Need Work Advice for Fresh ICT Graduate

• 

  geek001 on 29/06/2017 - 15:33

  Have you thought about applying for permanent residency in Australia? I am not sure of your current residency status, but your visa may not even allow you to work in Australia hence most jobs require you to either be a permanent resident or citizen. Getting your first job is really hard even for residents unless you are the top 10% of your class, you will probably have to start at the very bottom. I know IT graduates who started their first job at a call centre and people who did data entry. I myself would have sent about 150 resumes to get my first job and this was way back when. I think I still have a folder filled with rejection letters somewhere in one of my old email accounts. Good luck.

  • 

    panTera15 on 29/06/2017 - 20:25

    Thank you for your reply. Yes, i am thinking of applying for permanent residency which I will be able to after 1 year. I am very much willing to forward my resume to job advertisers. However, visa requirement is what's holding me back. I do have a 2 years Post study work visa though. I am still searching for job postings which will accept international students too. Fingers crossed.

• 

  ash79 on 29/06/2017 - 15:41

  I would try to secure some initial experience(at least 6 months) by approaching startups, visiting fishburners to meet small groups working on several new projects, meet ups by showing my interest to some POC/ startup projects. I would not mind to offer volunteer contribution to gain some reference and experience in the field.

  Needless to say that most of the startups there may not have great funding to pay you full time, be ready to work part-time or with lesser pay to gain some experience and to build references.

• 

  trustnoone on 29/06/2017 - 16:12

  Definitely check to see if its even possible, I'm not even sure you can really get someone without PR usually because you have restricted work hours on other visas?

  Honestly work experience go's a long way, I got into my program because I had experience in Engineering (unpaid) and volunteer work, so it doesn't even have to be ICT (though obviously that would've helped more).

  If you're looking for private businesses knowing someone helps, some guy was selling me his phone on Gumtree and I ended up scoring an interview through it (super nice guy) for a fairly big company (didn't really get the job though :p).

  Other then that, look for a company you can work from the bottom up, so if your looking at a software company maybe try getting into the sales area (like phone sales). Once they see you understand the business you can show them your ICT degree and move up.

  • 

    panTera15 on 29/06/2017 - 20:34

    Thank you for your response. That's a cool story of yours. I have asked few people that I know to tell me if they know of any job offerings too. Hopefully, that helps.

• 

  [Deactivated] on 29/06/2017 - 16:19

  You won't get a job through the standard channels, your only option is to network and get in via connections.
  Go to every social/networking events you find and make some friends who work in the ICT field, literally this is the only way.

  I've been searching for over two years now and from my experience, most businesses aren't willing to spend a dime on training non experienced graduates unless you've got some serious academic credentials or referred via close social/business connections.

  I can't even get a response from 80% of my emails where i volunteer for unpaid work experience in my field of Mechanical engineering. The ones that do reply, i later find out through asking their interns that they show no promise of paying down the track, they simply take unpaid interns for free labor and reject them at end of intern period.

  Hell i still can't put foot in the door and I'm in a better situation than you are being an Australian citizen.

  • 

    panTera15 on 29/06/2017 - 20:56

    That's what my friends told me too. A friend of mine is working as an intern (unpaid) in a small business (as a part of a professional year course for international students) and says he doesn't see them offering him any role once he completes. Knowing your situation even after all those efforts that you put into, I believe I'm looking for a very rough road ahead.

• 

  Mumbles on 29/06/2017 - 18:06

  Getting a start as an inexperienced Business Analyst is one of the hardest of the IT specialisations. An employer is taking huge risks and resources to train and mentor a junior business analyst/designer. Most important to an employer is your years of experience as a business analyst.

  Given your situation that you're on a visa with maximum of 2 years, most employers are going to freak at the idea of training you to be a BA. Imagine they spend 2-3 years of BA training and then you leave the country / company.

  Best to wait until your citizenship comes through and apply for advertised graduate business analyst positions (which is VERY rare for employers). In the mean time you can work IT roles that will develop the BA skills you want to work with (eg. customer support, office admin, research, reports, project management, user acceptance testing, database administrator/data modeller/data conversion/SQL, trainer, quality assurance, document writer, etc).

  Another option is to apply to one of the IT sweatshops heavily outsourcing to overseas. There are some companies that outsource IT to employees in countries like the Philippines, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, India. Unfortunately more and more are reluctant to outsource their Business Analysis and Project Management work overseas due to past project failures.

  • 

    panTera15 on 29/06/2017 - 23:02

    Thank you for your response. BA indeed is a very hard to find position for inexperienced analysts. I will definitely look for some other roles within an IT industry that will broaden my knowledge and experience.

    • 

      Mumbles on 30/06/2017 - 05:02

      Something important to keep in mind is that many employers advertising IT graduate positions will ask only for candidates who completed a degree recently eg. within 2 years (some allow 5 years). I'd recommend having a read of some of the advertisements to get informed.

• 

  Randxyz123 on 29/06/2017 - 18:17

  How about the graduate programs? You've missed next years intake but could apply for the year after.

  Are you allowed to work? What sort of visa do you have now?