wandrews

Some threads seem to indicate the lack of IT jobs, is this related to specific regions or OZ in general?

I still get emails everyday from seek.com.

cols

Well it's certainly not booming. I had a search to see and noticed this job ad on that site. I think this takes the award for the stupidist job advertisement i've ever seen. This has got to be a joke... I particularly like the last paragraph

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Senior Unix Administrator (Solaris)
We think it’s fair to say that this is perhaps the ultimate opportunity for a Senior Unix (Solaris) Administrator. Widely regarded as the sole possessors of an arcane and privileged language, Senior Unix Administrators nevertheless get some pretty bad press. I mean, I can understand it – all those obscure commands which mean essentially zilch to the untrained eye; hours, sometimes days locked up in a darkened room, hunched over a three year old PC with the lid taken off and the internals exposed; piles of great big thick manuals with closely-printed text and reams of crumpled documentation littered with alien jottings; poor complexions and massively retarded immune systems, and those thick glasses; a diet consisting solely of nicotine and caffeine products; empty bottles of eye drops – it all points to an insatiable appetite for hard-core, graphically violent pornography, right?

But it simply isn’t true, and I keep trying to tell this to people, but they just won’t listen! Nobody ever listens to me! Well, I’ll show them, I’ll show them all, and by willickers if I’m going to hit the dirt before my time I’ll be taking a few of those bastards with me! If it weren’t for my hideously deformed fingers and complete deficit of muscular strength in my arms, plus my poor eyesight where sometimes I order hot dogs from fountains, I’d strangle them with my bare hands!

Such delicious outbursts of physical violence are, alas, frowned upon by proper society, so all that the poindextrose Unix wizard can really do is put up with the bullying and the pointing and the laughing and the overwhelming unfairness of life, stay locked up in their smelly room and tinker, tinker, tinker, before quietly taking on a little job somewhere and making more money than anybody else could dream of.

And that’s what this role is all about – internal fury translated into cold, hard cash. You might not make them pay in blood, but their egos are gonna take a helluva wallop.

Technical skills and personal ability are, in my opinion, vastly overrated in the modern marketplace, but nevertheless our client is insisting that candidates presented to them possess some admixture of both, so we’ve really got no choice. Let’s hop to it.

Mandatory Skills and Attributes

Solid and expansive general Unix administration experience

Particular talents in the intricate workings of Sun Solaris

A good understanding of on-line application environments, with direct exposure to Java Application Servers and the management thereof

Strong familiarity with Linux, Sun One Application Server, ATG Dynamo, Apache and iPlanet

Java, Perl and shell scripting, Tibco Rendezvous, Siteminder and Tomcat all very very highly regarded.

The primary focus of this role with be the effective management (escalation, resolution etc.) of various Unix and Middleware issues, by any legal means possible. To do this, it helps if you’ve done it before, otherwise your head will explode because you don’t know that the eff is going on.

This is a truly juicy and challenging role paying up to $100K for the right person, so you’d need to be pretty stupid not to at least give it a shot. Unless you’re getting paid more somewhere else, in which case, screw you, buddy.

Apply now, or call Gary Lorden for more information

MeganEkno

I disagree with the above post and believe it depends on which part of Australia you are looking. Melbourne for example are desperate for IT people. Which area of IT are you looking at?

wandrews

I am a Business Intelligence Architect (Business Objects, SQL Server, Oracle RDBMS, DataWarehousing, OLAP, etc) As well as a developer background.

noodle

hi,

I just wondered how you know this. We don't think we'll go now because there aren't many jobs for my husband in Melbourne. He's a CCIE. We've tried all the job sites!

cols

Sorry for the sweeping statement, I was more interested in posting the funny job ad that I found

Most people will give their opinion on the state of the job market as it relates to their particular specialisation so you can get quite varying opionions on this. But I think it's reasonable to say that it's generally a lot slower than it was.

Anyway, isn't it easy to work this out for yourself by looking at recent job ads in your particular area. Assuming of course that a small percentage of them will be fake and some of them duplicates. Of course there are many jobs that are not advertised but it's difficult for a new migrant to break into these without knowing people.

I think i'll go to bed now...

MeganEkno

I am no whiz at IT - that is husband's department. Through him and through other friends working in IT back in Oz, I know it is still big business (although not quite the same as a few years back). I know that fewer people are graduating with IT skills and there is a real shortage of IT specialists. This lack of specialists is supposed to hit hard in the next couple of years. I shall enquire as to what the go is and where and get back to you ASAP. I'll also send you a cutting of a recent press release regarding this area. Sorry I can't do it now, but I am currently at work and don't have what I need on me! Hope this helps you both. I also think, as is often the case, it is a case of who you know sometimes and not what you know.

