Getting a job in sydney

Being sporadic, that i would say

It is hard not that easy, to find a job in Sydney, well what has this article represents is based on my background education which is IT and my previous working experiences, and my geographical location. I have been asked by many friends about how hard is it to get a job in Sydney, or generally in Australia, and I have always answered “well it depends”.

so about the jobs..

I always use job board sites such as seek, mycareer to find job vacancies, there are plenty of jobs just to search with a keyword “programmer”,  and go a bit more specific to “PHP” , and “ASP” or “.NET”,

-went a bit more statistically, .NET junior jobs are paying more than PHP on junior level-
and go way lesser jobs count on “games programmer” or even just “games”

here, we have recruitment agencies that lurking around job board sites posting jobs, most of the time, the jobs that being posted there are made by the recruitment agencies. so if I applied (submitting resume) to the job post, I will get replied/contacted by a recruitment agency’s staff.

After I finished my college, I did not do any job hunting because then I continued worked for my internship. but after my contract finished, I soon began my job hunting. I went to use the job sites, do some job searches, and found about 5 pages list of jobs. so I went like hey, there are plenty, lets choose the one that looks prestigious, interesting jobs and apply. at the end of the day, I only applied 1 to 3 jobs in a week. after few days of applying, I got call from one of the agencies that posted the job. she asked about my previous experiences though it is already in my CV, she asked a bit about my detail, salary expectation, etc.. and said she will forward my resume to the company. I waited for their feedback for few weeks, and in the meantime i also did not apply for another job because i thought this agent has a job for me, at least i thought i was taken for at least a job interview until otherwise. but nope, they did not give any feedback whether rejection nor acceptance.

I went jobless for 3 months because of this, until… I realize what I shall do, I submitted my resume to all new job posts that I am interested in, or job that I have experiences in. at the end of the day, I applied like 7 to 10 jobs a week. Being sporadic, that I would say.. I checked the job site once a day to see if there were new job posts. at the end of the week, I became a call boy for all these recruitment agencies, I had minimum 3 phone interviews a week with agencies, and sometimes got asked for interview physically on their office, once upon a time I got 2 interviews in a day in a week. but most of the time only once a week. but all of them were interviews with the agencies.

usually they ask if I have been interviewed by other agencies, or by companies(they call it “client”), but i would say.. be a liar about this, and say “just some agencies… two or three, including you”,

sometimes they asked about my expected salaries, lets oversell your self, say 45 to 50 base, or package. and adjust it later when you got interviewed by the “client”(the  company that is going to hire you).

but be honest about your experiences and skills. don’t be an embarrassment off your professions by saying something you can’t do.

but the best of job posts are the one that were posted by the real company. it is not that kind of obvious. some agents posted jobs without their agencies footer or header. but most of company posted jobs are always have the footer and their company’s header. it is good to apply to this one because you get interviewed directly by their HR or even I got interviewed by their senior programmers. i got this type of interviews twice. and their feedbacks are always prompt. once i got rejected about a week later (which is good so i can apply to some other jobs) and the other one I got accepted for the job.

so yeah, let’s end this post with some conclusion:
1. look at job sites, seek, mycareer, gumtree even. search for your dream job. but search also for ‘job to pay your bills’.
2. being sporadic and apply to all the job that if you find yourself you can handle the requirements, Gotta apply them all.
3. don’t wait for the interview replies. apply for other job posts even after you have just got back from an interview.
4. if you got accepted at a non dream job. do your best at it. while secretly looking for your dream job.

and another tip for programmers who are waiting or looking for a job, do a personal project. most interviewer asks for this. and i think it is always fun to talk about it.

cheers