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Wait times blowing out amid "extraordinary" demand for overseas talent

With providers "inundated" with requests for overseas talent and processing times blowing out, the Government must increase skilled migration caps, a workforce solutions specialist says.

"We are seeing an extraordinary rise in demand for talent from overseas," says Neil Merola, APAC head of People 2.0 (formerly Entity Solutions), which has an on-hire labour agreement in place.

"As organisations have started resource planning and skills gap analysis, it's clear that they cannot find the necessary skills here, particularly for high-end digital and IT skills."

Now that the borders have opened up there are some great skills employers will have access to, Merola says, and there's a "tremendous apex" right now, with a lot of overseas workers wanting to come to Australia.

"They really want to come here, and those skills are required by customers. So we are getting inundated with requests to serve the visa requirements for those customers."

Merola believes the Federal Government will consider increasing the overall numbers of international workers coming in, because he has seen thresholds change for some service providers – "not that they've necessarily released anything to the market"...