Archive for the ‘Australia Skilled Migrant Success Stories’ Category »
British Migrant to Australia Success Story
Ed Nicholls - Shares his Australian Job story
Ed Nicholls found the Australian job he wanted within four weeks of arriving in Australia. He had a number of factors in his favour, and admits that the ‘lucky country’ lived up to its name for him.
Ed, 31, grew up in Winchester, England, gained a university degree in business economics and started his career with a corporate events company. His work
included finding venues, which led to him accepting a Australian job offer from a hotel chain. He moved on to the Conrad Hotel in London, dealing with large companies that had contracts with the hotel for client accommodation and functions.
After Ed and his girlfriend visited Australia for the rugby World Cup (important general knowledge: England beat Australia in the final), they decided to move to Sydney. A company agreed to sponsor his partner, which made getting visas comparatively easy.
“I thought the smart thing would be to get a job in Australia while I was still in London,” he says, “but I soon learned that it was regarded as quite difficult to do. I had one interview in London but was unsuccessful.”
Still, Ed could do his homework regarding Australian jobs. He turned to the web and hotel and hospitality organisations to check out what Sydney had to offer in five-star hotels. While visiting for the World Cup, he had managed to have a brief chat with the general manager of the Shangri-La Hotel, sited at Circular Quay, between the Harbour Bridge and Opera House.
After arriving in May 2004, he immediately contacted recruitment agencies and went for interviews for suitable Australian jobs. “I found them fairly easy to get because I had a visa.” The timing was good-there was a lull in employment in the hospitality industry (not least because many young Australians were working overseas, particularly where he had just come from). And because Australia wanted hospitality people, his experience in the field earned points for his visa.
Ed had an interview at the Shangri-La; they said they liked him but had no suitable job position available.
Then someone resigned a few weeks later and he got a call. He is still there as Director of Business Development, finding corporate clients who take out annual contracts for the hotel’s services.
While being new to the territory has its disadvantages in a sales role, it can also be perceived as an advantage.
While being new to the territory has its disadvantages in a sales role, it can also be perceived as an advantage.
“I wanted to get out and about and establish new relationships. I think the company appreciated someone fresh coming in,” says Ed.
“To an extent, it was easier here. In London, you ring up a potential client and unless you have a relationship already, they probably won’t give you the time of day. In Australia it’s, ‘Yeah, okay, I’ll give you 10 or 15 minutes’ and they don’t mind you coming in. People’s personalities are more open, I suppose. Sales is such a numbers game-you have to ring so many people to get an appointment-but I’ve found it quite
easy here and now feel confident.”
The Shangri-La is expanding globally and it tries to progress people’s careers through the company.
“That’s what I was looking for from London-a longterm career.”
He laughs at the irony of so many Australians going to the United Kingdom to earn pounds while British people flock to Australia for the way of life. “I earn a lot less here, but the way of life is so much better. Most people I know work hard-long hours-but they know how to relax at weekends. The living is good.”
Australian Job success stories are written by Steve Packer and published by Tribus Lingua
©Tribus Lingua 2007
Philippines to Australia Job Story
Grace Alvarez - Shares her Australian Job story
In Grace Alvarez’s Australian job experience, most Australian employers approach recruitment as though they are looking for no more than “another set of hands”.
Grace, 35, came to Australia from the Philippines in late 2004. As creative director at a major advertising agency, she had dealt with the accounts of major blue-chip companies and travelled extensively. She had also worked in Dubai.
She describes her migrant status as “reluctant relative”. Her mother and brother were already living in Australia, and her mother became ill and needed care.
“My mindset when I arrived in Sydney was willing and open-new life, new Australian job, start from scratch,” she says. “I had been to Australia several times and have always thought of it as a ‘kind’ society. There is welfare, the dole, care for the handicapped and so on, and things work-trains running 10 or 20 minutes late don’t seem so bad to me.”
She soon found that getting into advertising required Australian local experience and knowledge. “You have to know what ‘fully sick’ means, and all about footy and cricket,” she says. “It was telling when my company in Manila wrote to the agency in Australia that belongs to the same global group, informing them that I was coming, and they didn’t even bother to reply.”
