I have two Australian nationally recognized IT qualifications from TAFE and a reference from my previous boss, but I still find it very hard to get an interview for IT jobs in Brisbane.
I updated my LinkedIn profile and tried getting my resume looked by the Tafe job officer and university resume inspector. Both of them said my resume is great, and have no issues, but still find it very hard to get a job in IT.
Any tips or tricks would be much appreciated.
Hopefully, entry levels. I tried a couple of recruitment agencies like Hays and Hudsons, but never seem to respond to me, and for my personal experience with Hays, the way they manage seemed to be all over the place.
The only place I can think of is a Traineeship or work experience since most entry-level IT jobs are always flooded with applications.
Yep, Been in IT for 20+ years now and entry level IT work is flooded at the moment both with newbies and people from overseas as well. IT is a particular high demand role among Indians I have found. In saying that, very few of them ever go beyond helpdesk/desktop support roles so if you can get that entry level work, moving up doesn't have the same challenges once you have the experience behind you.
customer service in an IT company. However, I do find that a huge wasted potential.
Brother you've not got a degree. You're going to have to eat shit in an IT CS role for a while as is tradition.
Could try government jobs https://smartjobs.qld.gov.au/jobtools/jncustomsearch.searchR…
For these you need to write your cover letter to address the criteria in the role description and it helps to sometimes contact the contact person listing and discussing the role as well as asking if they are aware of other opportunities coming up. Apply directly via the smart jobs website and upload your documents, not via seek.
Thanks, I always prefer to have a direct conversation with some employers to hopefully get some interactions with them.
Good luck!
Government jobs take AGES to get a response
Yes, they often do. It’s a minimum ten day advertising period, a panel of usually 3 people needs to be assembled and their diaries need to align for interviews. This will involve one person external to the area it’s in, and attempts to eliminate bias should be considered. Prior to interviews you do application screening. All three panel members need to screen applications independently and may need to meet to achieve consensus on a short list. After interviews all candidates that meet merit need to have checks done and these are pretty extensive. Police checks and take a while for some departments (where I work it’s quick but others are not). If it’s a health job in a hospital the candidate needs evidence of immunity to various things and this needs to be checked by the infection control area. Referee checks also need to come back. So yep you’re looking at probably 1-2months from application to starting if successful. For those doing the recruiting 3 months is usually built into a timeline, as there are a few steps before advertising. If all stars align it can be turned around much more quickly but this isn’t commonly the case.
Still very worthwhile looking for OP in terms of entry level IT. There’s lots of support in gov jobs and opportunity to build a career.
Queensland Education has such a large turn over and pay poor wages then that may be an area to consider? I would assume that you are based in BrisVegas, or at least Queensland 🤔
@Ade99: I used to work for one of them and the wage was poor that's for sure, but at least it is better than working for a wage theft business. The manager that I used to work for didn't even properly look at my resume and just did a quick interview and I got the job. However, when I got in it was mostly simple troubleshooting for student/staff laptops and wondering around the school to look for printers, projectors, and hardware to see if it needed to be worked on.
Good opportunity to enter the market and upskill before moving to private
Try applying at MSP's. Its hard work but you'll learn a lot and should be able to get into something better after a year or two.
Do you know where they usually post the jobs? I tried a few like https://nexigen.digital/careers/ and got ghosted even though I met all the requirements for the job
I used to work for an MSP called Blueapache down in one of their Melbourne offices. They do have a Brisbane office as well, though I never worked up there.
I will say, working in L1/L2 support on the phones etc is hard work, it's very busy and can be a bit overwhelming, but you will learn a lot, very quickly, and can potentially move up within that company, or move elsewhere once you have a year or more on your CV.
Only fans uses computers so that could be an IT job?
Is there local demand for your qualifications though? And how easy/much cheaper is it to get it done off-shore instead?
Outsourcing saves cents. Cheers
Unfortunately a lot of the applicants with degrees and no experience don't get a second look. It certainly makes it hard when there's not really anywhere to get experience.
My advice is if you're under 18 try and get a traineeship. The 2-3 years of that with work experience will end up more valuable than a Bachelor/Masters with no hands on experience.
I have both Australian and international work experience. I can even speak Mandarin, Japanese, and English I didn't include those in my Resume because I believe that most Employers don't really care about a person that can speak multiple languages at once.
I'm not sure about IT, but I think these are valuable skills in other professions and worth including in your CV.
I can even speak Mandarin, Japanese, and English
ASIS would like to speak with you.
For real though, see if there's another entry level position you can get into in a large government department (not necessarily related to IT). Once in, and after a little while it's a lot easier to transfer within teams (e.g. to an IT team), or even find secondments.
Try testing and support/help desk jobs as a way of getting into a company and get experience before moving.
Have a look at internships to see what companies have them and see what entry IT jobs they have and give them a try.
AI has your back
Agencies tend to only hire specialist roles. They're too expensive to use for help desk/entry level roles, so they're likely not going to help you very much. Most big companies have inhouse recruitment these days, and even small ones know they can just throw up and ad and sort through the resumes without spending $15k. Much better to go direct at your level. And much better to go MSPs, as mentioned above. But remember they get slammed and can take a while.
A lot of stuff has also offshored the past few years, where I work the T1 and a lot of the T2 is overseas and what's local doesn't always involve an IT background, so it's quite hard to break into it. Where you'll find the best luck in companies that have an interest in onshored jobs, government, banking, anyone that has government contracts, something like that. Make sure they actually have an office in Brisbane first as well, target them and keep trying (a lot of recruiting teams, while promising they'll keep your details on record, just spam ads to find their candidates. It sucks). Try find anyone who has a head office in Brisbane, because they'll have local staff.
It's a ridiculously tough market for anyone outside of security or AI at the moment, even good database networking people are struggling. We had 900 applicants for a IT project manager role recently, so it is a really tough slog. Jan is also the slowest time of year, everyone is coming back and getting into things, trying to figure out how to stretch their budget to year end. It usually picks up by March though, so now is a good time to apply. January we get swamped with applications of people who are just sick of where they're currently at, it's easy to get lost in the crowd.
Not sure how useful this is but there are volunteer positions in IT that might give some experience for your resume.
Best of luck with the job hunt.
There are no IT jobs worth pursuing in Brisbane! That's the problem. Nothing to do with u or your qualifications, Brisbane is 30 years behind the rest of Australia. And tafe certifications don't count for too much when you're competing with people who have degrees. So maybe consider a different industry
You didn't mention the TAFE quali you have. Anyhow, try MSP as others said and also do like short term projects like roll out, ewaste decom etc…and while you're doing this, still applying for service desk/helpdesk. Level 1 is mainly about customer interaction so not really needed lots of skill and then learn on the job.
Good luck.
My experiences is that TAFE certificates and Diploma are useless unless you had associated internships or higher apprenticeship (rare beasts). You are competing against hordes of degree (bachelor's and master's) as well
What sort of job are you looking For? The IT market right now is not particularly good for jobs