If there’s one thing international students are painfully aware of, it’s that finding a job in Australia is notoriously difficult. Sometimes it does feel awkward when you’re at a networking event, and someone asks if you would want to apply for their firm. This is how it would sometimes play out for me while I was attending the Clerkship Seminar Series hosted by the UTS LSS:
Person: “So, would you be interested in applying for the clerkship?”
Me: “Oh…um, I’m not an Australian citizen–”
Person: “Oh. But you do have permanent residency, right?”
Me: “No. I only have Japanese citizenship. Nothing else.”
Person: “…I don’t think we accept international students.”
It’s disheartening but out of anyone’s control as it ultimately comes down to visa-related issues. Now I’m not here to complain about how unfair it is or that we should be guaranteed jobs. Instead, I want to help my fellow international students studying law by suggesting some small but meaningful tips that I personally found useful.
- Volunteer somewhere, legal or not
I may be shooting myself in the foot here because as of writing, I am currently doing two separate unpaid internships. And it may be one of the most common pieces of advice to exist but for good reason: it helps you gain local experience which you can translate to your CV and discuss when interviewing with potential employers. But what I think is most important to remember is that it does not have to be related to law at all. It might help if you’re able to volunteer at one of the legal centres but at the end of the day, employers are more interested in whatever skills you’ve obtained from volunteering.
Do you need to do two different ones at the same time? Probably not, unless you’re either like
me, who probably overestimates their time management skills, or you happen to have figured out
how you’ll fit it into your schedule.
2. Know how to express yourself in applications (and more)
Selling yourself and your story is probably one of the hardest things to do in applications, CVs, interviews, and pretty much everything during your job hunting. Maybe you’ve only lived in one country before moving to Australia for university or you’ve pretty much lived everywhere and anywhere. No matter what your situation is, employers want to hear about it because it’ll help you stand out from everyone else.
If there’s one thing you absolutely must mention everywhere, it’s what skills you can contribute. You can a lso mention skills that you’ve improved on following certain volunteering roles, leadership positions, jobs, etc. The UTS LSS has an excellent template you can use that breaks down each section and you can also speak to the Careers Advisors for help on how to articulate yourself through words
3. Network, network, NETWORK!
As contradictory as this may sound, I am admittedly not a huge fan of networking because I consider myself to be introverted and having to speak to a grand number of people does drain my social battery. For international students, language barriers may also be a concern as networking, most of the time, requires you to speak and listen in English.
If language barriers are what you are most worried about, I would advise still attending networking sessions anyways because challenging yourself in a language that’s not your first helps you improve. And if you don’t practice speaking English regularly, you might end up forgetting the language which would be a waste considering how hard it actually is. You might want to prepare some questions you want to ask and have some details about yourself ready, such as your degree, what year you’re in, and what you would like to do after completing university.
Now you don’t need to be attending every single networking event, but it’s best that you strategise and then decide which ones you will go to. Maybe you’ll go to one every week, maybe you’ll only attend three during an entire semester. No one is going to have the exact same social battery, so it’s important that you plan your chats well in advance. And also? No one is perfect at networking, it’s going to be a skill you’ll continuously learn throughout your studies at university and beyond so keep practising.
4. Be audacious
Or, put simply, be willing to take risks. It can be scary being in another country, especially if you just got out of Year 12, but choosing to live abroad already shows that you’re courageous. Granted, you will face some setbacks (plus some nasty people and situations, unfortunately) but how you manage them is going to be more important than trying to avoid every single confrontation or slightly uncomfortable event. And yes, maybe you’ve heard that marks are important for law (let’s not discuss mine though, oopsies) but there’s only so much you can learn from a classroom.
Go out. Try new things you’ve never done before. Live and make mistakes, nothing illegal though, please. Try inviting the people you’ve networked with out for a quick coffee chat. Of course, make sure you balance this with your studies, work, and any other commitments.
I say all this because I would prioritise my own comfort over challenging myself, and I feel like I’ve set myself back by doing so. You know who you are, you know what your strengths are, and you (hopefully) know what your goals are.
This might all sound like similar pieces of advice you’ve heard before, and maybe they are, but as Erling Haaland says in his Insta bio, “every morning you have two choices: continue to sleep with your dreams or wake up and chase them.” It might be a straightforward path, or it might be non-linear. Maybe you’ll do something in life that makes you realise that your goals have changed, and that’s completely fine since most people rarely work in what they originally imagined.