mogthecat

That experience sounds perfect and I'm finding that integration engineers (which is exactly what you were doing) are in demand at the moment. My government agency (well, we consist of about 7 of them) is doing a massive amount of integration. I think with a judicious bit of re-wording and a change of focus on your CV you could highlight this experience and re-brand yourself and find yourself in a much better position. ETL is also something I'm hearing about more and more these days. How about something like "Data Warehouse and Integration Specialist"? Take out references to application support and helpdesk and focus on these skills. I think you could also adjust some of the job titles to reflect more accurately what you were doing, so "Application Specialist" at Telstra should be "Data Warehouse Specialist" (and actually most of the earlier ones too) and "Database Officer" should definitely be "DBA". I really do think you'd be an enormous asset and I'm horrified that you're thinking of going back to Coles, what a waste!

I'm a recruiting manager in Sydney (also a UK expat working in IT), I've been here for 10 years and I work for the NSW government (yes, it's a strange one, I'm still on a 457!). Looking at your LinkedIn profile DavLap, you look like a great guy. I would say however that your problem is that helpdesk/application support is more the domain of people with less experience than you. It's also now often out-sourced to the vendor/managed services, which are more and more likely to be off-shore these days. I would look at a person with your experience/age as being a service desk manager or specialist assisting with helpesk transition or dealing with managed services. These roles don't come up too often though, so I can understand your difficulty. You say you've worked as a solution architect before - have you tried re-jigging your CV to get an architect role? There are plenty of SA roles going, in your technology area and age is an asset. Or actually, your skills seem very suited to integration architecture and service bus work, that seems big business at the moment - we've just delivered a service bus and are working on our integration patterns. While it all seems "service bus mumbo jumbo" in reality it's all quite practical integration patterns such as SQL and FTP alongside the web services, particularly into ERPs. Updating your skills to include Tibco and other service bus applications would give your CV a really good boost. In your shoes I would probably say "but I won't have hands-on" but I don't see why you can't build yourself a little Tibco lab at home and get some real hands-on - I've just used an AWS certified cloud engineer who had the certification but not much hands-on aside from the course (which was lab based) - no problems at all. What have you got to lose? When I recruit I either approach candidates directly, using LinkedIn (the AU market is small and I can usually find a contact who has previously worked with that person for a reference before I approach them) or use a couple of my preferred agencies. These agencies are the ones I've had a good experience with as a candidate in the past and who I trust - their good treatment of me as a candidate is now rewarded by me giving them business. Others I won't touch because of their attitude/poor ethics. This applies mainly to contract roles - for perm we have to follow a very specific process. I personally don't care about Australian experience - I find most overseas candidates from the UK have a better work ethic. I do know that it happens here though, ditto for people trying to move to Brisbane from Sydney.

Goodness, you poor thing. It sounds like you've had a lucky escape. Congratulations on your pregnancy. I would be inclined to suggest that you contact a family lawyer in both Australia and the UK - you need to be very sure to protect yourself and the baby. I've heard that Australian Courts very much favour the father (50/50 residency etc) in custody cases. You really don't want to be in a position where you might have to return and share custody or be unable to remove the baby from the country. He might go after custody to punish you rather than out of interest for the child, so be very careful. International custody cases are the stuff of nightmares. I believe if he has parental responsibility even without being named on the birth certificate there may be implications for you - although I think that if he is not named on the birth certificate he is not automatically granted parental rights. He can apply for these rights through a court order however.

YY re Seek. The best you can hope from Seek is that you'll get a call randomly from an agent in several months time for an unadvertised position after you have already secured a position elsewhere. I do find a follow-up call after an application gets a better response from them - sadly not least because they can then tell I am a native English speaker. I would caution against Finite, particularly if they offer a visa. I moved from a good job at an investment bank to one that Finite courted me for for months. They lied about everything and by the time I realised it was too late, I was trapped because they held my visa. Very nasty - cost me a fortune and nearly ended up having to go back to the UK. Got another 457 by the skin of my teeth with a few weeks to spare. In the last year I have found that a good LinkedIn profile brings the jobs to me rather than the other way round. I have quite a few years experience under my belt though - I'm not sure I'd be confident of finding work with very little experience. Excellent communication skills are a big plus as mentioned up thread.