​In April this year, Reconciliation Australia (RA) utilised Chandler Macleod Group (CMG) to source an Indigenous Governance Program Manager to join their organisation. As some of you may know, this is an amazing role and great opportunity for the right candidate, but it also had the challenge of filling the role due to the mandatory requirement to recruit a person of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent. This limited the pool of candidates that we could work with. However, CMG has an industry-wide reputation as a market leader in sourcing Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander roles, even those that can be hard to fill.

Reconciliation Australia were looking for someone who identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander with a high-level ability to develop and maintain productive relationships with a range of stakeholders, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and organisations, government, corporate and not-for-profit sectors. The successful individual, as you can see, would require exceptional experience. Chandler Macleod, and in particular Talal, the RA Account Manager were extremely enthusiastic to work on this role, especially as this was the first opportunity for a high profile, Indigenous position for the Canberra office. 

Talal began the recruitment process by developing an in-depth understanding of the role’s requirements that RA were seeking for this position. By gaining a deeper understanding of the role, Chandler Macleod were able to create a specified sourcing strategy. We then used our BestFit model to ensure the candidate possessed the right skills and experience, whilst also ensuring they had the right level of motivation and were a suitable fit for the culture of the client. We went on to guarantee that the candidate had a genuine passion for giving back to the Indigenous community and people. It was clear this was a large motivation for the successful candidate as they left a permanent role with one of the Big 4 consultancy firms, to be part of RA’s mission. The contract was effectively signed in May, ready for a start date in June.



Chandler Macleod were also able to place a Senior Policy Officer for Reconciliation Australia and are looking forward to working with RA to fill more roles in the future.