No matter. Grace was ready for a change and she thought she had built up the skills and experience to be competitive in many other fields. She has directed 80% of her effort at pursuing jobs advertised on the internet. “I saw an ad for ‘panel beater’ and thought, hmmm, can I do that?”
More wisely, perhaps, she decided to look for a job as a coordinator or events manager. “You see ‘coordinator’ Australian jobs everywhere. I thought I had a pretty good cache of skills, but all people really wanted to know about was basic practical skills such as typing and using computer programs. I soon learnt from interviews-I’ve had 20 or 30-that what they wanted was just another set of hands. It was a no-brainer.
“Finding myself without work for a few months was very hard, having worked in advertising where it’s 24/7 [non-stop]. It was a reality check when I applied for a position as an events management assistant with [a medical research council]. I know the work well, so I filled out the selection form as lucidly and professionally as I could. But I never heard from them. It makes you feel rotten when even the ‘good guys’ are not very considerate.”
Grace’s English skills are excellent-in Combined Universities Language Tests, she proved that her fluency was the equal of, or even better than, most local speakers. But people have picked up on the Americanness in her speech and she has sometimes sensed a reaction against it.
“…all people really wanted to know about was basic practical
skills such as typing and using computer programs.”
“I believe that heaven’s mercies are new every morning, but there are days when you lose all optimism, days that catch you in a bad way,” she says.
Noticing that many Australian job ads required occupational health and safety (OHS) and first aid certificates, she did a first aid course to build her skills and make her more employable.
She has also taken up voluntary work. She maintains a community group’s website and acts as adult literacy tutor. Her ambition now is to combine her skills in communication with her new training in education.
Australian Job success stories are written by Steve Packer and published by Tribus Lingua
©Tribus Lingua 2007
Hong Kong Migrant to Australia Success Story
Falcon Yim - Shares his Australian Job story
Falcon Yim’s story features the ‘catch-22′ many migrants around the world encounter: employers in their new country won’t hire them until they have Australian local experience, but they can’t get experience if no-one will hire them. Falcon was almost middle-aged and had been working in senior administration for a Hong Kong IT and production company, but he was regarded as lacking in experience when he arrived in Melbourne a few years ago.
“However experienced you are from your previous job overseas, your résumé doesn’t count in Australia,”
he says. “What they want over here is Australian local experience. Even if you have worked in various countries or have held senior positions previously, employment agencies screen only for relevant local experience.”
Clearly, you need to make every effort to secure your first Australian job quickly. After three months, Falcon found his, selling door-to-door for a security monitoring systems company. He saw the position in a newspaper’s classified advertisements.
He continued to build his Australian local work experience through voluntary placements by TAFE and Centrelink, and attended career seminars organized by Centrelink and job placement agencies. It was through the volunteer work that he heard about a Australian job opportunity at a client’s company-a potential move up to installing security devices such as monitors and surveillance cameras.
“I think persistence is important when applying for a Australian job. I remember sitting at the reception for two hours, waiting to speak to the manager,” he says.
“The secretary told me the manager was busy, but I said I didn’t mind waiting. I had come all the way to see him-what was another two hours for me? Besides, many managers tend to say they are busy just to avoid unnecessary meetings.”
When he finally did get to talk to the manager, he was surprised Falcon knew about the job because he had yet to advertise it. Now he didn’t need to. “Networking is very important,” says Falcon. “You have to get to know the people here, understand their culture and adapt yourself. For example, tea or coffee breaks are good opportunities to mingle and get to know colleagues. Make use of these networking opportunities because it helps you get yourself known in the Australian job market.”
Falcon now has his own computer support company.
“Employment agencies don’t look into overseas qualifications-they go by a checklist relevant to Australian local qualifications.”
His advice for newly migrated job-seekers:
1) Network-”Don’t be afraid to do voluntary work. It provides you with an initial work reference point and Australian local experience that can be very valuable.
It also extends your network of friends and acquaintances who can help you get yourself out into the job market.”
