Why Adelaide can’t afford to leave talent at the door
Adelaide is at an inflection point, writes Sam Dighton. “The companies winning in the global economy right now are not the most homogeneous; they are the most inclusive.”
Adelaide is at an important inflection point. As we accelerate towards our ambition of becoming a globally connected hub for defence, technology, health sciences, and the creative industries, we need to attract and retain workforce.
We are actively attracting skilled migrants from around the world, yet too many arrive here only to find the door to meaningful employment firmly shut.
This simply must change. Not just because it is the right thing to do, but because the economic and social cost of getting it wrong is one our state cannot afford.
South Australia has made significant strides in attracting international talent. Our migration programs are well-designed, our universities draw students from dozens of countries, and our liveability is a genuine competitive advantage. The Committee’s Benchmarking Adelaide report demonstrates the success of Adelaide’s reputation.
Attraction is only half the equation. What happens when a highly qualified engineer from India, a financial analyst from Nigeria, or a data scientist from Colombia submits their CV to an Adelaide business? Far too often, the answer is silence. As we saw with InDaily‘s recent 40 Under 40 awards, some of this talent shifts their focus to other entrepreneurial pathways.
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Conscious bias, which is the deliberate discrimination based on nationality, accent, or ethnicity, is illegal and, thankfully, in most organisations, genuinely rare.
Unconscious bias is unfortunately far more pervasive.
Research consistently shows that job applicants with non-Anglo names receive fewer callbacks, even when their qualifications are identical. Interview panels favour candidates who feel “familiar.” Credential recognition processes can function as gatekeeping mechanisms rather than genuine quality standards. These are not malicious acts. They are human ones. But their cumulative effect is a two-tiered labour market that wastes talent, undermines trust and increases our productivity problem.
Then there is a bias so normalised it has become almost invisible: the requirement for local experience.
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Ask any recently arrived migrant professional about their job search, and you will hear the same story. Years of hard-won expertise, often in global companies and world-class institutions, dismissed because it was accumulated somewhere other than Australia. Job advertisements that list “Australian experience preferred” as a criterion are not filtering for competence. They are filtering for familiarity and dressing it up as a standard.
This is particularly damaging because it creates a catch-22 that no amount of individual effort can resolve. You cannot get local experience without a local job. You cannot get a local job without local experience. For skilled migrants, this loop can persist for years, forcing skilled migrants into roles far below their capabilities or out of the workforce entirely. The personal toll is significant. The economic waste in terms of workforce productivity is enormous.
There are, of course, legitimate reasons to value contextual knowledge, such as understanding local regulations, industry structures, or stakeholder relationships. These can all be learned and developed, and they are very different from the blanket preference for local tenure that pervades so many hiring processes. When “local experience” becomes a proxy for comfort rather than a genuine capability requirement, it is bias by another name.
For South Australian businesses, the business case is straightforward. Diverse teams make better decisions. Organisations that draw on a wider range of cultural perspectives are more innovative, more adaptive, and better positioned to serve global markets. The companies winning in the global economy right now are not the most homogeneous; they are the most inclusive.
The Committee for Adelaide calls on our business community to take concrete steps: audit your recruitment processes for structural bias, invest in cultural competency training for hiring managers, commit to diverse shortlists as standard practice, and interrogate every instance where “local experience” appears as a hiring criterion. Ask honestly whether it reflects a genuine operational need, or simply a preference for the familiar.
Adelaide’s future prosperity depends on every talented person who chooses this city feeling genuinely welcome within it, on our streets and in our workplaces. We invited them here. Now we must make room.
The Committee for Adelaide powers the Adelaide Connected program with the support of the South Australian Government.
Sam Dighton is the Committee for Adelaide chief executive.
The Committee for Adelaide is a non-partisan, independent and sector-agnostic think-tank, bringing together businesses, industry bodies, community, and government to help shape the future of Adelaide and South Australia.
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