WAGGA City Council is hailing its Sydney office a success after bringing seven new employees to the team.
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The idea to open an office in the state's capital came in a bid to fix the ongoing struggle to fill vacant positions.
Wagga council's general manager Peter Thompson said by removing the all-or-nothing choice, which stopped people from considering regional jobs, the council was able to pick the best candidate from a pool of 300 applications.
"We really had the benefit of choice in the recruitment," he said. "[The seven new employees] are exceptionally well-qualified and already producing results on the ground in terms of design input that we just couldn't provide internally."
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Mr Thompson said the new employees offer the council a range of skills from specialist design, project management and scheduling, as well as years of experience that they previously struggle to attract.
"There is a specialist design engineer of 40 years experience, who was previously employed as a manager with Sydney City Council, there is an engineer with specialist flood modelling and design skills and a specialist traffic engineer who focuses on traffic flows and intersection designs," he said.
The employees will be assisting with infrastructure-related tasks including subdivision, storm water and traffic designs.
"New subdivision projects is an area where we aren't where we should be," Mr Thompson said.
"Some people are allocated to just designing our future subdivisions and working with developers in Wagga while others are revisiting things we already have like storm water designs and traffic designs and so forth."
Although Sydney-based employees are not obligated to relocate in the future, Mr Thompson said it was his goal to show them what the city has to offer.
"The people of more senior years, I don't think they will relocate," he said. "Some of the people [with younger families] have indicated that in the future they may relocate to Wagga.
"Wagga has a lot to offer with affordable housing, ease of moving around the city, lots of good choices with education and sports, equal distance between Melbourne and Sydney, so we'll be pushing that every step of the way."
Not only did Wagga council recruit employees but other regional councils as well.
Mr Thompson said the Sydney office was a Wagga-led initiative, which seven councils have jumped on board.
He said council such as Tamworth, Port Macquarie and Parkes are already sharing the open-plan office space and expects more to take up the offer in the future.