Tomkim

Hi,

My husband is an aircraft engineer and we are job hunting for him in Oz. Has anyone moved and work in that industry, Do you have any tips on getting a job over there.

BAE take people over has anyone done this with them. Did it work well?

Tomkim

GracieK

I don't have any first hand experience in this but as no one else has replied I thought I'd chip in. I also have links in the defence industry but as far as I can gather from the various posts that come up periodically it's very hard to get work in Australia in Defence sector unless you are a citizen in order to get clearance (not impossible though) - which is 2 years (4 years soon). I think it may be easier to get the company to send you over from here!

Have a search in the forums (I think there was a thread last month about defence jobs) and there were a few links to some recruitment agencies.

frogboy

I worked for BAE Systems in the UK for 14 years and worked over at RAAF Williamtown (Newcastle) a couple of times last year, I tried to drum up some interest while I was there but they kept telling me they couldn't take me on because I didn't have citizenship to get security clearance. All the recruitment agencies were all very interested until I said I didn't have citizenship.
4 weeks before we moved to Oz there were internal jobs advertised for BAE in Adelaide and I applied for these, they were very interested and had several jobs that they could put me into however because I had already told them that we were coming over in 4 weeks with tickets booked they were trying to get me on the cheap and weren't offering me much financial assistance. The jobs were stated as 12 months secondment with a view to permanent which were ideal because they would pay for more or less everything for 12 months i.e. cars, housing etc however they offered me a permanent job which I didnt want. With flights booked to Brisbane I was starting to think about going to Adelaide for security although we didnt want to go to Adelaide and had our hearts set on Brisbane. I told them that we wanted to give Brisbane a try first and if it didnt work out then we would consider going to Adelaide. After a few weeks of being in Brisbane they rang me again to see how things were going but again I told them we were happy in Brisbane (even though I still hadnt got a job at the time).

Getting into the defence sector is very difficult without citizenship however a few people have succeeded but they have been very lucky. BAE did get permission from the Oz government because of the shortage of skilled people in Adelaide. There have been loads of jobs going at Boeing at RAAF Amberley over the last 6 months but again these are impossible to get in.
I am now employed as a Sales Engineer and we do a lot of business with the defence companies and I took a guy out from Boeing for lunch at xmas and I mentioned about sending my cv to Boeing on numerous occasions and he said because it was Boeing's policy not to sponsor non Australians or Americans they couldn't do much as it was the US policy even though they were struggling to get the correct skilled people.

Are you working at BAE now? If so where?

Give me a pm if you need any info.

cheers

Ian

steve_m

As already stated, getting a job with the ADF is almost impossible without citizenship. I work for Qantas Defence Services with a number of other Brits. Most of the lads were sponsored by QDS; they don't require citizenship but must have PR to work on ADF aircraft (C130). There is a shortage of aircraft maintenance engineers and the likes of Boeing and Qantas are well worth getting in touch with, you never know. http://www.qds.qantas.com.au/employment.htm is a link to QDS and may be of interest as they invite unsolicited CV's.

Australia Immigration

Hi Tomkom

Most if not all the salient points have been covered from the threads - but what sort of Engineering do you actually deliver or qualified for ?

Happy to help - go to the website and click on Professions in Demand menu and follow the prompts.

Kind regards

Chris

frogboy

Where are you planning on living as this will have a big bearing work, if you are looking at Brisbane and you get a job at RAAF Amberley then its a long drive to work and back from the coast.