How to find a job after graduating from university in Australia

First of all, update your resume! Then, take decisive action! There are many job resources for international students looking for jobs after graduation, and there are also many types of jobs.

Also, if you already live in Australia, the best channel is to use your local network. Let people know you have plans to live and work in Australia and see if they can point you in a good direction.

If you want to find a part-time job, you can look for opportunities from youth hostels or local websites. Don’t be afraid to walk into everyone’s favorite bar or restaurant, resume in hand, and with a smile on your face, and ask about any job opportunities.

Those international students who are already living in Australia should be very aware of the cost of living there. Now, if we want to step into the "real world", we will definitely want our first "adult job" to be more suitable for our living standards.

In short, it is very smooth for many international students to stay and work in Australia. If possible, everyone should make preparations before graduation.

What kind of job am I looking for?

After returning from Melb, around the beginning of February, I began to formally look for a full-time job that could bring a stable income. I have no PR, average grades, and only about half a year of website development experience in a Chinese company. But I never thought I would not be able to find a job because I firmly believe that in this industry, skills, learning ability, and thinking ability are greater than anything else. . There are too many directions in the IT industry, so my idea is that before you start looking, you should first choose your direction and future career. Don't take into account the appearance, but focus on the point and depth (this is the same as doing something) It’s quite similar but similar in approach). Because there are many different industries, expertise and learning ability are what employers really consider in a junior employee.

Resume preparation

After the direction and specific position are determined, start revising the resume specifically around the general requirements of the position. The resume should not be too long, just one page. Don’t put any unnecessary content on it, such as hobbies, interests, personalities, etc. It’s better to start with skills. Educational qualifications can be passed on at once, because only very large companies such as banks or the Big Four will use scores as the first round screening criteria. On the one hand, my scores are not good, on the other hand I have always had a physical aversion to large companies, so I would not consider this issue at all. Next, you should list the things you have done. If you have a portfolio, put a link and a brief description. If you have work experience, put your work experience. If you don’t have any, put your school project experience. If you don’t have any, just look for it first and then do it. Come back to this step (it should be noted that only the experience related to the position you are looking for is listed. For example, I will basically not include PHP positions or Java positions). When listing experiences, try not to include paragraphs, but focus on the phrase bulletin. People who read resumes don’t have time to read novels, so providing the maximum amount of information to resume readers in the shortest time is the most worthy of consideration (this is somewhat similar to SEO). In addition, I insist on being honest and truthful. I only write about things I have really done, and only write about skills that I really understand and have experience in. Don’t write up anything you don’t understand. Make sure that the skills you write about are all those that you can do. Get your hands dirty and do what has actually been done. Skills should also be listed from strongest to weakest, and the same goes for project experience. This is the same as when customers search for something on Google and will not read a website after two pages. In addition, I did not put any emphasis on my personality strengths, team character, etc. in my resume at all, because these can be described in the cover letter, and there is no need to occupy precious resume space here. And this kind of thing is not something that people will believe if you write it yourself. People will naturally understand it when there is an actual interview. That's pretty much it for resumes.

Cover letter

The next thing I started working on was the cover letter. Revising cover letters multiple times for different job companies was one of the most painful things I experienced when I was looking for a job the year before. So this time, after deciding to only apply for the same or similar positions, the cover letter became much easier. Writing a universal cover letter is hard work but has endless benefits. It is a typical investment that pays off many times. The cover letter is probably about four or five paragraphs long. You can search for the words and sentences yourself. It is best to avoid writing too many sentences by yourself. After all, most people like us are not good at writing. Since it is a relatively formal letter, it is better to use more secure written expressions. The first paragraph is probably about where you saw the position and what kind of situation you were in, so you were willing to apply for a job. In the second paragraph, you should start to list the skills that you can qualify for for each item in the job description. Just be more confident and bold. In the third paragraph, you can talk about your character strengths, personality charm, what a team and other nonsense. This is a must. Finally, I would like to summarize. I think I am qualified for this position and what kind of benefits it can bring to the company or team. I hope there will be an interview opportunity and attach my contact information, phone number, email, etc. Of all the opportunities I have invested in, 99% of the time I only changed the date and job title. Of course, this is related to the fact that the title of web developer I invested in is relatively broad. I think we must pay attention to the importance of the cover letter. After all, most people read the cover letter in the body of the email first, and then click on the attachment to read their resume. Compared with the importance of the resume, it can be said that it is even more important. , can be said to be a stepping stone. If this piece falls, there will be no chance of even smashing a gold brick to knock on the door.

