Bridging barriers
Business leaders in the IT arena have openly recognised the contribution of skilled migrant workers.
With approximately 26 language groups represented in EDS' call centre operations Bruce Lin, managing director of the company in Australia, places a high value on our skilled migrants.
-The skill level of many of the people that come here on the skilled migrant program is generally very high," Lin says. -Sourcing people with specific skills and experience is still very difficult, we really need to be getting a lot more people in Australia into IT careers."
Working closely with many skilled migrants as they look for employment in their field of expertise, Merryn Jones believes the IT industry is loosing out on a significant opportunity due to a reluctance to take into account overseas experience.
-I have heard it said that overseas experience only is almost an instant disqualification," Jones said. -So we end up with network security experts stacking supermarket shelves, it is a real loss to both the migrants and the industry."
Some skilled migrants do manage to break through the barriers and gain employment based of overseas experience.
Hailing from Peru Diego Bardalez first arrived in Sydney in October 1999. As an expert in Visual Fox-pro he was well aware he was at a disadvantage, given that the language is not in wide use in this country. Nonetheless he had his resume translated and began to register it with every job seeking Web site he came across.
-Everyone was telling me to wake up to myself, saying that it was impossible to get a job at the end of the year in Australia," Bardalez said. -Then on the 14 of December I was contacted by a company that was looking precisely for someone with my skills."
While Bardalez concedes his knowledge of Visual Fox-pro provided the initial entry into the job, he also points out that his experience in systems development was crucial to his securing the job.
-If you have 17 experience developing projects, it is easy to adapt to a new challenge or learn new skills if necessary, it doesn't matter where the experience came from," Bardalez said.
Nothing has changed in the last 14 years.
When i came here in '88 it took me more than a year to get a job, although i had 15 years experience in a wide area of IT. But once i had that first job, all problems were over.
Also, if there is such a large number of IT jobs available (as Bruce Lin said: "we really need to be getting a lot more people in Australia into IT careers.”) then why do nearly all ads for IT personel require a minimum of 1 year of experience? How about some companies take on people with shorter experience and train them?