Anna Robson On Growing Refugee Talent Through Recruitment Technologies & Social Enterprise

Anna Robson is CEO & Co-Founder of Refugee & Migrant Talent (RMT) whose experience working on Nauru led her to meet her co-founder Nirary Dacho, a Syrian refugee with a tech background at a Techfugees hackathon in 2015 and start Refugee Talent.

They have built RMT into a social enterprise providing recruitment and technology solutions that raise the visibility of refugees, and other minority groups, in terms of their skills, experience, qualifications and aspirations and connect them with employers to gain meaningful sustainable long term employment.

Anna discusses elevating refugee employability through innovative technology solutions and the broader social enterprise movement throughout Australia.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - Anna, could you please share a bit about your background and what led you to your passion in social enterprise?

[Anna Robson] - My background is in sports coaching and management, which is what I studied at university 10 years ago. I started off coaching kids' sports and working in elite sport travelling, and did a few random jobs as you do, like teaching English in South Korea to kids (which was really fun). But then I got a job on Nauru for Save The Children, doing sports activities with the refugees that were locked up in detention on Nauru. Really, that experience changed and impacted me a lot.

Just seeing people who'd faced so much trauma already in their country and then us locking them up on this island effectively in a jail, and then also seeing how skilled they were, [I realised] treating them like this was the problem. Everyone just wanted to work, build their life, contribute and be a human being with rights.

Just working there, I thought, "well, how can I change this? What can I do to, to change this?" After I finished working on Nauru, I went back to Sydney and I saw this event called Techfugees, and it was a hackathon on how to bring technology to refugee problems. There I met my co-founder Nirary Dacho, who was a Syrian refugee who had got to Australia through a humanitarian program. There I saw even if you made it to Australia or another country with a Visa, you then had another problem of trying to find employment in your new country.

With no local experience in Australia (which is a bit of a misconception as these people have global experience) plus no social network, overseas qualifications, language barriers and trying to fit in a new country, you really are at a disadvantage against an Australian like myself who has grown up here.

Competing in the normal job market on SEEK doesn't work for refugees. We saw there was a problem of why isn't there a SEEK for refugees and why didn't it exist already? Nirary and I had this idea of Refugee Talent, where refugees across Australia could register their CV and their details, be visible to employers that recognised that those barriers existed for refugees in the job market. They could then come to a national database and hire the right talent that they needed. That was five years ago now that we met, and some of the key milestones along the way have been that we've worked with over 600 companies across Australia and getting those first big corporate or government partnerships were really key. As well, we are partnering with Talent Beyond Boundaries; they are working with refugees still offshore in Jordan and Lebanon.

We managed to create a new skilled refugee pathway which was really the problem that I was trying to fix from Nauru, of people being stuck somewhere and seen as this problem, but actually they are skilled talent.

They could be an additional source of refugee intake to a country. Working with Talent Beyond Boundaries has been a really key part of our journey, and then obviously the social enterprise movement as well in Australia is really picking up steam and that's really exciting. We've had the Victorian Social Procurement Framework, which has offered lots of opportunities there. Now we're seeing this in other States like New South Wales and Queensland where it's really growing. It's exciting to be in this industry and being able to have an impact.

Absolutely. As CEO at Refugee and Migrant Talent, can you tell us a little bit more than about your future plans? I hear you might be launching something in the near future. Tell us a bit more about where you are at and where are you heading? You're five years in now, so you're on this growth trajectory, right?

We started off just doing recruitment of domestic refugees in Australia and internationally as well. But the last few years we've had a bit of a shift of also providing our technology software solutions to other refugee organisations to help them capture that CV data of their candidates. Then at the same time those candidates are in our national database, which we can help with through advocacy to specific industry bodies, like the medical or engineering bodies on behalf of refugees nationally.

We’ve had this shift into more of technology solutions and recruitment, [but] then the other shift is we also provided this recruitment solution through the social procurement framework to Level Crossing in Victoria.

It enabled them to hire not just refugees, but people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, disability or other cohorts that are facing barriers to employment. When we designed that solution [Wave XD], we thought it was just a one-off project, but then when we did it, we realised actually other employers need this solution to connect better with those organisations that are supporting all those groups, and through the software linking them up together and looking at every job as a possible job to hire someone from that background.

Often employers will just pick a few jobs, five out of a thousand perhaps, and send them to those organisations. Through technology, we're able to scrape all the career page job vacancies, and then match them against all the candidate resume data and see, "oh, actually they're the jobs where you've got matches."

Then we can increase the likelihood of employment outcomes for those different groups.

