Since beginning its recruitment operations in 1978, Bayside Group has been sourcing and hiring candidates for Australian organisations across a multitude of industries. Over the decades, our specialist recruitment teams have assisted employers through economic downturns, skills shortages and turbulent labour markets. 



During such times, Bayside Group has provided Australian organisations with a solution: on-hiring international professionals who are able to fill the skill gaps while passing on their invaluable experience and knowledge to the Australian workforce. 

Dennis Anderson, Bayside Group Senior Recruitment Consultant responsible for international recruitment, explains Bayside Group’s long history with sourcing talent from overseas, which first began on a larger scale in 2006 when assisting Ford Motor Company source 150 automotive design specialists for a large project. 

“After searching to identify these candidates in Australia, we realised that the highly specialised design skills Ford required just didn’t exist locally,” says Dennis. “We instead moved our search overseas to identify ideal candidates and sponsored them into Ford’s design studio. 

“The result was successful completion of the project, coupled with the on-hired international employees mentoring Ford’s local employees and imparting their knowledge to this workforce.” 

To this day, Bayside Group has continued to provide Ford with 482 Visa Sponsorship Services to fill skill gaps, something Ford’s General Manager Contact Centre Operations Carl Parkin says has been invaluable to the Australian arm of the company.   

“Bayside Group over many years have seamlessly sourced and engaged international talent for our business when skills weren’t available in Australia, assisting us to deliver key projects while contributing to technological advances,” he says. 

Though sponsorship can indeed be a method of sourcing skilled candidates, Dennis says that one of the main reasons Australian organisations choose to on-hire international professionals through a company like Bayside Group is to mitigate risk and avoid the time-consuming paperwork and legalities involved. 

“Most organisations don’t want to get involved in the intricacies of sponsoring people themselves and applying for a Standard Business Sponsorship,” he explains, as the rules are stringent. “For example, labour market testing needs to be performed to demonstrate that the necessary skills can’t be found in Australia. Once this has been established, then there’s numerous steps in the actual sponsorship of an international professional, once the individual has been identified.” 

“This could include comprehensive health checks, police checks, English language tests, a diary of where and when they’ve travelled over the last 10 years. It’s exceptionally involved, and a lot of employers understand why it’s so beneficial to outsource this component.” 

If requirements aren’t met, international candidates won’t be approved for 482 Visa sponsorship. But there are also ongoing compliance risks in relation to meeting immigration requirements. For example, if an international employee’s job changes while working in Australia and immigration is not notified, this could result in the organisation being sanctioned from sponsoring employees again for a certain number of years.