Cant seem to get interviews

[Peacefulwarrior]

So I have landed on the 11th of March 2015 here in Brisbane and started calling and seeing agencies the week after that. I have a state sponsored visa for QLD. One agency helped by providing advice to rewrite my cv and since then I have applied to just over 50 roles. I would say about 15 are directly at companies who are not using agencies and the rest is with the agencies themselves.

While everyone at the agencies are welcoming and friendly nothing seems to happen after that 1st initial contact. I continue to get rejection messages if a message at all and seem to be pigeon holed by my past experience which was in banking.

Now I know the school holidays may have slowed things down and I hear they are receiving more than 100 applications per role so I need another plan to at least just get to interview stage?

Please share how you approached it and do any of you know someone or perhaps are in a position to offer a role to me on a short term contract basis to come help out on a project or year end prep.

I am ACCA and CFA qualified, worked for KPMG's financial modelling team so can dazzle with Excel, have a lot of experience in financial accounting, management accounting, corporate finance the list goes on.

Just need to get over that hurdle to say yes to Australian experience.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Peacefulwarrior

[monsta]

Some tips:

Get a permanent rental. Recruiters like it when they know you are happy with your trip to work.

Go and volunteer. You may just meet someone in your industry who can give you advice. At worst volunteer experience looks good on your CV. Just google volunteering web sites in your area.

Join a church, join a gym, etc.. Aussies are as worried about how you are as a person as his good you are at your job. So, make some local friends!

Join LinkedIn. Think of LinkedIn as a big online CV. Go an endorse your previous colleagues, so they will endorse you. Put your LinkedIn address on your CV.

Control the narrative on your CV. A CV saying, "I can do anything with excel" won't get you a job. If I were you, I would list my main skills in a table. Then next to each skill summarize the experience you have that proves you have that skill.

If you haven't got a job in 3 months, then something is wrong. For example, maybe they don't use Excel here and you have no skills with the package they do use? Maybe your sort of work is done mostly in Sydney?

That's why talking to people in your industry is a good idea.

[rozellem]

Really work the Lindkedin thing. Join all sorts of sub forums on there for your job type. Join any kind of RSA business groups you can find on there. Is there a old boys/girls groups of you University perhaps. Join the Afrikaans club in Brisbane, join Aussiekaners on facebook and any other relevant facebook group you can swing your CV at. Flog that horse. Looks like your first job will have to come from outside the regular channels, so yes, look at volunteering too. Milk your old KPMG mates for all possibilities and connections. Good luck.

[SurferMan]

Hi Peacefulwarrior, welcome to Aus mate,

Dont feel bad, i have been in Aus almost 5 years and have not managed to nail a contract for almost 6 months. I am in Perth where it is all but disaster on the work front. there is work, but man you have to work those networks to get in. I agree with Rozellem, pimp your Linkedin profile, it seriously gets you noticed.

Brissie is in better shape than Perth, I am in SAP and could walk into work there if I had the means. Dont fret though mate, you are in the good and lucky country. Keep swinging! :ilikeit:

[Mara]

Perhaps it is time to spread your wings and look at the other cities as well.

[Peacefulwarrior]

I wish I could but have a QLD visa, so yes Sydney has lots of work in my field but I have to wait 2 years before I can go to another state if I remember correctly.

[ottg]

The economy is stagnant however I noted some activities in NSW. Attended a very interesting workshop recently on INDUSTRY GROWTH CENTRE INITIATIVE whereby the Government will invest $188.5 million to establish five growth centres in the areas where Australia already has a competitive advantage. The issues to be addressed:

1. How to encourage collaboration and commercialisation of new products?
2. How to enhance management and workforce skills?
3. How best to identify opportunities to reduce regulatory burden?
4. How to improve capabilities to enable engagement with international markets
and global supply chains?

The take-away was that the scope is broad, requires lots of development and unfortunately it a slow process and takes time.

The good news is that it starts to happen!

[Mara]

Peacefulwarrior, it has been stated on the forum before, where people who were state sponsored could not find work in their sponsoring state. I do believe the onus is on you to prove that you have attempted to settle and find work. If you have, generally, your sponsoring state will release you to move to another state if you can find work there. So perhaps put your feelers out further and see what comes up?

