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
