Construction Professional Job Offer Process

d.pop

Wanted to share this with people as before going through the process myself i had little idea of how different the "background check" process is in Oz compared to home. Might be useful to know for any recent immigrants.
After applying for a position if you are of interest to a company the very first contact is usually a phonecall from the HR officer who asks your visa/residence status and availability.
A few days later you will probably be invited to interview, you will be asked to bring along all your paperwork relating to education,visa, refeerees etc they copy and keep all this paperwork for checking later. This might seem obvious to some but anyway.. the first interviews are generally quite relaxed and if you are meeting a construction company the dress code is generally smart-casual, shoes, trousers and a longsleeved shirt, like i said it might be obvious to some but if you arrive over into 40 Degrees don't for f**k sake arrive into an interview in a 3 piece suit wringing wet like you just swam over from Ireland! The bankers around town might be fine but they are aussies and get cold when the weather drops below 32 Degrees! All the offices are air-con, arrive early, find the building, find some shade outside, sit down - cool down and then go in 10mins before your appointment, your big red irish head should have gone pack to more of a pinkish - white by then (speaking from experience here) and you'll appear cool and composed...
If the interview goes well you may be invited back for a second one although it is more usual to send you and maybe another 2 or 3 shortlisted guys for a medical.
Depending on the company the medical will probably comprise, lung capacity test, eyesight, hearing, drug and alcholol testing, muscloskeletal and aerobic capability (overall workout while hooked up to monitors) and final once over by the doctor. These medicals take about 1-1.5hrs and are paid for by the company. This bit is important.... if your ears are full of c**p you fail the hearing test, if you have even been around people smoking illicit substances within the preceeding few days you fail the medical, if you were on the tear the night before and are still half blood half alcohol, you fail the medical...etc.
These medicals cost about $500, if you mess it up you will never hear from the company again, a genuine and innocent mistake like driving to the medical on a motorbike and not being able to do the hearing test may be overlooked, you can do it next day but pay yourself. If you are going to work on Gorgon expect about 20 pages of paperwork relating to your medical history to be filled in as well.
If you pass the medical the company start checking references and they do check. The HR people will stay late in the office to catch your referee on Irish time, they normally expect to receive references from a minimum of your previous 2 employers/direct supervisors and will ring them, email them questionaires and ring them again afterwards to thank them. For God sake make sure your contact information is correct and your referee is expecting the call.
This process takes about a week to 10 days at which point if everything checks out you will be made a formal offer. It may or may not end there...a lot of companies will ask you to join the company as an independant contractor, basically an employee but with no holidays, notice period, more like a sub-contractor but still paye, bit strange but not unusual. If this is the case you will have to resubmit all your visa and education paperwork to an outside payroll company and also fill in the usual tax forms etc for them to check you out. This takes about 2-3 days so essentially from the day of your first interview to starting work the "on-boarding" process may take up to 2 weeks.
Like it or loathe it this is how the process works or at least for "big" companies in resources/construction.
Based on this my advice would be that if you arrive in Oz as a 'professional' actively seeking work, give the partying a miss while looking or at least tone it down a bit, you could get a phonecall at 9am to come for interview at 1pm and/or a medical for another company at 4pm the same day.
This would be directed more at QS/Engineers/Contract Managers etc although while sitting in the waiting rooms i have noticed about 80% of the guys are "tradies" so i guess the same process applies.
Make sure you have all your paperwork with you, resume/college diplomas/college transcripts/references/visa grant letter/passport. Drop your referees a text or email if you have had a good interview and give them a heads up that they may get a call later in the week.
Good Luck with the job hunting.

mandrake04

Good advice there, I'm not in the same line of work but had a very similar experience just before Christmas.

Brndn

Good post d.pop. Just to add a few things to your list;
if you are going to work in construction it's a good idea to do the white card course too. For mines work you need Marcsta training and possibly a DTEC (off road driving) certificate.
Get your Irish licence transferred over to an Aussie licence aswell to fast track things, you will need this for DTEC.

