TEQSA | Student Advisory Panel Recruitment

Question

Senator FARUQI: How much is TEQSA paying recruitment agency Elliott Gray for its work on the student advisory panel? Mr Akman: I can't give you the exact figure, but I believe approximately $29,000 excluding GST is the anticipated value of that contract. Senator FARUQI: That work couldn't have been done in-house? Mr Akman: We are running a process to recruit a student advisory panel. We received 515 applications for that panel, and Elliot Gray is supporting us through that three-tiered process. This is the first time we have run a recruitment of this kind. This is the first time we've developed a student advisory panel. It's not something that's usual in Public Service recruitment. It's a very specific, bespoke recruitment process that we've designed specifically to enable all types of students to apply, not just students who have available time or can go through a normal process. That requires some specific skills both in reaching a broad range of students from a diverse background and in developing a recruitment process to ensure that we bring a panel of eight to 10 people together who work constructively and well together. That isn't a standard process that we run. This is a one-off recruitment that we're doing to help us develop that skills understanding ourselves. Once that is done, we will continue to do those processes in-house from the second year onwards. Senator FARUQI: I'm presuming that Elliot Gray has expertise in working with students and education. Mr Akman: Elliot Gray has experience, for example, in conducting large graduate recruitment rounds and things like that. Senator FARUQI: When will the panel be announced? Mr Akman: We've gone through two stages of recruitment now. As I said, we received 515 initial applications. We've gone to a second phase where we received 100 written applications. From next week we'll be undertaking group interviews, which will be conducted over about two weeks. We expect to finish that recruitment process within the next four to six weeks. Senator FARUQI: You obviously have criteria for recruiting the student panel. Could we have on notice the criteria that you have developed. Mr Akman: There is an assessment rubric for each stage, and we can provide that on notice.

Answer

Please see the attached PDF.

Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• SQ26-000731.pdf (opens in a new tab)