A recruitment company that charges students and migrants up to $1,870 for unpaid job trials and internships cold-called Australia's top union body to offer it free labour.



Budding Talents Recruitment has been active since 2007 and recruits students, graduates, visa holders and skilled migrants for unpaid and paid work in fields such as accounting, engineering, human resources management, and information technology.

It charges people from $1,650 to $1,870 for unpaid internship placements at various partner companies, and $1,000 for a placement labelled the "Prove Your Skills Internship" that Budding Talents founder Ryan Shrestha confirmed to BuzzFeed News operates as a month-long unpaid job trial.

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus said the union's call centre had received a call from Budding Talents, which is also known as Study and Work, on Friday morning advertising its services.



"I imagine they called a lot of places not realising who the hell they were," McManus told BuzzFeed News. "Pretty unlucky, I’d say."

The phone call prompted union officials to scrutinise the company, and call into question the practice of third party recruitment companies advertising unpaid interns.



McManus slammed Budding Talents for advertising on its website that it sources "PHDs" for companies, described as "Poor, hungry and driven people who are: Poor in terms of knowledge and are constantly searching to learn more. Hungry with a tremendous desire to succeed. Driven to pursue set goals with hard work & dedication."

"They’re advertising these people for free," McManus said. "They’re telling vulnerable people on student visas who probably don’t understand what their rights are that they can get jobs and it’s somehow legal to work for free, and secondly, it’s the worst form of wage theft, where you’re being paid nothing."

Founder Ryan Shrestha said "We might have, yeah" when asked if Budding Talents had cold-called the ACTU.



"We just randomly call companies who we think could be benefiting from our services," he said.