MeganEkno

Most people will give their opinion on the state of the job market as it relates to their particular specialisation so you can get quite varying opionions on this. But I think it's reasonable to say that it's generally a lot slower than it was.

I think i'll go to bed now... [/QUOTE]

I agree!

wandrews

You're right it is often the case of who not what, the same goes anywhere.

I am aware that the market has slowed, and I am also aware of the advertising mechanisms agencies employ in order to gather interest in certain areas without the availabilty of any real positions.

One option I am looking into is the networking opportunities of short term contracts in OZ.

HiddenPaw

use www.jobnet.com.au as well - I found it better than Seek

Try and make contact with agencies - phone call rather than email as they are often reluctant to spend time on people who aren't in Oz yet, so if you phone you're more likely to be able to talk to someone there and then

There are more people on their books than there are jobs. Needless to say, they don't advertise every single vacancy on the net as they may already have a long list of potential candidates on their books.

Candle Recruit are very good. Michael Page and Greythorn were also good.

We migrated on an IT fastrack program (application back in 2001). Since then, they've stopped this program and most of the IT jobs are off the MODL. We found work quickly in Melbourne (but this was 18 months ago) but without having the luxury of already having a job and being able to choose your next piece of work, it was a case of taking what was on offer, rather than cherry picking.

I have friends in IT in Oz who are out of work or looking to move jobs but struggling to find anything - but they all have diff skills to you. And every one is different. Some people just walk into jobs if they have the right skills or personality.

I found on more than one occasion that it was often a case of "jobs for the boys" - one agency having quoted me that very line.

Good luck

ossigeno

I think agencies should only be used as a last resort. Many of the jobs on job sites are fake & serve merely to collect CVs so they can then harass previous employers/references to see if they have any requirements.

May be worth contacting directly potential employers that operate in required sector.

HiddenPaw

Is this your experience with agencies in Australia or just in the UK?

There are a lot of reputable, genuine agencies out there - you can't imply that they're all rogue CV gatherers!! This is why you need to choose which agencies you deal with carefully rather than solely applying for jobs off the net. In Australia, if you use agencies as a last resort you are severely limiting the number of employment opportunities that come your way.

Of course you can contact prospective companies directly but many of them will only deal with you via an agency...after all, that's why they're paying an agent to do their recruitment work.

I did find agencies in Australia more interested in you as a person and more committed to finding you a job than their UK counterparts. Don't write them off.

bondipom

The jobs from seek, career one and the other big web sites tend to be from the crappy agencies. Those sites are not indicative of the state of the market.

Personal contact with the agencies and companies is the way forward. It is the only way to set you apart from the other candidates.

MrsDagboy

One other point when considering how easy/hard it may be to get a job is how good you are. If you are very good at what you do, have a large and solid knowlege base & alot of experience you will have a much much greater chance of getting a good placement.

Last year Dagboys company put off 2 staff here in Brisbane which is not exactly a hot bed of IT work - both of them were snapped up very quickly by other employers & had good jobs again within just a couple of weeks. If you arent at the top of the heap then do some research - its often possible to see what skills or extra training may help to overcome any slight holes or deficiancy in your resume.

You have to be good at what you do & be the best person that applies for the position - after all do you think that the employer wants to employ the scum at the bottom of the bucket? It may sound harsh, but its true.

MikeStanton

My background is IT. There are cowboy agencies in both countries.

One of the key differences I found, was that in Oz contract rates are very rarely advertised.
Overall, in my experience, service from Aussie agencies is far worse than the UK equivalents- and this is going back 12 years. No doubt this has been made worse in the IT downturn.

I have also used IT agencies in UK and Oz to recruit staff, and the Oz agencies make very little efort.

Talking to a UK recruitment guy who now works in Sydney, he said that the agency commissions in Oz are much lower than the UK. It's probably a case of "pay peanuts, get monkeys"

By the way, in the end, I got my IT consulting work by approaching companies directly. Remember, ~50% of jobs aren't advertised. And those that are advertised (especially on the Net) attract a lot of responses. So, your chances are probably much greater if you go direct. And you don't get a brain-dead agent who knows little about the subject area to filter you out!!

And if you think IT recruitment agencies are bad, you wait until you deal with the real-estate people (sorry, realtors - lovely word).

And if you are older (35-40+), you will probably find it a lot harder to get jobs in Oz.

If you want IT work, I think you'd be better off in the UK. Especially in London and the City, which is starting to re-employ. Of course, then there are the problems of high-cost housing, lots of people, the Tube.....