[Tiermelk]

Peacefulwarrior, it has been stated on the forum before, where people who were state sponsored could not find work in their sponsoring state. I do believe the onus is on you to prove that you have attempted to settle and find work. If you have, generally, your sponsoring state will release you to move to another state if you can find work there. So perhaps put your feelers out further and see what comes up?

I've also heard of this happening.

On the state of things in general, I get daily notifications for jobs aligned to my skill set (in IT) and the number of daily job ads are down around 40% in Sydney over the last 4 weeks.

[BriD]

Have you had your resume professionally redone? I saw you said the recruitement agents made some recommendations on changes...but it can change everything to get it done by a professional cv writer. We spent 6 weeks searching for work with hubby's self modified resume...only 1 interview. Then we paid to have it redone professionally...and after that he had at least 3 interviews per week. it really made a difference to my hubby.

Good luck...hope you find the perfect job asap. I remember how stressful it was looking for work.

[Toitjie]

I applied for 60+ jobs with no success and them my reume redone. It cost me over $400 but i got 2 interviews in 1 week after that. And then i got the job as well. What i believe was my saving grace was my volunteering experience. I put that as the first item under work experience and made sure i detailed that my volunteering duties were in line with what i do (HR and recruitment). This afforded me "ozzie experience".

I think most people overthink this as my work exp from SA was more than sufficient and then some but there is no way you can convince someone that you foreign exp is good enough (not always anyway) so even though i did very menial jobs as a volunteer, it did the trick

[Peacefulwarrior]

Thanks for the input. Brid, Toitjie can you please advise who you used to have your cv redone?

[Toitjie]

Roland Coombes - Business Manager

itouch professional solutions

Switch: 1800 450 527

Direct Line: 02 9029 9214

www.resume-solutions.com.au

[gordonza]

In our experience, forget the whole Aussie format of your CV... we wasted good money on getting ours done, only to be told by the next person that OOOOOOOH that isn't in the right format...

Reality is there is no correct format each person and company can have their own formats they are expecting it in, if they actually care at all. Just make sure to keep it around 3 pages and to the point.

We also discovered that it is better to not bother with the cover letter unless it is specifically requested. A case in point was a job advertised for an IT support person at Toyota (I know the IT manager), they put the job spec up in the morning and by lunch time she asked her HR person to remove it as they had had 500 applications. She didn't even bother to read the cover letters.

Another point is that they are running auto filtering on the cover letters and not the resumes. I had been trying since last year July and applied to everything in software development I could find with absolutely NO luck at all. Then I got the hell in three weeks ago and stopped sending the cover letter... my phone didn't stop ringing the whole week! I start my new job on Monday!!

So if my experience is anything to go by, forget the cover letter (except universities which require it)...

Hope that helps others.

oh yes, in the three interviews I ended up going to the interviewers mentioned how they are battling to find staff!

So there are plenty of IT staff out there and it appears plenty of jobs... guess there are too many under qualified HR people who are not able to put the two together??

Edited May 1, 2015 by gordonza

[Sunnyskies]

I'm not in HR but get to see a number of CVs. There is no set format for a cv in Australia.

I had a chat with one of our HR people about what she looks for.

In brief a cv with only relevant information and only max 3 pages. No long intros, put dates on the left hand side so they can run their finger down and see periods of employment (ie how long you worked somewhere), how many jobs and gaps between employment.

Next to the date the company you worked at and then position held.

Under each company a BRIEF description of your role. Leave all the major projects you have worked on or examples of work done for the end of the CV. Include a referee or 2, not a big issue if overseas they will phone them only if you are about to get an offer and will arrange a time by email so put their email address down.

If you have a love of reading or running it isn't necessary to include. If you smoke give it up it is off putting having an interview with someone who smells of cigarette smoke or breath.

If you get an interview don't say you will take any job (desperation is not appealing), be neatly dressed and appropriate for the job, go in confident but not arrogant, be friendly, if English is not your mother tongue then practice talking about yourself and your experience before you go in. Be ready to answer why you have moved to Australia - saying that it offers better opportunities for you and your family is sufficient, if you go into a long rant about South Africa it is off putting. Try not to say "when I was in South Africa..."

