Of course, serving jobs are the easiest to come by, especially if you have experience. And this definitely holds true in Australia. I decided to suck it up since it has officially been a month living here, and go drop off my resume. Like I’ve mentioned before, I live in a good area that’s close to a ton of cafes and restaurants and shops. I figured at least one of them would be willing to hire me, especially if I applied to every single one.
So I set out last Friday with 8 resumes printed. And by the way, this isn’t your normal 1 page American resume. This is a “CV”/”Curriculum Vitae” (or something?) that’s about 3 pages long and goes into deal what skills you have acquired and how you use them, what companies you’ve worked for and what they’re all about and so on and so forth for 3 pages. The first place I went was this Italian restaurant that I’ve seen always pretty packed and they said that they would call me in a few days. The next 2 places I dropped it off at gave me an interview right then and there. The 4th place I went to asked me if I could come in and do a “trial” the following week. Then I dropped two more off for shits and giggles and they weren’t hiring anyway.
I figured I may as well call it a quits for the day since it had been relatively successful. I got a call about an hour after getting home asking me to come back into one of the restaurants I had dropped off my resume. Showed up and they pretty much offered me the job – only it wasn’t a part time/”casual” job that I was looking for, but full-time. By the way, these crazy Aussie’s have this thing called “casual” work which I guess is pretty ideal for travelers – something along the lines of being “on call” pretty much the entire time..something along those lines. Anyway, as my sister, Mallory, put it perfectly – I didn’t come to Australia to work full-time, let alone working full time serving. Not down. So I kindly declined.
So now I’ve gone to 2 “trials” – which sounds weird but I suppose it makes sense. They basically just throw you in and see how you do. You get half-assed trained and they see if you sink or swim. I suppose it’s quite an effective way to hire adequate servers. Unfortunately I sank at my first trial – sorry I can’t bring drinks to table 25 when you haven’t told me which table is 25. And that I don’t recognize all of their 50 Australian wines. Anyway, the second trial went quite well and they even put me on the schedule! Mind you, it’s when I have class and now I have to get it covered (they had me fill out the availability form and I’m pretty sure I did it backwards….put an X every AM & PM I could work – which is all of them except for Monday & Tuesday AM’s. I, of course, got scheduled Monday AM), but that must have meant I did something right!
It’s at this super cute Italian café about 3 minutes walking from my house. All the food looks delicious and everyone that works there seemed pretty chill. It’s your basic café job so I would work the register, bring out food, handle cash etc. Nothing crazy. Unfortunately (isn’t there always an “unfortunately”..) the pay is pretty shitty, or as the Aussie’s say, “the pay is pretty shit” (apparently “shit” is an adjective here as well). I get it, the minimum wage here is way higher and $12 an hour might not sound bad, but they don’t tip here. And so $12 really isn’t the best of deals. Especially when other places had offered me $15 and I thought that was “shit”.
Anyway, I’m going in for another trial this Wednesday, along with an interview Wednesday morning as well. And this one is for a big kid job! It’s an Event Marketing and Information Assistant at this not-for-profit company, BrainLink, which is an organization aimed at funding money for different kinds of brain disease patients. Pretty much the PERFECT job because I’ve been working with non-profits AND it’s an event position AND not to mention it pays $30 an hour. Oh AND it’s only 8 hours a week, which is perfect for a person (me) that wants to travel a lot!
Sooo to sum everything up à if you have serving experience, you’ve got a GOOD shot at finding a job in Australia relatively easily. And I’m pretty sure being American, where customer service is our number one priority, doesn’t hurt either. Don’t let employers trick you into working “close to full time” when they actually 100% mean FULL time as in Thursday – Sunday for 10 hours a day, and no, I doubt you get breaks either (I’ve heard people don’t get breaks). Pretty much, if you’re able to be picky and don’t want to get screwed over – don’t settle. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before but employers don’t really care about you because you’re expendable. You kinda just gotta turn it around sometimes, especially if you DO have lots of experience, and realize that there are plenty of job opportunities if you work hard to find them so make sure you have your priorities straight.
Obviously, my priorities are something like fun, traveling, relaxing, then maybe school, perhaps working after that ;)
You’re life is what you make it. Stop bitching about your stupid jobs and either get a new one, maybe work towards what you got your degree in or do something exciting. Obviously I’m not right on my way to being super successful and getting a great job but that’s not what I want to do right now. My first priorities are having fun and traveling and that’s what I’m doing.
A few other tips -- If you're planning on looking for work, make sure to apply for a Tax File Number (you can just google it and apply online) because it takes about 1-2 weeks to get in the mail and you need one to work, otherwise you get taxed the shit out of. Also, look up Aussie Resume Builders online. I used one through Deakin, but it gives you the format of how they want it to look, which is pretty different to how I've been taught in the states. OH & just FYI - they LOOOVE our American accents and our culture so show some personality : )