As a postgraduate student, you should have little difficulty
getting a job if you you look in the right places - in the
employers' perception, you are distinguished from the
undergraduates, who tend to be workers of very variable
quality.
As for looking in the right places, the newspaper classifieds would
not be the place to do it. In those ads, employers would not
primarily be looking to hire international students, and some of
them may think that hiring you may involve extra paperwork.
Besides, you are competing against applicants who pose no potential
work rights issues, and who can commit full-time. I would suggest
your university's student job site - you would fit the bill for
potential employers there.
Silly question - if you're at UOSQ, why are you in Sydney? If you
know anybody at the University of Sydney, see if you can get access
to their job site (I expect it would be a password-protected site)
- the serious players tend to advertise at the older universities.
My best two roles came from Melbourne University's site, including
the one where I got around the 20-hour rule.
That was actually a bit of an odd case. I got along very well with
my potential employers, to the point at which they selected me as a
postgraduate student over fully qualified psychologists. I
explained the 20-hour rule to my boss, and she said fine - on the
books, she would hire me for 20 hours a week but double my hourly
rate, so she got the other 20 hours for free. I have found the most
receptive organisations to be those that have a staff of about
10-20, and have been around for about 8-10 years. Such
organisations that I have encountered tend to be new enough to not
be weighed down by bureaucracy, and are old enough to be reasonably
stable.
Apart from the university sites, try either seek.com.au or
mycareer.com.au, and look for contract, temp or casual roles. When
they ask you if you are a resident, you are in fact considered a
resident by the Australian Tax Office, albeit with the work
limitations. By the way, do you have a tax file number yet? If not,
apply for it ASAP at your nearest ATO office - it should take less
than a week to come through and you will need it if you're going to
be paid. Anyway, you can explain to employers that you have the
right to work in Australia for 20 hours a week. If it is a contract
or casual role, that will not affect them at all.
With your work experience, as well as your postgraduate status, you
may as well go for something in finance. Try Seek or mycareer -
they should have plenty of part-time roles in that field. You might
want to apply for this bookkeeper role that turned up on Seek ($25K
a year could ease a lot of pain for a student :mrgreen):
http://www.seek.com.au/users/viewdetails.asp?Action=jobsearch&JobListAction=ViewOneAd&JobSearch=true&AdID=3259281
If I were in your position, this is something that I would feel
reasonably confident about applying for.
Another approach is to send your CV to temp agencies, not to the
employers themselves (they rely on the agencies for their
recruitment). I'm not sure which agencies operate in Sydney, but
you can call any recruitment agency and ask if they do temp agency
work - even if they don't, they are likely to be able to tell you
which agencies would be appropriate.
A side issue would be your English language skills. Being educated
in Catholic schools throughout my education in Singapore, I had
absolutely no problems with this, but if you do have language
issues, that could be a barrier to be aware of. It's not a racist
thing - the fact is that you will need to be able to communicate
clearly in order to do the job right.
Anyway, all the best. Feel free to ask any more questions if you
need to. Also, PM me if you want me to take a look at your CV and
provide feedback - I used to be a recruiter in Melbourne.
