#2 - Rakesh: ’Survival’ jobs as a step to professional employement

Rakesh talks about his current job and how he found professional work in Australia, after an initial customer service role. Arriving from India, not knowing anybody in Australia, and right at the start of the Covid, he was able to secure professional employment through adopting the OBP Australia strategy which he describes as, ‘Simple, but not easy to do on your own’.

I first met Rakesh in April 2020, after he’d been in Australia a couple of months. The first thing that struck me was his excellent communication skills, something that no doubt helped him secure work in his profession.

He talks about:

• What’s important in a job application and job interview
• What causes applications to be rejected
• Relevance of industry domain experience
• His work and professional development on the job
• His ‘survival jobs’ and how they were useful
• The mistakes he made in his initial efforts to find work
• Networking events
• The ‘no local experience’ issue
• Humour & Australian culture and the differences working in India
• Preparing to come to Australia