Some disciplines are more oversupplied with skilled candidates than others. These are typically ones that require more technical skills than communications skills, such as accounting and IT. In other cases, it’s a result of the government opening up visas to those in certain fields such as hairdressing and cooking in the past.

The reality is Australian employers want people with experience. As I say, “Employers want you to make mistakes at work so you learn; they just want those mistakes with the past employer!” This is a combination of employers wanting confidence that you can do the work and the fact that universities’ curriculum in some disciplines is seriously misaligned from what the bulk of employers are chasing. A classic example of this is in Accounting where the course content is aimed at senior accounting roles, air fairy theory, and whole subjects on ethics. CPA and CA are both prestigious brands and many students, rightly so, aim to complete one of these accreditations. However, this steers students to subjects at the university that meet the CPA or CA requirements rather than taking the basic courses first, and universities often bow to the same pressure. The analogy I put forward is like teaching students how to be formula one drivers and not teaching them basics of driving a car on the road! As for ethics, yes everyone needs them, but it is interesting that there is such a need to focus on teaching ethics predominantly to accountants, and less so to HR and other business disciplines.

Then the biggest issue hits international students: the need for strong communication skills. As a recruiter, my biggest obstacle in placing international students is English communication skills, followed by lack of experience, then technical ability. The phrase ‘recruit for culture and teach skills’ is followed because technical skills can be taught. The same principle applies to communication skills. Employers may take a chance that they can teach you the technical aspects of a role, but they won’t even try teaching you English. So if your communication skills are subpar they will simply select another candidate. This is not racist but a simple business requirement. However, there are also racist employers in Australia. (I make it clear I don’t condone this and that 95% of my staff are from international backgrounds.) Some employers are subconsciously racist, born from laziness and time constraints in that they will look at an applicant’s name, see it is an international name, assume the applicant cannot speak English and delete their resume. I have observed first hand an experiment where the same resume was taken and the name only was changed from a foreign-sounding name to a more common Anglo name. Both resumes were sent a few hours apart. I’m sure you can guess which one of the two the employer responded favorably to.

I alluded to the fact that over-education can be an inhibitor to obtaining entry-level roles. In countries throughout Asia, the culture dictates that aspiring professionals complete an undergraduate degree. They then do their postgraduate course and subsequently get a great job. In Australia, unless you gain work experience along the journey it does not work that way. In fact, even the leading postgraduate courses such as a MBA require you to have work experience before they will admit you. This is to ensure that all students enter at a certain level and so that their graduates get jobs at the end of their course, a statistic which is critical in protecting the brand name of their flagship courses.

Many students are smart enough to work out that they will need work experience. Others find out six to twelve months after starting university. Either way, having then spent upwards of $30,000 on a postgraduate course they are willing participants in gaining voluntary work experience. However, Fairwork Australia has put a stop to many of these practices, creating bigger problems for students because they now have no opportunity to gain experience. In Fairwork’s defence, they are trying to stop exploitation of people, but the wording of their legislation is very grey and there have not been enough test cases yet to make employers willing to risk legal action by hiring a student. The ones that do tend to be the smaller backyard businesses where exploitation is more likely.

CPA printed an article in their “In the Black” magazine presenting the thoughts of one lady who argued that some students having access to voluntary work was a social injustice as richer families could afford it and others could not. I agree with her implication that voluntary work is clearly highly beneficial but would argue that as a parent I will provide my children any assistance I can starting with a private school if I can afford it, a good university, afterschool tutoring, and I certainly would not hesitate at giving my kids a strong competitive advantage with voluntary work experience down the track. In fact, my younger brother completed a Marketing degree and, like most candidates, struggled to get a role so went and did a master’s in Marketing and still could not get a role. I had a contact in my business network willing to take him on for 3-4 months as an intern. My brother learnt a lot, took the experience, got a job, and has not looked back. I would certainly never exploit my family members, so you can see my view on the importance of experience.

It is true that many international students do not have the circle of friends and family to help them gain experience, that many have communications barriers they need to address more so than technical deficiencies, and that their home culture steers them down a different study path to what may be optimal in Australia. Many of the people not getting roles are highly motivated and willing to put in the work to actually make Australia the lucky country once again. They just need an avenue to achieve this vision.