What is this "local experience"?

As a Job Search Career Coach, in my business ‘Careers Reborn’, I meet a lot of job seekers who have migrated here with hopes and aspirations. They have had their skills evaluated and Degrees recognised. They have left everything they had from, established careers, to loving families & friends, to take the risk and follow their dreams to migrate to the land of opportunity.

Then suddenly they find out that they are not being considered for the role even though they have perfectly matching skills qualifications and experience, because they don’t have what is known as local experience! They apply for hundreds of jobs and reach interview stage only to be told they have been rejected because they lack local experience. They are called by Recruiters for matching job profile and told unfortunately at the last stage they got pipped for the role, since the client got a person with local experience! So what is this local experience? Can you buy it? How do you get it? What makes it so unique? Why is it so important?

It’s the chicken and egg story, you cannot get local experience till you get a job and you cannot get a job until you get local experience. So how to take steps to tackle this issue? Also I hear some recruiters use this as a standard excuse for rejecting new migrant candidates. You are just not being considered for roles! So what to do?

Firstly take professional help. Don’t try to bluff or fake it. Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish, trying the same thing day in and day out and expect results. Have a proper learning attitude. Admit and accept that you migrated to a different country and not the other way round. Listen to the experts. You need to check and get proper professional career coaching advice.

Don’t show ego and attitude based on your past credentials. Don’t assume that your previous experience always was and is suitable to the new work environment here. It may or may not be. There might be a big difference. What worked for your friends may not work for you. Every candidate is unique and has a different skills-set and experience profile.

So what does this local experience stand for? Local experience in my opinion is the sum total of all relevant things put together such as, work culture, way to do business, laws, tools, techniques, standards, labour, work procedures, margins, costing, protocols, rules, systems, documentation techniques, regulations and last but least, in fact most important, communication. It’s simple; these things differ from one country to another. I feel the work culture differs even from one state to another. In Perth, it’s much more relaxed than in Sydney. In, Brisbane, it’s more informal than Melbourne and so on.

So if you want to gain local experience, call a career professional get an assessment done and get a proper job with their help.