[monsta]

So there are plenty of IT staff out there and it appears plenty of jobs... guess there are too many under qualified HR people who are not able to put the two together??

Well, said.

Its a bit like the music industry. Hollywood rules the roost because there are a lot of hopefulls there. The "good" musicians soon filter there way to the top. In RSA its harder for a "good" musician to get noticed because there is a much smaller "music scene".

The same logic applies here. The IT market isn't overly competitive. You don't often hear, "without our guru Sergey from Moscow, we would have never been able to scale our software to 1000s of computers!"

Look, companies are only as good as they need to be. Aussie just doesn't have a very competitive IT market... so smart people don't rise to the top.

The Recruiters/HR in RSA couldn't tell a Sergey from a complete rubbish talker either.

Cheers

Edited May 1, 2015 by monsta

[HansaPlease]

I agree about there being no standard Aussie format - different employers have different preferences, unfortunately it's just the luck of the draw that the person reviewing likes it enough to want to interview you.

[SurferMan]

Haha @Monsta,

Mate, I been in many countries consultign and I tell you, in Perth I have never seen such an incenstuous setup. Companies deliberately colluding to con the client out of money. Also, so many "consultants" who are basically useless and clueless to boot, lead the client projects and doleout work to their own companies and mates. Unbelievable. So agree they would not know Sergei from Simon!

I know this practice is around the world, but I like to think that perhaps on the east coast it's not so overt. If it is, well, I will just keep calling it out!. Curiously, at the contract I just landed now, the client had cottoned on to the trickery and is now insourcing their IT and one of my tasks is to cleanup the vendors and ensure this does not happen. My FAVOURITE!

[DXB2OZ]

If Roland can do your CV, great. If he passes you on, tread carefully - I felt that my referral was not worth the money. But, having the cv in a familiar format is very important - people don't like to be confused.

My other advice, after sending out over 80 resumes and slugging it out for over 3 months with only one disastrous interview with a recruiter who basically said nobody would hire at my level because of my lack of local experience and that I couldn't take a lower level because I was over qualified is to work the phones.

I basically bullied the successful recruiter into seeing me. I phoned for one job, he said I had no local experience. I said "but wait" and bounced in with a different tack. He tried something else, I said "but wait" and just kept on coming up with alternatives. No local experience meant I was cheaper in the market. A broad range of experience meant I was adaptable to any different role. Too much experience meant I was tough and could stand the heat. And everything negative, I turned into a positive. I tried to keep it light hearted, even joking that this month I was "on special" at a bargain price.

I'm now almost a month in to the only job I interviewed for. Had some serious concerns over the contract at the start (thanks again to my lovely fellow forumites for their support and advice), but basically got all the changes I asked for and have just been quietly told that it is very positive that an employment contract with a hefty increase is waiting at the end of my three months.

I am working incredibly hard, but it is a great bunch and I am having lots of fun.

Finally, agree that recruiters need to know you aren't going to cut and run in a few months because you can't settle. Emphasis the positives, highlight that you are committed to this move and are giving it everything. Pretend you were recruiting an immigrant back in SA - what concerns would you have? Try to calm those concerns and give the recruiter the warm fuzzy feeling.

Good luck.

[SurferMan]

Nice one DBX,

Glad to see that you are a glass 1/2 full girl. You are the kind I hire, because your attitude more than makes up for any lack of talent in an area. have you notived how people will graitate towards you?

Thanks for that great post, ya made my day! :ilikeit:

[4viljoens]

Join the Facebook group South Africans - Jobs in Australia. My husband landed in Brisbane on the 7th March 2015 and after job hunting for 7 weeks, also seeing agents and applying to companies direct and networking like never before. He eventually landed a job with an amazing company from a lead that he got on the Facebook page and he applied directly. Also, be humble and be prepared to do anything and take a step back if you have to. He applied for a Sales Manager position. After they interviewed him they told him that they would prefer someone with Aussie experience in the Management position but they liked him so much and offered him a Rep position, which he was really thankful for! Today was his first day at the company and he loved it