spigs

hi all

any tips from fellow IT-ers in Sydney when job hunting?

I can't seem to get past the 'no local work experience' problem when looking for jobs, I have a degree, 10 years app development exp (Oracle, VB,ASP) but no luck!

any suggestions or help most welcome!

Badge

all I can suggest is that you need to get lucky
, and befriend an agent, and network like crazy. That's how I did it.

BM

gedge

Can't say I ever seen that. Is there a particular business area you are looking at that requires local knowledge?
What do the agencies tell you? (Don't believe everything they say, just the bits that you can confirm elsewhere).
Networking helps, but it's a chicken and egg situation IYKWIM.
We use those skill sets, but no vacancies at the mo.

Where are you looking for work? Which papers, web sites?
There are plenty of recommendations on this site, do a search.
I used
seek, jobnet and careerone

spigs

Yeah I'm on Jobnet, seek, careerone,mycareer every day (like now)

no particular business area,
the 'local work experience' is what I heard back from 2 agencies, maybe they're just using it as an excuse for their inability to help

I have a good cv and some nice companies on it , gets the agencies but i don't get to interviews.
I guess there must be a lot of Oracle developers around at the moment

I'm trying to apply direct to companies but they all seem to be using agencies


thanks for the replies so far

gedge

On the agency front, I can recommend Greythorn and Gap - most of the contractors here come from either as did I. I'm now permanent from the initial contract role.

I have used Candle before, but they haven't impressed this time.

RichS

I'll say this:

1. The agencies are full of poms who couldn't give a monkeys and know even less.

2. Its a tough market

3. Go for temp jobs in other fields, just general office work, anything at all. If you can pick up some of this stuff you'll meet people - networking is key. thats what I did. Ring up ING and see if you can get a spot in their call centre or something like that.

If you were to PM me I might have some other places you could try that are less advertised - can't promise they'll have jobs, but they might have leads.

MikeStanton

Go direct. Try to find the names of IT managers, directors, project managers etc - eg chat up a few personal assistants. Make your resume very focussed, spelling out what benefits you can bring the company (research them on the Net etc). You can get a list of the Top 500 companies through www.brw.com.au

Don't forget to follow-up your letters. You'll probably get a lot of rejections, but then you only need one successful bite of the cherry. And, after all, how much success are you having now?

That's how I started!

Best of luck.