After getting the two sharp tools above, you need to pay attention to some details. Don't use your usual contact email, but register a separate email specifically for job hunting, where the person's name can be seen directly from the email address. My personal suggestion is of course gmail. It has fast speed, large capacity and no ads. It has many functions and is well integrated with Google products. The IMAP access method is perfect on the iPhone. After registering this dedicated email address for job hunting, you can forward everything directly to your usual email address (gmail is best, of course) in the settings. This avoids the trouble of checking several email addresses every day. In your frequently used mailbox, create a keyword filter. When there are work-related keywords, mark them all with special work tags and divide them into folders. The advantage of using gmail all the time is that when replying to emails in your regular email address, you can directly choose your sending address as a job-specific email address instead of your regular email address, which is convenient and professional. Having said that, there is a little thing that makes my love for gmail reach a new level. In our cover letters, there are usually words such as "I have attached my resume below". Once, after attaching the cover letter to the body of the email, I forgot to upload the attachment and clicked send directly. At this time, something surprising happened. A pop-up dialog box showed, "Your text contains the word "attach" but the attachment is empty. Are you sure you want to send the email without attaching any attachment?" I was shocked, moved and admired at that time. Falling to the ground. User experience design has been done in such small places, it's hard not to love Google.

Looking for opportunities

In fact, I think that after doing the above things, finding a job will be a mechanical and repetitive physical work. How to do regular physical work well? In fact, it also has a certain technical content.

The largest job search website in Australia is seek, and others include mycareer. But I only focus on seek, because seek accounts for about 80% of the job information in Australia, which is enough for anyone to apply. After registering for seek, first improve your profile according to your own situation. Next, the most important thing is to subscribe by email. seek provides new recruitment information updated daily to the user's mailbox based on keywords and other special field requirements. After setting special keywords, levels and salary requirements for each position you want, the corresponding new information added every day will be sent to your mailbox in the form of a list at around three o'clock in the night. So from now on, I will just check my emails every day, and then choose the ones I think are appropriate to post.

An important thing is that there are a lot of recruitment information sent by headhunting agencies. I will never apply for this kind of job, because most of them are useless, and they don’t have direct contact with people from the company for interviews or anything like that. If you don't understand the company well, it's better not to do this kind of thankless waste of time. Another thing worth doing is to keep a record of the companies and positions you have applied for. Because the general process is that the other party will first short-list a part, and then call you. If they feel it is suitable, they will send you an email to make an appointment for the next interview or test. Often at this time, after you have submitted dozens or hundreds of applications, if anyone calls you and tells you the company name, it is impossible for you to recall it, because saving a doc contains the company position, location, company information, and seek. The corresponding job description page, company page and other information are necessary. On the one hand, you can know which ones you have applied for, and you can avoid repeated submissions to positions that failed. On the other hand, you can have statistics on the number of applications you have applied for. If there is no reply or response for a long time, you should make timely adjustments to your resume and cover letter. I use Google Docs for this. The convenience is that the cloud can be accessed from anywhere, which is the same as email. In addition, I have divided documents for different regions, namely sydney, melb and others. According to my statistics, Sydney has the most opportunities, accounting for about two-thirds of Australia. Of course, it also has the largest population and competition. In Melb, the number is probably one-third to half of that in Sydney, and other regions combined have just as many opportunities as Melb. In my case, sydney received the most responses, followed by kunzhou and other regions, and melb didn't get a single positive reply. The only one who contacted me via email also rejected me after 20 days. Maybe it’s because I’m in Sydney and there’s a huge shortage of people in Queensland. In terms of technology distribution, website or web application development is the most common, regardless of front-end or back-end. Then, php is the most popular back-end technology, .net is similar to j2ee, python, RoR and even perl have been seen before, but they are very rare. In addition to working on the web, there are relatively many databases. Whether it is analysis, development, mining or management, there are many, and it is an optional direction (although I personally feel it is boring). Furthermore, it is obvious that mobile development such as iOS is becoming more and more popular and is worth pursuing. Low-level system development or networking is probably the least (but it seems that the money is the most, because it is scarce). In terms of salary, Sydney is considered to be one of the best in Australia in terms of consumption. This is indeed the case in terms of salary. 45k super is the industry benchmark (for junior/entry, of course). You can also get around 40k in other places, but compared with the house price, this 40k is much more valuable than Sydney.

