bucket

I am an IT professional with more than 18 years of IT experience in project management, business analysis etc.

I lived and worked around 7 years in USA, 3 years in Europe and 8 years in Asia. I moved from USA to Sydney, Australia 6 months before.

I have management experience with top consulting companies and fortune 500 clients across the globe and also experienced in managing many top 5 consulting companies as vendors. I am Six Sigma certified.

My green card (PR) was stuck in USA for many many years. If you are from India or China you will end up in huge backlog which runs for more than 10 years, because of the per country limit for visas.

So that is the reason I applied for Australian PR and got it quickly, so immediately moved to Sydney, Australia from USA. Before moving in I did not check the IT job market here. I talked to couple of friends, they said for my experience I should be able to get a job quickly, I believed and came and struggling for last 6 months without any job.

I have put more than 1000 applcations, ramped up and down my resume, applied for all roles managers, business analyst, developers etc.. But still did not get any single break.

Only got two consultant interviews, where they said

(1) I lack local Australian experience even though I got USA, Europe and Asia experience which does not matter here.

(2) My profile is too high for most of the project management jobs here.

I went to one of the client project manager interview where some IT fellows who is atleast 10 years junior to me interviewed me and gave the same "over qualified" feedback before and after interview.

Even though I told them that I am willing to work at any junior project manager level, still they did not give that role to me. But that job is still getting advertised for the last 7 months, without getting filled.

I am desperately looking for my first break in Sydney here, because I cannot survive any more here, with family and without job, and I exhausted all my savings and in dire situation right now.

Now I need a job to continue or I should go back.

I assume many of the forum members would have faced this situation and can easily understand my situation.

If any of you have any project management roles or business analyst roles in any IT areas in your company please let me know. I am willing to start immediately. Please give me a break here.

Thanks.

chris and farideh

Can't help you with Management jobs, but when we first moved to Australia that's what my husband used to get at every interviews, so he applied for jobs nation wide & he got his first break after 6 months in another state, are you willing to move to other state?
Are you willing to do minimal jobs to survive?
Can you do tutoring?
There are loads of jobs out there if you are not too fussy, good luck.

MAR001

Few random points in my opinion:
- Experience in europe and USA does matter here.
- I was in a similar situation when I came here but I got an offer in 4 month after my arrival for a managerial role.
- recruiters work great for my wife but they hate me (I hate them too), good luck with that because if they want to, they will find you a job.
- I work with a lady from Europe with great qualifications and coming from a top director level in Europe from a huge global firm who is happy working in a managerial role to start.
- Doing any king of training or qualification may give you an insight about the industry and help you to meet new people (and keep you busy and productive).
- Everybody asked me to despec the CV and I strongly refused to do that, it took me years to find a good position in a good company but I made it and believe me, the lower you start the longer to get up the ladder.
- finally, NETWORKING is paramount here. In a country with such a small population and opportunities, who you are and who you know play an important role of the job hunting game.

Hang on here, you will find the job!

GarryP

The job market here is very parochial - they don't count overseas experience for much, even though the overseas experience is often at a more advanced level than they are up to here. In addition its much more a question of who you know, and many senior positions are earmarked for internal candidates (they are just going through the motions).

I'd also say there is a degree of racism, particularly against Indian or Chinese sounding applicants.

Try anglicising your name, experience, etc. and see if the takeup rate changes. You can also focus on jobs where you have a fair bet the recruiter is not australian.

I'd also look in Melbourne and in government jobs, more openness, potentially.

Finally, look towards setting your own startup in place. If you can find a niche you'll find that arena more accepting.

Chortlepuss

IT Market here is really tough - I'm in Brisbane and my friend who is a recruiter has told me he doesn't expect a turnaround until New Year.
I have similar levels of experience to you and had over 4 months out of work. I did chop off some years for more junior roles (BA etc) and that got more interest. If you're not getting interviews but putting in lots of apps then you have to work on tailoring your CV exactly to fit the job description. I suspect you probably know this - but agency staff are often clueless and expect to see stuff like 'advanced exposure to MS Office including MS Word' when to most people it's bleedin' obvious. Six sigma is quite rare here - so maybe a push towards change mgt roles? Change your old job titles (so if you've done change mgt as a PM - make sure your old role is called 'change manager'). And as someone has said Network, Network, Network - Syd is better than Brisbane for this as it's a larger and more professional market but most people I know in IT (including me) finally got a role via someone they know. Good luck, I do appreciate how hard it is, but hang on in there - something will come up!

Alfresco

I concur with that all that has been said so far.

I'm in the same boat.

isgraham

I disagree with some of the points. If you have the right kind of experience in UK/US then it helps to get work in OZ oe at least it has in my experience. It all depends what area you are looking to work in.