2) Lower your expectations-”Do not expect too much from your Australian first job. Things are different from your country of origin. Adaptation is the key. If you keep thinking about how great your job was in your home country, what is the point of emigrating in the first place?”
3) Understand the job requirements-”Some overseas qualifications are not recognised in Australia. Find out how you can convert your qualifications to fit the local context. Employment agencies don’t look into overseas qualifications-they go by a checklist relevant to Australian local qualifications. Getting the right certificate is important. TAFE courses, short training courses and work placements can help you learn and gain Australian local experience.”
Australian Job success stories are written by Steve Packer and published by Tribus Lingua
©Tribus Lingua 2007
Accountanting Migrant Success Story from Russia/Israel
Leon Kosher - Shares his Australian Job story
“They always say you have to be in the right place at the right time,” says Leon Kosher, 26. “But you have to be prepared for that right time-prepared to take the initiative to find that opportunity and not just sit around and wait.”
The Russian-born Israeli resident migrated to Melbourne, Australia, in 2004. Armed with an Israeli Bachelor of Business Management, he wanted to move into an Australian accounting career.
He attended a two-month course at Box Hill Institute of TAFE where he learnt about the practical aspects of job-hunting in Australia-adapting his written application style, being effective in interviews, where to look for a job and so on. “It was pretty helpful,” he says. “It also taught me a lot about Australian culture, about how to act in the right way on the job. And it gave me ideas and pushed me to act.” At the end of the course, the TAFE offered him a four-week placement, working at a university, but it didn’t fit with his career plans so he went out and found himself a placement in an accountancy firm.
When the placement ended, the firm was unable to employ him because he was yet to secure PR (permanent residency).
Leon says he must have applied for more than 100 Australian jobs. “But I managed to get only three interviews. In my opinion, it was because I was overqualified for some Australian jobs and because of my lack of local experience.”
But he didn’t despair. He printed himself a business card, caught a bus to a suburb full of manufacturing companies and went door to door. Someone had to need a bookkeeper somewhere.
At the first company he saw, he asked to speak to the manager. “It so happened that the manager was from Israel as well. He told me to speak to his son, and I did. I was told to leave my application and he reply, so Leon took the initiative and called back. Two days later he went for a second interview.
He printed himself a business card, caught a bus to a suburb full of manufacturing companies and went door to door.
Due to his lack of experience with certain software packages, the employer was hesitant to give him the Australian job. He offered to work for two weeks free of charge, and after a month he was employed full-time.
Leon is now the company’s financial controller and taking his masters degree in accounting.
Leon Kosher’s formula for success:
1) Take the initiative
2) Never give up
3) Ask everyone and anyone who can help you find a job in Australia
Australian Job success stories are written by Steve Packer and published by Tribus Lingua
©Tribus Lingua 2007
Brazil to Australia Migrant Success Story
Isabel Schuck - Shares her Australian Job story
In 1998 Isabel Schuck moved to Australia from Brazil with a Bachelor of International Trade from the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos. She went on to do a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Queensland University and was ready to enter the
Australian job market after one year in the program. However, finding a Australian job was not as easy as expected, even with an MBA in hand.
“I tried working through recruitment companies but was surprised by the lack of interest. I was treated as though my experience was on a junior level, as my
international experience was not recognised.” Isabel, then 29, decided to target the top 10 companies she wanted to work for. “I approached the divisional director or human resources manager directly in each company by cold-calling the company.”
Again, no success.
She speaks German, Portuguese and English. She had an Australian MBA, she had over 10 years of international experience, including as an employee of a global corporation. So what was the problem?
The biggest barrier was getting through to the interview. “Many times, I could not get past the receptionist to talk to the HR manager or divisional director, and when I did manage to confirm that they had received my CV, there was no reaction.”
Isabel eventually figured out a way past this hurdle, based on two main points: networking and adapting her résumé to the Australian job market.
“I managed to get three interviews, all through network connections,” she says. “I anticipated being head-hunted from the MBA course, but this did not materialise. There were no connections to industry from the course.
“It took me six months to get my first job in Brisbane, as a management consultant with one of the top four accounting firms. I got it as a result of an MBA course colleague recommending me for an interview. Connections are critical.”
