That's the way mate.

I'm rather embarrassed to say that I've had my pick of jobs - from Sydney to Gold Coast. Applied for 3 and offered three but in the end picked Gold Coast as we've always wanted to end up in QLD. It's been such a joy dealing with the Aussies for their friendliness and efficiency - I already feel part of the workforce and a valued member at that!

Morning.

Hi Rich

How's it hanging?

You haven't given us your story yet

Post # 11 mate, come on keep up. That was my latest installment.

Do you still keep in touch with George & Mildred?

I submitted an application a few weeks ago and this morning I thought I'd follow it up with an enquiry as suggested by the HR co-ordinator.
She explains that she had forwarded all the resumes to the manager concerned, he's away at the moment but hopefully they'll have a shortlist by early next week and will then plan the interview stage.

Now maybe I have it wrong but if the closing date was 4 weeks ago you would have thought the interview stage would be quite close?
Ok, I'm the HR guru of a company, we'll have the closing date here, the first stage of interviews here, etc... perhaps that's far too simple, needs to be more of an in depth plan.

I did think that perhaps we're in that new budget planning year period and are they waiting for the results of this before they make a move, but then if that was the case the position would have been advertised as 'expressions of interest' wouldn't it?

This position is within a government department.

Got to Brisbane early January 05 and started work on the 7th March so approx 2 months. Of those 8 weeks I probably applied for around 4 jobs per day (Monday to Friday) online for the first 7 weeks (@ 140 in total). Of those applied for I got a reply from 20 at best which knocks the confidence a little. Finally I got 2 second interviews at the same time in my area and got offered my current post which I tried to stall on until I heard from my other interview (17k salary difference). Didnt hear anything for a day or 2 so I signed the contract with the other company and started. The day after I started I got offered the other position and had to turn it down.....DOH!!!!

I probably spent about two months properly searching for a job in Sydney. The feedback I got initially was:

1. You have no Australian experience
2. We're not that interested in your 10 years experience in the UK
3. Your references are all in the UK
4. You won't get as much money here as you did in the UK
5. You'll have to take a few steps back on the career ladder to get your foot in the door
6. Employers are reluctant to take you on as you are on a four year temporary visa

Other observations I have made are that the job market here is really small compared to the UK, and that the competition for jobs is fiercer because of this.

CVs are longer here - I've seen 8 page beauties with photos of candidates and everything on them! Mine is usually 3 pages, sometimes four.

Re references - this is a sore point for me. I don't like giving my reference details out until I've been given an offer (dependent on references of course). Employers here seem to use references as a way of culling candidates, and if you're unlucky a few times and just miss out on a role - your referees better not mind being contacted again!

I have been unable to get a permanent role, and after accepting a contract working with the State Government (rather than a law firm - the government job offered flexi time!) I have been pigeon holed by recruitment companies as a 'government/public sector' candidate which is frustrating.

Once I got my first contract, it became much easier to get more temp roles.

We now have permenent residency so I'm hoping that I'll soon be able to find a permanent job soon

btw I worked in public relations in the UK, I've done a bit of a shift over to marketing here in order to find work (the number of news outlets is much smaller here, and so the number of PR roles pushing stories is much smaller too!)

One of the most frustrating things is the fact that many employers don't want to know about experience pre-Aus. I have a hard-core of people here fighting to get me permanent work, and they have advised me to outline previous experience etc.....then when I end up with other people on the panle, I egt told "forget all the previous stuff, we don't want to know, just give us examples from Aus"........which of course I don't have
I've taken so many steps back that I'll fall in the gutter if I go back any further. I didn't expect Aus to be magical jobwise, but I didn't expect to be lower on the ladder than I was 25 years ago - and at least 25 years ago I could see a way forward. Now I can only see a series of shortterm deadend jobs for the rest of my life. Rather demoralising.

A chap has just come around to service my mountain bike and it turns out he was born in the same place as me and then moved down to Cornwall not far from where we used to live.
I used to work with his best mate and son-in-law, how spooky is that?


We have just had a good yarn about job searching and experiences.

I digress slightly.

Back to the applications.

It took me 5 month's to gain a full time job as a Packaging designer. before that I was working in some grubby printers in Koo Wee Rup (arse end of Melbourne) cleaning down printers with nasty chemicals in a 5am-3pm shift, then the closed down!
My wife and I then done some Apple picking which was quite enjoyable, though physically demanding. We were just starting to think its not going to happen for us (we gave ourselves 6 months to get a job) then I landed my Job. I'm earning about two thirds of my UK salary, living in Mornington and loving life, we also have a one month old daughter, so life just keeps getting better!

My wife however couldn't get any work (she's a secretary) and even found even voluntry work was difficult to get and found the charity's very ungrateful and had the attitude that they were doing you a favour! she's now a full-time mum and at least got the baby bonus off the government!

Beautiful and congratulations on the birth of your little girl.

My wife is working whilst I'm looking after the kids etc. I have been doing odds and sods for a couple of builders since arriving, hardly stimulating stuff but it'll have to do. Totally untrade related in my case but it's certainly been an experience!!
I've never seen such huge shiny spurs in all my life.

One of the things I've learnt about recruitment is that there is always a factor which noone knows about, not even the recruiter knows it. I remember being baffled about 'waits' in my early 20s, especially for clients of ours where the placement should have been almost a shoe-in.

Often that delay can be caused by a completely innocuous reason like...guess what the bloody manager or general manager is on leave...or a budget has not been set, or somone, somewhere is too busy.

I've heard people sitting next to me spitballing over a recruitment decision doing this and I can imagine a poor buggar sitting at home not so busy wondering what is going on. I've learnt to be patient but gently reminding(!)

Replace "UK" with "Australia" and you have a perfect description of my experience in the UK.

Nobody cared what I'd done back home, nobody was interested in my experience, nobody wanted to give me anything more sophisticated than a grunt job at £10-12,000 p.a. and nobody wanted to touch my Aussie references with a barge pole.

It was a long, hard slog before I managed to get an intelligent, responsible position with a fair salary.

Didn't have a problem with that in the UK - mainly because I was temping for most of the time. Now have British citizenship, it's a moot point.

Agreed.

My Aussie CV is three pages long (including references and personal information.) I have used it succsessfully here in the UK.

My story....

Bumped into an ex director of my old company who has set up a business in the Uk, mentioned that i was emigrating to Aus he says where i says Brisbane he says really, i says yeah. He says come over for a chat as we are setting something up in Aus. Cutting a long story short today is my first day as IT Systems officer - IT manager it would have been called in the UK.

So far so good !