Working with the providers/employers and the refugees/job seekers I'm sure has given you a unique viewpoint on where unique opportunities exist and where refugees are really coming up against pain points and problems. What are your thoughts on that in Australia right now, and what channels exist for us to provide better support?

One of the key gaps in the refugee sector is actually capturing that CV data early on with software.

Usually it's when they’ve got the job available, [the employer] then find the CV, but we're trying to encourage those organisations to capture the skills, experience and aspirations of people earlier on before the job data exists.

Then once you've got that data, you can map it against job vacancies.

That's one of the gaps we're trying to fill, but then some of the key opportunities in the sector is also in regional Australia.

There's a lot of job vacancies, and regional areas can be very welcoming to new arrivals, so it's again matching those opportunities and capturing those job vacancies against potential people that want to move. We've done that with our Talent Beyond Boundaries candidates, mapping their CV while they're still offshore in Jordan/Lebanon, working with employers in country and then moving them directly to those regional areas rather than them moving to a capital city first and then trying to move out.

People make attachments when they first come and they've already been displaced, so you want to move them straight to an area where they want to stay and build their life and make connections.

Five years now after building a couple of platforms and growing this enterprise, what's one of the biggest mistakes that you've made and what have you learned from it?

It's maybe chasing customers that weren't so interested. Sometimes, you're trying with different members of that organisation [also], but

I think it's better to work with those customers that really get what you do, are aligned, and then look for new opportunities within that relationship to build new work.

Maybe it doesn't happen so quickly, because you have to balance that and financially survive, but it's working with and strengthening those relationships you already have.

Of course, you're looking for new people to work with all the time, but often if you've had many no’s, then it's better to just leave it and then maybe they will come back to you later when they're ready and they see you have progressed a little bit more. We wasted a bit of time trying to work with some companies and maybe they just weren't ready.

It takes a long time to establish those relationships and get those things through, but I think it's a good point of focusing on those that you're working with rather than scoping out new people. [It's really] finding a balance.

Exactly.

In terms of recommendations for other social impact entrepreneurs who are at that early stage of starting up, what would some of your key advice be?

I think it’s to do an incubator program if you can. We did two early on, one was SSI Ignite, with SSI, the Refugee Organisation based in NSW, and it was early on establishing your business number, business plan and getting a mentor. That just helped early on to guide us. Then we did a longer program with The Difference Incubator.

It just made us think that you don't know what you don't know, so you're learning all these different concepts that you're not thinking of so early on, but it's good to just have a bit of knowledge of them, so when you're progressing at the right stage, you know where to go or can go ask someone.

The other key part of being in those incubator programs is one, you get mentors, but two, you share the journey with other social enterprises or businesses. You can just sort of see you're not the only one facing these highs and lows, and you can share the journey and make friendships. It's really worthwhile doing.

Part of it is community and sharing the frustration; you really need it. Let's talk about some other inspiring projects or initiatives. Who else are you seeing out there right now in this impact enterprise/social enterprise space doing some great work?

There's a great one, and it just started this year called Migrant Women In Business, run by Corinne Kemp and Luz Restrepo. They're working with migrant women who want to start a business, as women face different challenges to men. It's a really worthwhile enterprise and it's really needed in this space; they're doing great things. Also, just during COVID, I think it's inspiring seeing people and community groups helping the elderly with tasks or chefs delivering meals to healthcare workers and those big sing-alongs in Zoom calls. I think it's inspiring and really positive, with some good things yet to come out of the COVID pandemic.

Anna, people have been picking up lots of books during COVID, especially with this extra time and the efficiencies of having back to back Zoom calls all day. What books would you recommend to our listeners? Are there any podcasts, blogs or things that you read?

I'm a big reader, so I've got a couple of recommendations. The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek is a great one.

It's just trying to think of the long term and not just let short-term decisions rule. It's hard because you have to balance it out of course, but it's about sticking to your values and building a good culture and how ultimately you will reap the benefits of those decisions.

That's a great book. Another one is Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales. She goes and interviews people who have just faced unimaginable horrors, and highlights how they faced it. It also discusses what the people around them could have done to support them better. It's just a really inspiring book that makes you so grateful and makes you think if anything like that happened to either yourself or somebody you knew; you would know better how you can deal with that. Another one I'm reading at the moment is Wintering: The Art of Rest and Retreat In Difficult Times.

An appropriate one to end on here, especially with the holidays coming up!

It is! It's just about the good times to hibernate and the good times to do things. It's just a good balanced book. Then, other good podcasts that I've followed during our journey is NPR How I Built This. It's just interviewing founders about their journey, and everybody face highs and lows, so it's just good to hear people's journey and how everyone's got a different story. It's fascinating.

Well, there's a few great books and a good podcast there. Thanks so much for sharing your insights and time.