Recruiters sideline Aussie expats returning home, not enough female workers are tradies, and more top news

The news Australian professionals are talking about now, curated by LinkedIn’s editors. Join the conversation in the comments below.

Many Aussie expats returning after working overseas contend that Australian companies don’t value skills honed abroad and often describe the transition home as “time-consuming, expensive and demoralising.” New research confirms their fears, with 49% of HR professionals admitting they had reservations about recruiting expats and 35% deeming expat candidates “more difficult than it’s worth.” Expats often must accept a “serious pay cut” to come home for a job, and a title demotion. And two-thirds of returned expat workers say they’re now contemplating fleeing back overseas. Here's what people are saying.

More needs to be done to encourage women to become tradies, according to a Charles Sturt University study. It identified hurdles at every stage of a woman's career which prevent them entering these male-dominated industries and assisting with a skills shortage, such as the fact that girls are more likely to be pushed towards higher education than boys, through to a lack of appropriate facilities such as toilets and change-rooms for women on worksites. Here’s what people are saying.

 Australia's "two-speed" workforce is causing significant distress with official figures indicating almost 14% of workers are either underemployed or unemployed, ABC News reports. At the same time, one-in-five workers spend more than 45 hours a week on the job — with 300,000 clocking up in excess of 70 hours. The contrasting experiences demonstrates the layers of complexity behind Australia’s 5% unemployment rate. "It's basically two different sides of the stress coin," labour force economist Conrad Liveris said, and both camps are increasingly “sad and frustrated". Here’s what people are saying. 

There are almost as many mining jobs now as there were back in 2013, during the height of the boom. But they're very different, according to ABC News. There’s a growing need for skills linked to automation technologies, data collection and analysis. Curtin University's WA School of Mines is adapting to this with a new curriculum focusing on robotics and data analytics. McKinsey recently estimated that up to 6.5 million full-time Australian jobs could be affected by automation. Here’s what people are saying. 

Business sentiment has taken a dive, despite record-low interest rates and Canberra’s recent tax relief. NAB's business condition index — a measure of hiring, sales and profits — nearly reached a five-year low in August, and the bank’s business confidence reading slipped from 4 to 1, hinting that the tax cuts haven't helped move the needle on tepid consumer spending. The report follows news that Australia's economy expanded at its slowest annual pace in a decade during the second quarter. Here’s what people are saying. 

Idea of the day: Jim Paleo is Head of Architecture in Delivery and Engineering at Assembly payments, one of LinkedIn's Top Startups for 2019. Paleo says that to work at a startup, you should be comfortable with uncertainty.

“It’s a risk to assume any role is guaranteed. One sits in a better place when the focus is purely on value add, instead of job preservation. I feel the word “gamble” is a framed thought. It’s not a gamble if you know what value you can add, and what you can gain from working in startups.”

What's your take on today’s stories? Share your thoughts in the comments.

— Andrew Murfett