Having got to an interview, Isabel put every thought and effort into making it a success. “When having an in-depth interview, I’ve found that employers tend to go to a familiar reference point, something that they can connect with,” she advises. “They will pick out the most familiar thing-their reference point-and ask you questions about it. It’s important to review your CV and history, and identify possible reference points.
“For example, the fact that I worked for a global company that was instantly recognisable held a lot of weight. The fact that I studied in Australia was also a familiar point.”
“Essentially, be who you are. Authenticity and showing your flexibility to adapt is what leaves an impression.”
She sometimes found it useful to know someone locally to ‘name-drop’ in an interview to create a reference point. “Even if you have only had an informal chat with the person, it can be useful. It is extremely important to have local referees also, so find someone locally to support or advocate for you-or even better, act as a mentor.” Some of Isabel’s other observations of the Australian job scene:
• “With résumés, length seems to be associated with quality. Australians love long résumés! My perception was that a one-page, summarised, American-style résumé did not work with prospective employers at interview. The reaction to a longer résumé was far more positive.”
• “Essentially, be who you are. Authenticity and showing your flexibility to adapt is what leaves an impression.”
Australian Job success stories are written by Steve Packer and published by Tribus Lingua
©Tribus Lingua 2007
Malaysia to Australia Success Story
Su Deo - Shares her Australian Job story
Sometimes it can seem as though two plus two must equal five in Australia. Su Deo was a qualified accountant in Malaysia for 18 years. She worked for a multinational corporation and two banks. When she left for Melbourne with her husband and two children in January 2005, she had been managing a major banking group’s credit card centre. “The first thing I did in Australia was register with seek.com.au,” she says. “In the very first week I got quite a number of calls from recruitment agencies, who said they would get back to me. Then nothing happened.”
The first thing everyone asked was if she had Australian job experience. “What can you say? It was difficult to digest,” she says. “I mean, the principles of accounting are very much the same whether you are in Malaysia, Europe or Australia.”
Su and her husband attended a two-month course at Box Hill Institute of TAFE specifi cally designed to help professionals from overseas who are seeking Australian jobs. “The course was very useful,” she says. “We learnt important job interview techniques and got an insight into Australian work culture. I believe the interview techniques were instrumental in us landing jobs.”
By the time she got her first break, in June, she was beginning to wonder if she and her husband had made the right move. They had both given up good jobs in Malaysia-he was a chemical engineer managing 100 workers-because they thought their children would have better opportunities in Australia.
Su began telling employers she would be willing to start at entry level, and she followed advice to downskill her résumé in case it was intimidating people. “I was told to keep it simple and not oversell myself.”
The Deos liked Australia and were finding it easy to assimilate, helped by the fact that they came from an English-speaking background. Su got involved in volunteer work at her children’s school and a football club. “It was good to have those things to mention to employers to indicate that I was adjusting well,” she says.
But in the end, she doesn’t know if they made a difference. It seems it was determination and persistence that led to an agency lining up an interview with a bank that landed her two months’ work in budgeting and financial forecasting. (Her husband finally found work in the same week.)
“They asked broad, macro questions and seemed more interested in screening for personality…”
An agency had already interviewed Su on behalf of Hewlett-Packard, but she was told the Australian job had been put on hold. Then she was offered the position just as the two-month contract with the bank was ending.
She is now on a renewable one-year contract as a financial analyst at HP.
“I felt I got lucky,” she says. “I know people who have been in Australia for more than a year and are still looking for their first break.” Interestingly, it wasn’t the down-skilled résumé that caught the eye of HP but her original version.
Most of Su’s interviews were first-level, at recruiting agencies, where she found that many interviewers knew little about the Australian jobs they were dealing with.
“They asked broad, macro questions and seemed more interested in screening for personality than the technical aspects of actually doing the job-mainly because they didn’t know exactly what the job involved.”
