Government HR managers and public sector recruiters should be proactively going after the thousands of Australians who’ve lost their jobs in the financial crisis with incentives to return home, a top recruitment consultant has said.

With thousands of jobs lost in Europe and the US in recent months, a huge number of Australians have come onto the international job market but are being lured by cities such as Singapore, Dubai and Beijing.

Head of Government, Education, and Public sector recruitment for Hudson International, Paul Baker said: “Those people would be interested in employment in this country for educational packages for their children and accommodation packages for themselves and not so much the salary levels that they’ve received in the US,” said , sector .

Australia has one of the highest numbers of people living and working overseas with approximately 15 per cent of its workforce in Europe and the US. Mr Baker said that in order to attract these candidates back to Australia the public sector had to become more innovative about the way it approaches recruitment.

“In relation to countries such as Canada, we’re very much second comers in that race, some of these countries are tackling that with a lot more vigour than what we are in this country at the moment,” Mr Baker said. “There is a labour pool there and it’s a very skilled, highly and widely experienced labor pool, who would consider coming back for the right accommodation and educational packages.

“These are expats who would consider coming home. I’m just mentioning that as the type of flexible innovative thinking required by levels of government to attract these people into positions with a fairly good chance of retaining them at the end of their period.

There are over 100,000 Australians in overseas countries earning more than $100,000 a year. It is estimated that more than 150,000 people have lost their jobs globally in the last year due to the credit crunch and the ongoing global financial crisis.

 National President of the Australian Local Government Managers Association (LGMA), Ray Pincombe said that whilst there were short gains to be made from the fallout of the financial crisis, most Australian councils were looking for long-term recruits.

 “I think there are opportunities and they’ve been talking about the same thing in the UK, that people who are losing jobs in finance and IT would provide opportunities… and we’re keen for opportunities like that.”