Fertility Clinic Turns to Online Jobs Site OneShift to Help Find Sperm Donors

SYDNEY - Sept. 26, 2013 - PRLog -- In an attempt to meet the increasing demand for Australian sperm donors, Fertility First has begun targeting males on online job sites, encouraging them to visit the centre and to learn more about the donation process.

Laboratory Director for Fertility First in Hurstville Julie Zieschang has posted 17 ads to the job site OneShift in the past six months. The ads are simple and direct, there are 100 casual positions for a 'Sperm Donor'. The ad is placed on the "volunteer and community service" section of the site and has already caught the attention of 108 people who have shown an interest and have received information about the Clinic's contact details.

"We're normalising the whole process for sperm donation. Historically, it has been an embarrassing topic but we want to get the message out there that you're helping someone. Like donating blood, it's extremely helpful and it changes people's lives," Mrs Zieschang said.

Since 2010 when the NSW Government introduced legislation to assist the exchange of information on donor conceived people once they turned 18 years old, numbers of clinically recruited sperm donors in separate centres have declined to handfuls. As a result, Mrs Zieschang's clinic is one of many Australian centres struggling to provide their patients with a variety of sperm donors from a range of backgrounds.

"We have a diverse patient base who have diverse requirements for donors and we're going online to get the word out in the hopes of offering our patients more choice," Mrs Zieschang said.

CEO and Founder of OneShift, Genevieve George said that the ad is one of the more unusual staffing requests but welcomes the idea.

"The ads target a particular demographic of job seekers and it's getting these men talking about the shortage which is great. That's the beauty of a site like OneShift - the platform matches our users to exactly what a business requires," Ms George said.

In NSW, donors are limited to donating to a maximum of 5 women. This regulation, whilst important, increases the need for IVF clinics to find new ways to recruit donors on a regular basis in order to meet the increasing patient demand.

For Fertility First, the experience to date has been a positive one with five donors making the decision to come to the Clinic and have the initial testing required before being able to become a donor. Should these potential donors be assessed as appropriate and complete the donation process, their donations could result in five women receiving the donor sperm they need to have the child or children they desire. Fertility First hopes that more men will walk through the clinic's doors and say that it's important that there are more sperm donors in order to meet the increase in women undertaking IVF.

About OneShift:
OneShift is a network that matches employees with employers for short term work including one off shifts, casual work or even permanent employment. It is free to join and to review job seeker matches, and just $10 to get into contact with the employee of the business' choice.

Led by Genevieve George, OneShift started as a venture to match working holiday candidates to employers in tourism hotspots and has expanded to a full range of industries including administration & secretarial, animal care and cleaning among others.