Thursday, October 18, 2012

Job hunting in Australia after 3 months

Another update after 3 months of restless job searching. I have been through some interviews and below are my findings:
  1. The organization chart is mostly flat for companies in Australia. I applied a Database Analyst role and when I reached to the company for interview, I found out I was meeting with the CIO. Seriously!?!?! I realized that the working culture in Malaysia was mainly go through some level of management before I have the chance to talk with the big shot such as a CIO. Here, in Australia, I have told that I will direct report to CIO, which does not make sense for me the first time. My mindset has to changed to think like a senior manager in Malaysia in order to work with CIO. Lots of leadership, self management, communication and people management. I don't have those behavior yet and no doubt I failed the interview.
  2. Same job title in Malaysia does not mean the same responsibility in Australia. Further more from point 1, the job title Analyst in Malaysia might be working as a group but in Australia, this has become a independent role. The job description does not provide the whole picture and I was the victim to get fall into the trap only to realize the title is a different thing in Australia.
  3. Multitask is the required. Being called for interview as a Database Analyst, my expectation was to handle mainly on database issue or any application that related to database. However, my expectation was wrong and I was told to cover the DBA, Business Analyst and Support as well. I was shocked and it took me by surprised. There is a term in Malaysia called the "one leg kick" (means do everything by myself and usually applies to small company that has no budget on hiring) and it applies in Australia as well.
  4. Job interview process may required a month. This is my experience and may different from someone's else. First the phone interview with recruiter and got confirmed that I have the skills to perform the job. Then it took the recruiter a week to setup the phone interview with hiring personal  A week past and the telephone interview with hiring personal went well. Then it took the recruiter another 2 weeks to get confirmation from the hiring personal for face to face interview. Face to face interview went well, then it took another week to get answer from the hiring personal. In the end (total 4 weeks), I still couldn't get the job because it was taken by internal reference. Anyway, I wish they could finalized things faster or at least get the internal reference sorted out before posting the job online.
  5. Finding jobs and interview skills can be learned thru attending courses. I found out that NSW government has created a course for the immigrant to help them to find jobs successfully in Australia. The course required 4 hours a day, 3 day per week and it takes 8 weeks. 8 WEEKS! Just to acquire the skill to find and land a job in Australia.
Am I shocked? Yes. Beaten? No. The job hunting course somehow train me up on how to sell myself and I find it is a valuable skill to survive in Australia. Nevertheless, the job process that took 4 weeks to finalize is really driving me nuts.

P.S.: If you're an immigrant in Australia, attend the skillmax course for free and get your resume reviewed and checked. I have attended the course for 3 days and I learn a lot of stuff and got a lot of resource from it.

Reference