Australian Job Vacancies, Australian Workplace Culture and the Role of the OQP
Filling Australian Job Vacancies and the role of Overseas Qualified Professionals Program
Government policy-makers and immigration officials seem to assume that, in an open job market, all we need to do is to link suitably skilled people with Australian job vacancies in an identified skill-shortage area and the gap will be filled. Holders of recognised qualifications in “in-demand” professions are fairly easily granted permanent residency to Australia and encouraged to take up one of the many Australian job vacancies in their fields. The strong message is that this will be a fairly straightforward affair.
But we have seen that this is rarely so, and that we need special post-settlement programs to induct even highly skilled and literate professionals in the complicated art of landing a job. The OQP program (Overseas Qualified Professionals Program) was born of the failure of many migrants to:
- Locate a job that was in their field but that they also had a reasonable chance of getting
- Construct job applications that are acceptable, according to Australia’s peculiar conventions
- Present themselves reasonably well to recruiters, in phone calls or interviews, as viable candidates
It is this last barrier that presents the biggest obstacle. On top of the expected requirements of qualification, skill-level and language competence, acceptance involves what recruiters and managers often call “cultural fit”. This is easier to name than to define and often seems to involve criteria that the recruiter is not fully aware of, let alone the job candidate. Talk of cultural diversity, a multicultural workforce or even culture shock has done little to clarify for overseas job seekers what it actually means. And it doesn’t help at all that it means different things to different people.
Defining Australian Workplace Culture
Most skilled migrants soon learn that to be successful they must absorb the values of something called “Australian workplace culture“. But what is this exactly? If they are lucky, someone will instruct them that, on the surface, the Australian workplace culture is:
- More egalitarian and informal, less hierarchical and authoritarian, than the one they may be coming from
- Yet, somewhat confusingly, demands a strict adherence to a strong “work ethic” (whatever that is)
- An environment where “selling yourself” and being assertive is highly valued
- Where qualities of initiative, leadership and independence are expected of professionals
- But, again conversely, where an apparently collective culture of “teamwork”, communication, reliability and punctuality is required
Unfortunately, when this rather unspecific set of prerequisites is listed in a résumé (however correctly) or recited at an interview (however sincerely) it often gets the candidate nowhere at all, and even elicits distinct impatience from a recruiter. Even if a candidate is able to relate by convincing anecdote where and when they have demonstrated these qualities, the response is still often not enthusiastic.
This is because the recruiter is looking for something further, something less easy to explain. They sometimes talk about a “fit” with the “company culture”, and a lot has been said under this banner about the need for recruiters to investigate and define the “culture” of a company before they recruit for it. The trouble is, it is a far different thing from what has been identified above as “Australian workplace culture”. How is the newcomer to negotiate this mystifying barrier?
Walking the “Cultural Fit” Tightrope
Clearly, “cultural fit” is much more personality-based than the former, and is now measured more and more (in a “professional” or an amateur way) by psychological or “psychometric” interview techniques. But knowing this won’t help the candidate much. The real “measurement”, quite apart from whatever facts and figures may be indicated from these tests and questions, usually takes the form of informal, unstructured and often fairly unselfconscious opinion-sharing by the recruiting panel, after the candidate has left, as to his or her ability to “fit in”.
An ability to “fit in” is often judged by impressions and “gut-feelings”. The more drawn-out, convoluted and process-driven our interview and selection methods become, the more scope there seems to be for nebulous, personal, “cultural” judgements to come into play. This is especially so when many interviewers are not specifically trained for the purpose.
One major Australian cultural tension is that between egalitarianism and individualism. Displays of equality and personal familiarity, even between people who occupy vastly different positions in the workplace power structure, are important in Australia. Understatement, not “blowing your own trumpet”, the rejection of all presumptions of superiority, suspicion of intellectual achievement (or even education itself in some quarters), the cutting down of tall poppies – these are prominent in the Australian popular identity.
Yet, on the other hand, locally-grown aspirants learn that to impress a prospective employer you must stand out, show individuality, initiative, self-reliance, great confidence in your own ability, even outspokenness. We admire the larrikin achiever, the one who goes against convention, the “self-made man”.
