Author here. I now know some places in Melbourne that have a good success rate on projects. Some of them are so small as to be invisible and rarely hire. One uses two specific independent recruiters or internal referrals. As far as I know, they are extremely profitable because the competition is a joke.
For many organizations, the success rate is indeed 0%. A Group of Eight university (our top 8 universities nationwide), for example, sent me a job description a few months ago where they misspelled the word engineer, and left change tracking on in the Word document. This allowed me to walk through the profiles of the people running their data projects, and it was super obvious that many of the people involved aren't going to do a good job. They could have saved millions by having a random HN person eyeball the CVs of their chosen leadership team.
i think it all goes deeper in overall culture/attitude there.
i was in Melbourne in 2012.. with idea to relocate wholesale, 2nd time. Worked 2 months at some "startup", that fired me when i finished the task given.. Seems it was cheaper to hire "permanent" then fire, rather than take someone on 2 months contract. So that's one red light on the dashboard.. There were other redlights from overall "society", feeling something-is-wrong but i did ignore them for quite a while - people have become evil, etc..
Then i started going around places and mailing my cv here or there (with 22y of experience making software, by that time),.. ibm, ernst&young, you-name-it.. to no avail, and more red-lights flashed on me.. And one day visited some kind of meetup, organised/held in some wellknown company. Seemingly it was kind-of "hiring" event or so, we grouped in teams of 3-4-5 people, with half from company, and other half outsiders.. and went solving some problems of theirs. Or that was the "label". Any solution that any of outsiders suggested, was shot down, with somewhat vague reasons, that at the end started to sound like "if we solve this there'll be no job tomorrow". And Smile :) Lots of smiles. Empty ones.
That was one of the Last red lights on my dashboard. Whether it was a financial balloon pressing everyone so they only smiled and did nothing, in order to pay the mortgage, or something else, i don't know. Next day i watched Sacrifice/1986/Offret by Tarkovsky, and.. bought a ticket out. Discontinued my oz dream. For good.
quoting meself, from 2007-8:
"with time, places change people. Other way happens noticeably only while coming in - or switching on."
For many organizations, the success rate is indeed 0%. A Group of Eight university (our top 8 universities nationwide), for example, sent me a job description a few months ago where they misspelled the word engineer, and left change tracking on in the Word document. This allowed me to walk through the profiles of the people running their data projects, and it was super obvious that many of the people involved aren't going to do a good job. They could have saved millions by having a random HN person eyeball the CVs of their chosen leadership team.