtime foot traffic, driven by hybrid work, commercial vacancies and commuter hesitation. Fewer impulse purchases. No one ducking out for sushi. So while the pool of casual workers may have shrunk, the structure of demand has changed too. To frame this purely as a shortage without accounting for shifts in technology, consumption and employer adaptation is to tell only part of the story.
Meanwhile, particularly across Geelong’s white-collar workforce, that broader ‘shortage’ narrative starts to read a little like fiction here. While we’re criticising the perceived or assumed lack of talent, we’re also recognising Geelong as Australia’s fastest-growing regional hub. ABS figures show that Victoria recorded a population loss of over 130,000 to Queensland between 2020 and 2023. Geelong, by contrast, welcomed more than 20,000 net positive new residents from Melbourne in that same period. The pandemic reframed lifestyle preferences, accelerated regional relocation, and encouraged city-dwellers to reassess their priorities.
And yet, the Bingle jingle, echoing from Moorabool Street to Malop, remains: where the bloody hell are you?
We keep asking where the people are, but are we asking whether what we’re offering is worth finding? Whether our local roles, employer value propositions, and recruitment channels are compelling to the evolved talent pool we’re now hoping to reach? In hiring across corporate, advisory and professional sectors, the issue is rarely absence. It’s invisibility. Especially in regions like Geelong, where we’ve historically had the benefit of loyalty, localism and a bit of geographical insulation. For a long time, ‘good enough’ has filled most roles, but we’re not in that economy anymore. Greater Geelong’s population now sits close to 283,000, and nearly 42,500 of those residents leave the region each day to work elsewhere. That’s not a shortage. That’s a sign. They’re not missing persons. They’re simply heading out of town because their career hasn’t found a foothold locally.
Many Geelong employers have returned to a four-day in-office rhythm, while Melbourne-based businesses continue to operate more flexibly. Candidates who relocated to the region but retained Melbourne-based roles have largely done so because they only commute once or twice a week, if at all. That flexibility remains one of the market’s strongest pull factors, but it’s not an unbeatable one. Those individuals could just as easily be working locally, if the opportunity felt aligned. While lifestyle may lure, it’s rarely enough on its own, and increasingly, people want to be part of something well-considered and well-led. These days, the gap isn’t money (many white-collar roles in Geelong now attract salaries broadly on par with their Melbourne CBD counterparts), it’s meaning. And just as often, it’s messaging. Now, more than ever, we have extraordinary talent already living across Greater Geelong. Some are leading national portfolios from their home office in Highton. Others are managing teams across global markets while taking calls from Barwon Heads. But they may not be aware of the opportunities around them, and perhaps no one has directly invited or appealed to them to consider a change.
There’s no doubt that Australia is in a complex labour moment. But ‘shortage’ is starting to feel like a blanket term. One that absolves employers of their role in shaping, engaging and sustaining the workforce they need. A business that’s had the same job ad live for six weeks without strong applicants doesn’t just have a pipeline problem, it may have a strategy problem. Or a brand problem. Or a visibility issue. Or a retention concern that’s quietly making the role unappealing. If we’re going to talk about workforce shortages honestly, we need to include these factors too. This is the disconnect I see most clearly. Businesses continuing to hire reactively, with no long-range view, no meaningful outreach, and no structured effort to engage passive talent. That kind of approach places enormous pressure on inbound response alone. Then, when the response is underwhelming, the market is blamed. In many cases, the real issue is a narrow funnel built on outdated habits. And I don’t say this to diminish the effort already being made. Many of the organisations I work with are deeply capable, commercially strong and genuinely values-driven. But recruitment, for all its strategic weight, is still treated as an operational task. It’s rarely considered until it’s urgent. Not because leaders don’t care, but because it hasn’t been given the same importance as finance, operations or business development. The trouble is, that delay carries significant cost. According to Deloitte, the average cost to replace an employee, factoring in advertising, onboarding, lost productivity and interim disruption, sits somewhere around $35,000. That’s a substantial outlay, and one that warrants a more deliberate approach. It’s not just about attracting someone, but attracting the right someone. And if the process is rushed or mishandled, and the choice comes down to the best of a bad bunch, that cost can easily double, if not triple, if the wrong person is appointed.
At the same time, LinkedIn’s latest Global Talent Trends report shows that 88 per cent of professionals are open to a new opportunity. Yet fewer than 30 per cent are ever approached. That suggests we’re not facing a talent shortage so much as an attention shortage – a failure to reach the right people, in the right way, before urgency takes over. SEEK’s own Hiring Trends Report shows that 78 per cent of SMEs still rely primarily on inbound applicants. Only 12 per cent maintain long-term talent pipelines. Fewer still are engaging passive candidates with any consistency. And yet, the passive market remains the most influential one, especially in white-collar and executive hiring, where the best people aren’t scrolling job boards. They’re already working. Leading. Delivering. Most are open to change, but they’re not browsing over breakfast hoping your job ad appears. This isn’t a supply issue. It’s a sourcing issue. And those two things are not the same.
For Geelong, the broader ambition is clear. We want to attract residents, reinvigorate our CBD, and support thriving businesses. But without compelling, contemporary, future-focused workplaces, we’re simply building houses and hoping people come. We need to build careers. And make this a region where ambitious, values-aligned professionals can see themselves thriving in the 9-5, not by default, but by design.
That won’t happen while we continue advertising stagnant roles, on outdated platforms, with little thought given to structure, story or voice. Yes, the lifestyle here is enviable, but lifestyle is no longer enough. If we’re promoting beaches and brunch spots while offering careers that lack pace or direction, then we’re selling serenity without substance. And if we want our local economy to flourish, not just in housing starts or retail spend, but in ideas, outcomes and long-term capability, we need more than rooftops and ring roads. We need intent woven through every job spec, every team structure, every leadership appointment. That doesn’t necessarily mean a complete overhaul or exorbitant resources. It starts much smaller than that. It begins with seeing talent as a relationship to cultivate, not a vacancy to fill. With rewriting the role before it’s vacated. With lifting the brief from operational to meaningful. With taking the time to articulate what this person will help build, not just what they’ll manage. And harnessing new ways to get the message across.
COVID, among other things, was a pandemic of perspective. It forced people to reassess their time, their energy, their tolerance for extraction. For many, it wasn’t burnout that pushed them to leave, but the quiet realisation of how long they had been burnt out. I’ve seen former teachers now thriving in corporate services. Nurses now leading in project management. These people didn’t leave the workforce. They left workplaces that no longer worked for them.
So let’s be deliberate with our language.
A talent shortage implies we’re searching through empty streets. But the people are here. What’s changed is what they’re willing to tolerate, and whether they can see a place for themselves in what’s being offered across our region.
Some industries may never rebuild their former pipelines. But if we want to re-engage the next generation, or reposition the work for those already here, we need to start from the ground up. With roles that speak to potential, not just performance. With graduate pathways that are properly scaffolded. With job design that protects energy, not just output. And just as critically, with messaging that actually cuts through. Storytelling that speaks to people’s values. Visibility that goes beyond a static job ad. Because the way a role is written, shared, and brought to life is often the difference between being noticed and being overlooked.
Many of the barriers we face are not external. They sit quietly inside leadership teams that haven’t revisited succession in years. Inside hiring habits that are still built around set and forget. Inside assumptions that proactive outreach is either unnecessary, or unaffordable. Inside roles that promise high performance, but deliver burnout and attrition instead.
The opportunity is already planted here. Not lost. Just waiting to be brought to fruition.