How to Australianise Your Resume

How to Australianise Your Resume
January 11, 2022 Construction People

The title to this piece sounds controversial, doesn’t it? The reality is though, that many migrants are being overlooked for jobs even if they are highly skilled. We share a couple of tips on how to Australianise your resume.

Australianising Resume Migrants Tips

It’s in a migrant’s best interest to look at their resume as the ticket that will open the door to an Australian job and help to overcome the barriers a new country presents with. So, how do you Australianise your resume?

There are the usual tips that really can apply to anyone such as, making your resume detailed, tailoring your resume to be job-specific, avoiding the use of American English, removing slang and text-style acronyms, providing referees with the correct International Dialling Code, and being clear – to name a few.

But what exactly is meant by Australian-ising your resume?

Basically, it’s reworking your resume to be understood in an Australian context.

Make company comparisons

When employers aren’t familiar with the companies you’ve worked for overseas, just stating the company name isn’t going to cut it. What you need, is to explain what that business does. Provide real practical tips so you can explain to a person who’s not familiar with the company, as to what they do.

It comes down to how best you can present your information in the best possible light to get you a job when people can’t reference or have no understanding. For example, if someone says I worked for Lend Lease in Sydney, the employer will have an immediate understanding of what it is that they do, what the backgrounding is, they know the size of the business and what the business does, but they won’t know about businesses from other countries, because they just simply don’t know them, so you’ve got to explain it.

Make job description comparisons

In that light, also look for similar Australian job descriptions to ascertain what your role from overseas is titled here. Find similarities and liken a company in Australia to that of the one/s you’ve come from, to help the employer understand you better, and what you have to offer.

For example, a job title might be Senior QS in the UK, but what does that actually mean to an Australian employer? Well, that’s really a Senior Contracts Administrator. Here’s where we traditionally find that the duties differ just a little bit, so you need to be aware of this. That’s where it’s worth exploring how you can explain yourself in a manner that can make a potential employer understand better what it is that you do. So, if you’re an SM or a CA coming from Europe, the Middle East, or Africa, what does it take, how do you Australianise your resume?

Help the employer to help themselves

Half the thing is that the employer doesn’t know how to overcome the barriers because they’re new to them and they don’t necessarily have the time to research, particularly in a candidate rich market that is moving very quickly presently.

Make it as easy as possible for the employer to understand where you’ve been, what you’ve done, and how that translates into what we do here in Australia.

Summary

A little bit of homework can go a long way. Australian resumes are very different to say the UK, US, Middle East, or South Africa etc. Think of ways to explain where you’ve been and what you’ve done on a parallel of what that looks like in Australian terms. Don’t leave any room for ambiguity. The job ‘market’ is just that – a ‘market’. Market yourself by explaining why you’re the best fit in a way that the employer will easiest understand. The same works for Australians looking to work overseas.

Australianise Resume Tips

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