By Karalyn Brown

What to do if you have "no local experience"

No matter what your profession, if you've recently arrived from overseas, one consistent message that you're likely to hear from employers and recruitment consultants alike is: "we'd like to employ you, but you've no local experience."

So if you keep hearing this, what can you do to land your first professional role? Firstly think multi pronged approach - applying just one of the ideas below will not be enough.

Does your resume make it easy for employers?

Assume employers know little about your country of origin nor have the time to investigate how your experience relates to the job at hand.

On your resume, give context to your experience briefly describing the scale of organisations you've worked for. Highlight the challenges of your role and the market place. Relate your organisation to a well known Australian company. Use job titles that Australian's commonly use (check out A-Z listings of occupations at Australian Government Jobsearch website).

Communicate in perfect English and use "local expressions"

Nuances in communication are small, but make a big difference to the way you're perceived. Even if your English is text book perfect, recruiters may read expressions and phrasing in your applications then guess unfavourably at what you sound like when you speak.

Your expression needs to reflect local expression and spelling and grammar need to be perfect. Remember the recruiter first looks at your name, then your country of origin. Any mistakes you make after that may fuel negative stereotypes about your communication skills.

If language is a problem think about seeking professional help with your resume, interview and communication skills. You'll also need to focus on your non-verbal communication such as body language, facial expression and general physical presentation.

Be pleasantly persistent

Never just email an application and hope for the best. Engage the recruiter, by showing a sincere interest in the job, asking lots of questions and listening carefully to the answers. This will allow you to tailor your application to the requirements of the job.

Once you've sent your application, follow up (within a few days) to see if the employer has any further questions.

Opportunities can come from anywhere

You'll need to be creative in your job search. Build your networks by joining industry groups relevant to your profession; this will enable you to investigate and understand differences in the Australian market and your country of origin.

A less direct but still useful way to build up your networks is to do some voluntary work. Ideally this should be related to your profession, but if not, target a job that allows you to meet people. Six degrees of separation applies here. If you let people know you're job hunting, you'd be surprised at how many people offer to help, if they see that you are giving up your time. Make sure however you devote enough time to continue to look for paid work!

Work casually for a specific purpose

Register with recruitment agencies for temporary work. While you may find it hard to be considered for permanent work, based on your lack of local experience, the temporary employment market works slightly differently. Often the recruitment consultant makes the decision about who to send to an assignment (not the employer), particularly for short term jobs.

If the consultant's in a hurry and competing against other agencies to fill a job, they'll be more concerned with whether you can do the job and how soon you can get there, rather than where you acquired your experience.

Taking on the last minute hard to fill roles gives you an in with the agency. They learn to trust you and when you've done a few assignments you can discuss permanent work.

If you do need to take casual work unrelated to your profession, find a job that allows you to meet people and practice your communication skills. Anything related to customer and client services where you connect with locals can suit this purpose. For example recently an Accountant from India started work at a gym to bring some money in. He got talking to one of the patrons about what he did, and it turned out this person needed help in his accounting firm and the two got together. Opportunities will pop up where you least expect them when you put yourself out there.

Finally, organise yourself and make sure you have a jobsearch plan; be very aware that it'll take longer than you anticipate and you may not have a direct line to your perfect job. Apply a little pragmatism, and look at any rejection as a learning experience. The worse thing you can do in any job hunt is beat yourself up and let your confidence drop.