The Story

Humble Beginnings

When I moved to Sydney for my Masters degree in 2007, I looked for help in finding a casual job. Being an immigrant, and a student with work rights restrictions didn’t help my job prospects. After trolling through seek and other job seeking websites for months, I was beginning to feel dejected and demotivated. None of it made sense. Here I was, with plenty of corporate experience, a will to succeed, well-spoken, confident, pursuing a Masters degree, but I was still struggling to find jobs. There were plenty of jobs out there, and even the ones that matched my resume perfectly were rejecting my application. I had heard all the stories from my fellow immigrant students – it’s your name, it’s your country, it’s your VISA status, it’s your resume, you’re overqualified, you don’t have local Australian experience and the list of excuses never seemed to end.

The first step…

I had nobody to ask to help review my resume or help me prepare for job interviews. In addition, I needed styling advise as well as advise on corporate culture in Australia. The University of Technology, Sydney career centre came to my rescue. Thanks to a great career counsellor, I started getting help with placements and interview techniques. This helped me prepare for Australian interviews, and got me a placement – an unpaid internship. At this stage, I had secured a casual role in a call centre as well. But I was still at a loss in understanding the Australian workplace.

The VISA conundrum

One by one, I had to tackle those ‘reasons’ for why I wasn’t getting those jobs. The one story that did seem to be true was inability to secure permanent jobs due to lack of a full-time working rights in Australia. When I finished my degree, I applied for my Permanent Residency and got my full-working rights once my application was successful. That was a big TICK. I was ready to brave the world of seek one more time, this time with the right VISA. After another hundred odd applications, I decided I was truly overqualified and need to ‘dumb’ it down and I clearly didn’t understand the Australian workplace. I applied for a Graduate role in a consulting company and went through a prolonged recruitment process and secured my first permanent job. I still couldn’t understand why I had to dumb it down, there had to be other immigrant success stories surely?

Help is what I needed

To this date, I still don’t quite understand why I got so many rejections, but I know that had I got the right mentor and coach to help me prepare I would have had a better chance. I am glad I didn’t give up though. Starting Sydney Mentoring is about giving everyone a real ‘fair go’. Its about helping others succeed, be their best self, whether it is help with resume writing, or someone to run your ideas past, or understanding Australian corporate culture, helping you succeed in your new role, perhaps you need to push new boundaries in your current job, or helping prepare for an interview or just a helping hand. Sydney Mentoring is my story and I hope I can help others in creating their success stories.