Welcome to the show. Winter, 11,400. That's roughly how many active NDIS-related listings SEEK is carrying nationally at any given time in 2026, and if your ad just says "Support Worker Wanted"... you're basically whispering into a cyclone. Hang on -- 11,400 on SEEK ALONE? That's the bit I'd want burned into my brain. Because suddenly "we posted the role" doesn't sound like a strategy. It sounds like tossing a flyer out the car window on the Pacific Motorway. Exactly. And this is the mistake I see all the time. Providers ask, "Where should we post?" when the sharper question is, "Which platform matches the exact human we want?" Are we after someone values-driven? Someone already experienced with complex supports? Someone local to the Gold Coast? Or someone new to the sector who's trainable and aligned? And those are completely different ads, right? Because a Gold Coast community support role is not the same creature as a specialist support coordinator role. If you market both the same way, you're flattening the job before anyone even clicks. That's it. A generic headline gets buried fast. On a high-volume board like SEEK, the listings that convert tend to do four things really well: specific headline, clear pay rates, a genuine description of the organisation and participant cohort, and a very straightforward application process. If the ad is vague, candidates assume the job will be vague too. I wanna sit on "participant cohort" for a second, because that's one of those phrases providers say internally and candidates actually care about in real life. You mean: who am I supporting day to day? Kids, adults, SIL, community access, high-intensity supports -- that sort of thing? Yes. And it matters because experienced support workers are screening for fit, not just hours. If you tell them the shift pattern, the location, the support environment, and who they'll be working with, you're helping the right person self-select in. If you don't, you'll get a pile of applications from people who just saw "NDIS" and hit apply. Which is the hidden cost, hey. Everyone focuses on ad spend, but the real drain is reading twenty applications from people who were never going to take the role. Or worse -- should never have been shortlisted. Right. And regional filtering is where this gets practical very quickly. SEEK can be especially useful in places like the Gold Coast, Adelaide, or Perth because candidates often search locally. That means your spend is more likely to hit people actually willing to work in that area, not someone browsing from three hours away. So let me try to play this back. The first decision isn't "job board or not?" It's more like a casting brief. If the role is local and frontline, that shapes the platform. If it's specialist and senior, that changes everything. Almost like you're choosing a fishing spot based on the fish, not based on whether you happen to own one rod. That's a good way to put it. And I'd go one step further: your ad is not an announcement, it's a filter. The best ads repel the wrong applicants as much as they attract the right ones. Which sounds rude until you've hired in disability support. Then it sounds like self-preservation. Okay, so if SEEK is the giant -- the 11,400-listings giant -- why not just live there? Why bother with the rest? Because volume and quality are not the same thing. SEEK is still the dominant platform for disability support roles in Australia, no question. It's where most experienced support workers go first. But it's crowded, and crowded markets reward precision. If your listing is sharp, SEEK can deliver scale. If it's lazy, it disappears. So SEEK is like the busiest shopping centre in town. Great foot traffic, but if your shopfront looks bland and your sign says basically nothing, people walk straight past. Exactly. Now, EthicalJobs is a different proposition. It's built around not-for-profit, community, and social services work. The reason that matters is motivation. EthicalJobs attracts candidates who are actively looking for purpose-driven roles. And there's research showing 72 per cent of Gen Y workers won't apply to an organisation whose values they don't believe in. That's not fluff -- that's applicant behaviour. Seventy-two per cent is huge. That's not a nice-to-have employer brand thing; that's "three out of four people might scroll on" territory. So if you're a provider with a strong mission and a decent culture, EthicalJobs lets you lead with that instead of burying it under generic recruitment speak. Yes, and NDS members can access discounted rates for EthicalJobs through the NDS Workforce Hub, which is worth knowing before you spend a dollar. The Workforce Hub is also useful for recruitment tools, values-based recruitment guidance, and even employee referral scheme ideas through apps like Care Friends and Odoo. I like that because it shifts recruitment from "write ad, hope" to an actual system. But let's talk about the platform people still underestimate -- Facebook Groups. They really do underestimate them. Facebook Groups remain one of the most active local channels in this sector, especially for community-based and regional recruiting. The NDIS Participants Jobs Board on Facebook has nearly 1,800 followers, and then you've got dozens of other groups across cities, regions, and cultural communities. That's where you can reach people who aren't actively refreshing SEEK. And that's the magic bit for me -- community connection. If you're recruiting for a role with specific cultural language requirements, or a very local participant match, those groups can outperform a polished national ad because the trust is already there. People hear about roles through each other long before they update a profile anywhere. Yes, and that connects neatly to JobAccess. Different tool, different strength. JobAccess is the Australian Government's national hub for workplace and disability employment, delivered by genU from 1 January 2025. It's free, and for providers who want to recruit candidates with lived experience of disability, it's incredibly valuable. It also helps employers understand obligations around inclusive hiring and access funding for workplace adjustments through the Employment Assistance Fund. I think "lived experience" is one of those phrases people nod at without really acting on it. But if JobAccess helps you hire people with disability -- and support them properly once they're in -- that's not just a social good. It changes participant outcomes because the perspective inside the team changes. And the evidence base around employees with disability often points to stability and reliability as well. So this isn't charity. It's smart workforce design. Right. Now, for senior roles, I get a bit twitchy when people chuck them onto the same channels as frontline roles. Because LinkedIn exists for a reason. Agreed. LinkedIn is far more effective for support coordinators, allied health practitioners, behaviour support practitioners, and management roles. DSC uses LinkedIn extensively to connect with professionals across the NDIS disability sector. For a standard support worker role, LinkedIn is usually not your best bet. For anything above frontline delivery, though, direct outreach there can be one of the highest-quality channels available. So if I'm hiring a behaviour support practitioner, I'm not waiting for them to stumble across a generic post. I'm going where professionals already keep their public career identity polished and visible. That's the logic. And if the role is really hard to fill -- say specialist support coordinators, allied health clinicians, SIL team leaders -- specialist disability recruitment agencies can access pre-screened candidates who never hit the job boards at all. Agencies like Healthcare Australia, ONCALL Group, and Drake Medox have active talent pools across major cities and regions. Some providers resist agencies because of cost. Fair enough. But if the alternative is leaving a specialist role vacant for months, that "saving" can get expensive very quickly. Exactly. And don't forget the new-entrant pipeline. Workforce Australia is useful if you're open to training career changers from hospitality, retail, and other service industries. And TAFE or university noticeboards can create a direct line to students in Certificate III, Certificate IV, allied health, or social work pathways. That's how you build future supply instead of fighting only over the same experienced pool. Which lands us on the big principle, really. No single platform is going to solve workforce shortage in disability support. The strongest providers go multi-channel: SEEK for volume, EthicalJobs for values, Facebook Groups for local trust, JobAccess for inclusive hiring, LinkedIn for senior roles, agencies for the hard stuff, Workforce Australia and training institutions for the pipeline. Then they actually TRACK where the best hires came from. Yes -- and they don't wait until a roster hole becomes a crisis. Recruitment works better as a continuous presence than a panic post. If you're always telling a clear story about the work -- meaningful, challenging, varied, secure, with room to grow -- the right people start noticing before you desperately need them. That's the part I keep coming back to. In a market with 11,400 competing listings, the winning ad isn't the loudest one. It's the one that makes the right person think, "Oh -- this role was written for someone like me."
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