“Fitting in” as a professional in Australia is very much a balancing act between these two opposites. It is nearly impossible to express this mix in an interview unless it comes naturally, without self-consciousness. Yet, often unwittingly, recruiters apply this rule of thumb to local and international interviewees alike. Overseas-qualified applicants can all too easily fall down on one side of the knife-edge or the other. Trying the individualistic achiever approach, many applicants appear aggressive or even arrogant, offering a boring recitation of their qualifications and achievements, showing as trying too be too clever, lacking humour or even causing the negative suspicion that “self-promoters” provoke here. Yet if they try the other approach it often comes out as too passive, weak, lacking in energy, the recruiters noticing only too much anxiety to please and defer to all statements. It is hard to know which self-presentation affects Australian interviewers worse.
The Right Balance
Those who succeed in this balancing act have either been exposed to an Australian cultural experience (natives or long-term residents) or they have been instructed in our self-presentation conventions and have practiced them in a critically supervised environment. The OQP program (Overseas Qualified Professionals Program) attempts to give our participants a little experience of both of these situations before they actually submit themselves to the interview process. Firstly, by involving them in exploratory and critical examinations, in workshop environments, of their interactions with the Australian job-market so far. Secondly, by putting them through interviews that are as close as possible to the real thing. Thirdly, by placing them full-time in an Australian workplace cutlure, so they experience, albeit in a limited and somewhat protected way, an “immersion” of sorts in the “target” culture.
When instructed to “speak up for themselves”, we notice raw newcomer professionals tend to err on the overbearing side. This is perhaps reinforced by their position in their original societies, being esteemed as one of a small educated elite, belonging in the top 5% of the population in status and usually income. In Australia the class indicators are different. Education and privilege are nothing to be flashed around and our management and professional elite learns to adopt a ‘one of the common people’ approach when dealing with employees. People who exhibit self-satisfaction have ‘poor people skills’. I have seen several otherwise capable overseas professionals destroy certain job chances during an industry placement because they inadvertently drew too much attention to their high level of qualification.
With professionals who have been here longer, however, the opposite tends to be true. Imagine it. You are disappointed, even confused, by hundreds of rejections (or no replies) for jobs that appear below your real skill level, and by one or two years of unemployment mixed with low-paid casual work. You adopt a desperate, but somehow passive approach, either pleading or resigned, that cries out: “I’ll take any job.” This usually brings the recruiter’s comment “lacks get-up-and-go” and means certain rejection before the interview has even begun.
What have been the implications of this rather depressing reality on the evolution of the OQP program (Overseas Qualified Professionals Program)? One noticeable result has been a toughening of our attitude to any strategic shortcomings or inflexibility in our participants. In their position in a buyer’s market we have perceived that it is they who most have to change: “Diversity and multiculturalism is all very well, but that won’t help you where you’re going.”
The program has developed more and more into a series of revelations of harsh realities, each bringing with it a new counter-strategy to be considered, yet more work to be done, more barriers to be crossed. We tell them “Get real!” We urge them to develop thick skins. We tell them this is a competitive job-market and part of the test is to prove your endurance.
Getting Past the Recruitment Gatekeepers to fill the Australian Job Vacancies
Yet there have been other results and revelations as well. The interviewing “gatekeepers” are not the full story. We have sometimes seen potential interview failures blossom and gain confidence after “cold calling” directly to employers and being able to meet colleagues with their own technical background instead of recruiters.
We have learned that very often the application and interview process is a cultural ritual, a shortlisting and elimination tool (which pays lip-service to “equal opportunity”) of little relevance to performance on the job. So often our participants, in time and in a setting where they can complete a task and overcome nervousness, interact well with supportive and helpful colleagues and shed the “outsider” personae they presented at first. Supervisors and managers are also able to shake of the “risk factor” that haunts them when presented with somebody unfamiliar.
This process of managers and supervisors quickly accepting slightly different ways of “fitting in” has been helped along quite a bit by the increasing talk, and the reality, of the great Australian “skills shortage”. The increasing exposure of senior executives to international, multicultural professional expertise has also helped. We even find willingness at senior levels to reconsider the very rationale of recruitment gate-keeping and envisage new ways of assessing applicants of all types.
This article which looks at the realities of filling Australian job vacancies, understanding “Australian workplace culture” and the role of the OQU in regard to getting past the recruitment gatekeepers is taken from “Getting Past the Recruitment Gatekeepers” by Peter Hosford, Industry Liaison, Overseas Qualified Professionals Victoria, Northern Institute of TAFE (NMIT). Overseas Qualified Professionals (OQP) Victoria provides overseas qualified professionals with an introduction to the Australian workplace and labour market and the opportunity to undertake practical industry placements.
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