Nicola and I began emailing our CVs and cover letters via
SEEK (an online recruitment company) in the middle of November. We initially
applied for jobs in our fields, and after looking through numerous job adverts
we applied for around ten jobs initially each; the vast majority of which we
were easily qualified to do. We didn’t just apply for jobs in our fields
either, although the first week we did just do that. On week two of our job
hunt we applied for jobs in retail, fast food, supermarkets, travel, admin, and
recruitment (ironic?). We signed up to job agencies, recruitment sites and
responded to adverts.
It is now three weeks since we applied and we have had next
to no response. I have a small lead, but it’s only a possibility at the moment.
We’ve had rejections from a few places but the majority have not replied; which
is annoying. It's still early days, but we don't know how long we can afford to live here whilst looking for work.
We have spoken to recruitment agents who were useless and
told us we didn’t meet the criteria
despite not asking anything about us. We’ve been served by brain dead
simpletons, rude teenagers and people who cannot string a sentence together in
English yet we have been told that there
are more suitable candidates or we don’t
have customer service experience for the roles. McDonalds rejected me eight
times (humiliating in itself) and then I go into a McDonalds (as I still can’t
resist the food despite the stinging rejection) and I am served by rude
imbeciles. It’s absurd to the point of being funny; which it isn’t because our
money is running low.
We have tried farming and I know people say there are jobs
in farming but we didn’t come to Australia to work 100km from the nearest town
to pick fruit in the blazing sun with no break for 12 hours. It’s tantamount to
slave labour and the wages are poor after considering the expense of traveling
there, accommodation and living costs. We have no bar experience and were told
there is no point in getting a RSA (one of the many pointless certificates they
have out here to convince themselves that they are qualified when they just
serve beer) as it costs $100 and there are hundreds of people after those same
jobs. Construction, well, it’s a man’s job and anyone who knows me knows I’m
not a labouring sort of chap – as I was also told by a recruiter when I thought
I would enquire.
We made a breakthrough of sorts when we went to a recruiter
in Sydney…many firms don’t employ people on a working holiday visa and won’t
consider them even if they are qualified. So basically, unless you are lucky
(which we were also told you have to be and we don’t seem to be so far) you
won’t find a professional job out here in our circumstances. We have come to
the realisation (which has been reinforced by numerous third parties) that you
should apply and secure work out here in a professional capacity before you
arrive as when you are here on a working holiday visa it is a lot harder to
find; not impossible, but harder.
There is so much bullsh*t out here about experience and the
requirements of the role. For instance, we saw a job advert for a receptionist
that required the candidate to have two or more years’ management experience
and an interest in stocks and shares…words fail me. We have been informed that
most Australians are lazy and try to have as little responsibility as possible
for as much money as possible, so there is a strange situation where there are
plenty of professional jobs in management and senior levels but hardly any at
the bottom end of the scale. We’ve seen more adverts for store managers in
retail than we have for retail assistants. There is a level of bullsh*t out
here that far exceeds anything in the UK. In fact, for some positions it is
quite staggering and if the Australians had a satirical or ironic sense of
humour it would be funny, but they don’t…and it isn’t funny. Who’d have thought
you would have to be interviewed and shortlisted for a job as a cleaner?! No
offence to cleaners by that statement by the way but that is the reality out
here and it highlights the difficulty we are having in finding a job. Even
casual Christmas retail positions in tiny shops out here aren’t offering us
work, and Nicola has five years’ retail experience four of which were over the
Christmas period.
We live in hope, but at the same time we are being pragmatic
and realistic. There is only so long you can live in a country where it costs
£2 for a bottle of water without a job. We are saving money by moving into a
house for a few weeks but it may come to the point where, unless a job comes
along after New Year we’ll have to move on and continue our travels and maybe
come home a lot sooner than we had
imagined. We have not been blown away by the standard of living out here as we
would have thought, most towns are small, remote and lifeless and the job
market is more prohibitive than we would have imagined. We have enjoyed
traveling Australia, and some of the sights are beautiful and the weather is
great, but that’s not enough if you can’t find work. So unless we find work in
the next few weeks, we may pack up our bags and head to New Zealand, Fiji or
wherever to continue our travels. We are reaching a point where, if we stay too
long out here looking for work and our money runs out, we’ll have to come home
without having travelled beyond Australia. There is the chance that if we leave
too soon and continue with our travels a job may come up after we have left and
we may miss out. It’s a tough decision because we do want to experience living
and working out here but at the moment all we are doing is experiencing
spending money and being rejected for positions we would not have even
considered applying for in the UK. It feels like being qualified is not enough
unless you are also Australian or not qualified but you are Australian.
Me, bitter? Surely not…
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