Sook Yee Yap - Shares her Australian Job story
When Sook Yee Yap couldn’t land the kind of job she wanted in the media, advertising or public relations, she took on a range of part-time and voluntary opportunities to expand her contacts and improve her skills. Sook Yee, 24, a Malaysian who went to secondary school in Singapore, came to Australia in 2001 on an international student visa to study for a Bachelor of Arts in media and communication at Melbourne University. She speaks English, Malay, Cantonese and Mandarin.
“My advantages over the locals in Australia are my language skills and cultural experience,” she says.
“I’ve found that the way to capitalise on my skills is to look into anything multicultural that would make use of my heritage.” After obtaining permanent residency, she looked for part-time work through job sites on the web while studying. “But it’s hard to get a job in the media when you don’t have experience in journalism, politics and that sort of thing. And in the advertising sector, they want people who have already been in the field for at least three to five years.”
Focusing on supermarket, department store and university job sites, she filled out registration forms and sent off dozens of applications. She was surprised to find that the vast majority of recruiters and employers did not so much as acknowledge that they had received her Australian job application. “After a while, when you don’t hear back from anyone, it can get discouraging. You don’t feel like looking any more. But you just have to keep trying. “One of the places I registered with was the supermarket chain Big W, which called back after two months. I went for an interview and got part-time
checkout work to help pay my bills while I searched for a better job.” She has also been doing clerical work at a high school one day a week.
Australia has two government television and radio services-the mainstream Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the multicultural, multilingual Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). SBS is a natural magnet for people in Sook Yee’s position.
“Graduates with language skills all look to SBS, which makes it very hard to get one of their cadetships,” she says. “In the last six months of my uni study this year, I’ve been an intern for the Cantonese language program and a volunteer for a multicultural
youth program at SBS called Confusion. I’ve organized a hip-hop concert under Confusion and produced a 10 to 15-minute radio feature for the digital radio trial at SBS.”
“I’ve found that the way to capitalize on my skills is to look into anything multicultural that would make use of my heritage.”
She has found further opportunities at student radio station SYN 90.7 FM (at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), which is always looking for volunteer producers to contribute to its programs.
When a Melbourne University orientation week brochure carried an advertisement for a youth website, Sook Yee decided to send in her résumé to see if they were hiring anyone. A few months later she was called for an interview and got casual part-time work as an advertising assistant with the organisation’s events management company. “They organise events for the Asian nightclubbing scene and have a website (visitkn.com, subtitled Asia Down Under). I started as an advertising assistant but later discovered that I’m more suited to editorial work. I’ve been put in charge of the website as editor and content manager.
“I’ve realised that I want to develop a career in the area of Asian youth media, and I’m doing that.”
Australian Job success stories are written by Steve Packer and published by Tribus Lingua
©Tribus Lingua 2007
Finding Australian Jobs : Success Stories from India
Ajay Dharam - Shares his Australian Job story
Every migrant has their own reasons for coming to live in Australia, but Ajay Dharam has a somewhat unusual one-a prawn virus epidemic. “I had just finished a bachelor of science in Bombay, India, and I went to Tasmania to do my masters. That was in aquaculture - growing prawns and fish artificially,” says Ajay, 35. “I left Tasmania in 1994, intending to start a prawn farm in India, but a prawn virus outbreak devastated the industry.”
He decided he wanted to get into management, but he lacked international work experience. Through networking, he found a Sydney job, working for an American multinational company for a year.
The following year he started a masters degree in business administration (MBA) at the University of Queensland.
During summer breaks he got a Australian job in a packaging company in Brisbane and, on finishing his MBA, he decided to stay in Australia. “It was difficult. I don’t know how many résumés I sent out. I got the impression they were barely glanced at.”
Through a former classmate at university, he heard about a project management role at the same packaging company, and he has worked there for the past five years. He has moved around Australia, been promoted four times, and is now on a job posting in Adelaide as South Australian state manager. He notes that the company’s culture is based on promoting from within the organisation. Employees have been there for about 18 years on average.
“I got the position through networking,” says Ajay (once again proving the most common theme in the case studies in this book). “I think there is a degree of openness coming in now about employing people from outside Australia. But 10 years ago, from my experience in Brisbane and Sydney, if you weren’t Australian, most people wouldn’t consider you. But networking opens doors, and studying in Australia is a great help because you meet people in your field.”
