I finally got the real thing, the formal letter of the job offer from the City Council. It’s been two weeks since the HR people rang me to suggest me to go for a pre-employment medical examination. Now I have every reason to believe that, this is actually happening, after nearly two months’ hard work of looking for a job, I am really going to work somewhere at the last. Hooray!!!!!!

I started to search around since 10 June, the first Saturday after I got back to Australia from a holiday, and also the weekly releasing date of Job Guide by The Canberra Times. During the first one month after I began, I got no response at all. No calls, no email feedback and no further discussion. I thought this was going to be exactly as same as what I have gone through in the last year.

But things suddenly changes since 8 July. The windows and doors started to open up to me. The following week from 10 July to 16 July was quite busy. I got 4 calls from different companies inviting me for an interview, 3 of the appointments have to be done in the same week, the other one left to the very next Monday, which is right the one that I was given a notice to tell me I was successful 8 days later.

However, after that busy interview week, I haven’t really slowed down. I kept preparing the applications and sending them out, and I got the interview invitation from time to time until last Thursday morning, I got my last invitation from Transfield which was my 9th one, giving a perfect temporary ending for this year of my job seeking work.

Here are some statistic figures that might be helpful to review the whole course of my job searching:

1) It took me 7 weeks to finally get a job, comparing to last year, which was 10 weeks (but just got a initially 3-weeks contract job) and very fustrating bloody exhausting, I am happy to see the time I spend for completing such a cycle has reduced a bit.

2) I send out total 36 applications, most of them was to response to the job ads from the Canberra Times, only one of them was through the Career One website.;

3) Out of this 36 applications, 16 didn’t give me any forms of feedback until today, like telling me I was not successful or something, but 3 of this 16 positions have been re-advertised in the newspaper, which means they might have read my application but didn’t think I would fit;

4) Out of the rest of another 20 applications, there were 11 employers directly sent me a refusal letter (post or email) informing me I was even not successful to be shortlisted for an interview or there already has someone filled the position;

5) The rest of 9 applications were my luck, 2 of them through the agencies, another 7 was directly from the employers. I have attened 5 and declined another 4 because these 4 came after I already got a notice from City Council, so I just cancelled the appointments or refused the invitations on the phone. So the interview rate is about 9/36 (to 1/4);

6) Most of the positions I have applied were Admin based permanent job or project based admin job. a couple of them are 5-12 months contract job. I didn’t apply for any part-time job this time;

7) The salary range is from 30,000-54,000. I was very close to get one of my interested position in ACT Health where the salary could reach up to 52,000, but I couldn’t make it for some reason;

I found that my application usually couldn’t appeal those small or private companies, maybe it’s because I don’t have particular experience in a certain industry or they love more local-oriented employees. However, the big companies like Government, Public Sectors and some National or International Tech companies showed more interests in me;

I used to hear lots of people telling their job seeking experience, like sending 100 applications every day, which sounds very proactive and shows the effort and diligence on job searching work. But according to my experience, I don’t think it possible. There are about 700 jobs coming out of the Canberra Times every week, plus other info published in other recuitment sources, there are at most 1000 positions brought out every week. Out of this 1000, it should be no more than 1/20 jobs that would be suitable for each individul, so how could one people send 100 a day and do it 7/24? Besides, writing applications is a very tiresome and time-consuming work. A good application, especially the one needs to be prepared against the Selection Criteria, could cost you a whole morning or a whole day. When coming across this kind of jobs, it is very normal to at most have 2 applications done within one day. So, if someone sent out 100 applications, I guess most of this 100 have not been carefully prepared or just exactly the same copies. Wouldn’t that be a big waste of time? For me, I would rather writing 2 good applications instead of sending out 100 bad applications.

Plus, don’t worry too much about English. We always thought employers would care about this very much, but it’s not always true. Everybody knows we are not locals and they don’t expect us to speak English as well as they do. They care more about what we have done and how closely what we have done matches up to what the current duties require us to do. Therefore, skills and how you integrate your skills and experience are the most important thing for a successful job seeking. Last, always being sincere and honest, which can help you to earn the trust from interviewers.

Now it’s my time to say good bye to the chilblains. I won’t have to stay at a cold room to develop chilblains on my feet and fingers. I am going to a warm office