As an aside, I've been inducted on several of the major projects, Gorgon, Nickelwest etc, and my medicals weren't as in depth as yours seems to have been.

d.pop

Brndn wrote: »

Good post d.pop. Just to add a few things to your list;
if you are going to work in construction it's a good idea to do the white card course too. For mines work you need Marcsta training and possibly a DTEC (off road driving) certificate.
Get your Irish licence transferred over to an Aussie licence aswell to fast track things, you will need this for DTEC.

As an aside, I've been inducted on several of the major projects, Gorgon, Nickelwest etc, and my medicals weren't as in depth as yours seems to have been.

Hi brndn, guess I got lucky with the medicals! For the gorgon project I had the usual basics plus about 30mins at push ups, sit ups, squats, step aerobics plus 10 mins of stretching-touching toes etc. I run about 4 times a week and am in reasonably good shape but I still found it a bit of an effort particularly the 12-15 mins of steps. That one was about 3 weeks ago, maybe changed since you did it last, mine was with prime health.
Good point on the white card and dtec

ellaq

My husband has done that test a few times, always with Prime, always the same. He works for drilling companies. Last time he passed he had flu.

A lot of the new lads where my husband is (they are coming through an agency now) have to pay for most of the medical. The agency are only paying for the d&a test. The test is valid for 2 years and the cost is tax deductible. I have heard of some companies making you pay and reimbursing you after your 3 month trial.

WG1817

Cheers for the excellent advice d.pop! Had no idea the interview process would be so intense. Im a site engineer heading to melbourne at the end of the month, have you any advice of which job agencies to apply through or any other ways of going about seeking employment?

d.pop

WG1817 wrote: »

Cheers for the excellent advice d.pop! Had no idea the interview process would be so intense. Im a site engineer heading to melbourne at the end of the month, have you any advice of which job agencies to apply through or any other ways of going about seeking employment?

WG, don't know too much about Melbourne I'm afraid, sorry. With respect to the agencies, can be a bit of a minefield.
Basically a company prefers a direct approach as then they don't have to pay the agency a fee, 10-15% of your salary.

What i did was

1. i did up a list of the biggest companies in the area and emailed them either an application for a position advertised on their website or sent in cv as an expression of interest, the cover letter is very important for this process and should mention the company by name or better again a person if you can identify someone say from the contacts section on the company website.
2. After emailing all the companies on my list i then applied for specific jobs on Seek.com., Careerone etc
3. Finally i sent off my cv to the agencies in the area. The agency guys were not happy as i had "closed them out" by applying directly to a lot of firms but in fairness a few of them did track down a few smaller companies and put me forward.

Up to yourself i guess, if you do find a good agency who will follow up and get results in a few days then that might be ok too, i don't know, sorry.
Someone told me last year that about 60% of positions filled in construction in OZ are not advertised i.e. word of mouth, referrals etc, that's why i went straight to the companies but all down to luck and timing. I did 4 interviews, offered 4 jobs all in first week of arriving but was completely haunted, should have done the lotto the same week as was on a role! Ended up taking a job a mate refered me to.
You will defo need an aussie telephone nbr and a computer with internet access for the duration of your job seeking.
I hope you get lucky but don't be surprised if you are looking for 4+ weeks, bring enough money, borrow it if you have to before coming over, if you get a job you'll make it back in no time.
Good luck.

WG1817

Again, thanks a million for the advice. Looking forward to going over, but not sure what to expect when I get there. Was just trawling boards.ie for useful info on oz the past few days, this has definitly helped

melb

Some good stuff there. Am not working in that area but had a guy staying with me go through the whole process but he went through an agency.

He went to a few interview they had set up, bombed the first two then got some interest in the third one(which ended up being a skype interview seeing as he wasnt in WA at the time). Agent then asked for his referee contact details and rang them for a 5 minute chat before emailing them some questionaires. Once this checked out he went for a medical. Full check up, took two hours and he'd to do 15 push-ups which came a s a shock to the tubby fecker.

He got back in contact with the agent after and they talked about what wages he should ask for. Ended up being less then he hoped for but more than he dreamed of as he was over on a WHV and the company was going to sponsor him straight off the bat.

The job offer took around 4 weeks to materialise from the time the company showed interest. He'd been in Aus 4 months before he started. The wait was worth it.