Ajay found that Australia was the reverse of India, where qualifications are held in higher regard than work experience.
Ajay found that Australia was the reverse of India, where qualifications are held in higher regard than work experience. “In Australia, in finance and management and the like, it seems job experience is more important. The whole social cycle is different. Here, you can put yourself through an education with part-time work, or by working and going back to studying.
But in India, your parents pay for your education and you start work when you have finished studying.”
Australia is a friendly place, he says, although Sydney’s social networks were tough to break into. “I play a lot of sport, so I joined a soccer club and a sailing club, and made friends with the regulars at the bus stop outside work.
“I’ve travelled to a few places and I think Australia has the best culture-the mateship and honesty-but it’s getting diluted. When I went from Bombay to Launceston in Tasmania, the difference was striking and quite an awakening. There were only one or two Indian families in the town at that time, which was good in a way because I had to mix with Australians and people from other ethnic backgrounds.”
Ajay, who recently married an Australian, concludes:
“There was a time when I could never think of living outside Bombay, where I had a charmed life. But now I think of Brisbane as my home, even though the rest of my family is in India.”
Gowri Sriraman - Shares her Australian Job story
In Gowri Sriraman’s experience, the place to look for a first Australian job is where other people tend not to look-which is often in pockets of the public sector.
Gowri arrived in Australia in 1994 from India with a Bachelor of Pharmacy and a Masters in Management, both of which were recognised in her new country. “I had completed my education and worked for four years before I came. Not having a lot of experience, I didn’t have very rigid expectations of what I wanted from an Australian job,” she says.
It took a few months to determine which Australia jobs she had a chance of getting. “One thing I noticed immediately is that private sector jobs required women to adopt a formal dress code [suits]. This is not something that comes automatically to me, which was one reason I started looking in the public sector, where it seemed more relaxed in this respect [smart casual clothes].”
After six months, she landed a position implementing patient administration systems for the south-west Sydney health service. “It was not a job many people wanted,” she says. “It was a temporary position for 12 months and based at Fairfield in the western suburbs.
Ten years ago most professional people wanted to work in the city and very few would venture ‘out west’ in Sydney for a job. And in my experience, among public sector jobs, most people want a permanent job straightaway and refuse to look at contract or temporary positions, so there is less competition for them.”
Sydney’s east-west cultural divide (the east being the generally wealthier region closer to the waterside) has diminished in recent years, but it’s still a factor.
“Candidates tend to be choosy about working close to their home and convenient public transport,” says Gowri, who found herself leaving home at 7am in the east to start work at 8.30am, with the bus and train trip home taking just as long. But she wasn’t about to let that stop her from making a breakthrough in the Australian job market. And, besides, she was soon able to schedule lessons after work to get her driver’s licence with a view to buying a car.
Gowri was also able to take advantage of a government employment policy. The public sector was focusing on equal employment opportunity and a number of positions were open for external candidates, with a particularly transparent selection process.
Her networking related more to the private sector, so she turned to the Sydney Morning Herald job ads to find the position. Her Australian job-hunting included joining a Centrelink club, where the résumé / cv workshops and practice interview sessions proved especially useful.
She also discovered that migrant resource centres provided access to cheap photocopying, faxing and printing. She joined public libraries to use their free computer/internet facilities and read up on organizations before interviews.
“It’s important for skilled migrants to fully familiarize themselves with all the facilities the government offers and take full advantage of them,” she says. “Some people have a cultural barrier to accepting any form of help from the government. One wants to be seen as self-sufficient. But making the attitude shift and accepting help allows you to function at a higher level.”
“It’s important for skilled migrants to fully familiarize themselves with all the facilities the government offers…”
Gowri is still based in Sydney and has a Australian job as a clinical quality manager for a Sydney mental health division. “One of the advantages of being in the public sector is that a number of Australian jobs are open only to internal applicants,” she says. “I have moved ahead using a combination of internal and external opportunities.”
Australian Job success stories are written by Steve Packer and published by Tribus Lingua
©Tribus Lingua 2007