Waiting

In fact, for me, if I get an interview opportunity, the chance of getting an offer is probably more than half. The most anxious part is actually the stage of waiting for the response.

Within two weeks after I officially started submitting my resume, there were only a few emails and phone calls, and not a single serious interview opportunity. However, in the next two weeks, the interviews began to explode (three last week, four this week). , four next week). I think this has a lot to do with the fact that Australians are relatively lazy in life and work, so you don’t have to worry or be too anxious (I also received a call today to arrange an interview for a position I applied for 20 days ago) as long as you have a phone call and email Replying to the letter means that your cover letter and resume are useful and eye-catching. However, if there are basically no responses to phone calls and emails within two or three weeks, you should make timely adjustments. As for the interview, I really can't give any practical and useful advice. Take a rough look at the common interview questions and have a mental picture. Don’t panic suddenly when the time comes. Prepare to accumulate the technical questions slowly. In terms of dressing, you feel that you can pass it (people like me who never like to wear formal clothes still bought one. Use a semi-formal and semi-casual shirt as your interview attire). Don’t be too full or hungry before the interview, otherwise it will affect brain function. It is okay to drink some coffee and energy drinks before the interview (but be aware that both of these are diuretics. For Don’t drink too much water before a long interview). During the interview, you should be neither arrogant nor arrogant. You should laugh when you should laugh and not laugh when you shouldn’t. It is best to be able to control the atmosphere during the interview by yourself. Avoid being too nervous or too nervous. If you are too excited, the most important thing is to be honest, because you have no memory of lies. If you ask repeatedly, problems will arise, so it is better not to say it. Regarding English, don’t speak too fast. Just speak how you normally speak. There is no need to prepare any business English. When it comes to swearing, avoid it if you can, but it's not a big deal if you blurt it out in a moment of excitement. After all, Australians are very unconventional and unconservative in this regard, so you don't need to pay special attention to it. My impression from the interview is that in fact, in our industry, there is not much difference in terms of skills. After all, learning ability is more important, so personal personality charm plays a much greater role than imagined. Most ghosts like to be open, interesting and have their own way. They value people who are good at conversation, and have a harmonious company team atmosphere. Of course, these are all based on the skills meeting the minimum basic requirements. The benefits of working abroad can be reflected here. After all, any value is created by people. Talents are everything in work. Treating people as talents will lead to better efficiency and effects.

If the interview goes well, the next step is to accept the offer. When you have too many interviews and too many companies to choose from, whether to accept the offer or not is a tangled proposition. Whether to choose the one you love or the one who loves you is a question that never ends (in all fields). And since I have always only cared about the ones I love, it seems to me that it is natural to reject one or two offers and wait for the company I love. But this does not apply to everyone. After all, individual pursuits are different. In addition, if opportunities and offers are very rare and rare for you, it is not undesirable to seize the fleeting opportunities. After all, you will have more food and clothing. Spend more energy pursuing the people and things you love.

As for job hunting, I don’t have much experience in our place and this industry. It’s mostly just the above. I hope it can be of some help to my friends who are struggling in Kangaroo Country.