As I rewrite my CV for the Australian market, I'm reading what Nick Vandome (the British author of Getting A Job In Australia, How To Books, third edition) has to say:
...Australians are more interested in whether you are able to do the job, than in what school or university you went to.
Be positive and upbeat but not showy or pushy.
Be prepared to listen and learn - do not say things like 'Back home we used to do it this way...' *takes long deep breaths* I've also gotten resume writing help from my soon-to-be Australian alma mater, UTS. Karen at Career Services says resumes only get 20 seconds each, so the most important content should be well presented on the first page. She doesn't provide models because for each person the key content is different. (I well remember, from back when I used to help other people write CVs for a living, that the hard part wasn't writing, but deciding what to write.) Karen's comments remind me of the advice in Australian Standard 4360, Risk Management, which was updated earlier this year. The 1999 version had a section known as "the list" (official title: risk ranking matrix) and people were too prone to using that sample list of risks instead of properly developing their own, appropriate to their own context. So the new version has no list, so that you really do have to do your own work, which seems to me part of its essential Australianness. At the same time the standard is of global quality/interest, ultra readable (short!), and if you're a standards geek like me, highly recommended. (You can get it from SAI Global, or if you've got access to a uni library you may be able to read it through them.) Actually, the Australian career guide I've found most useful so far is a truly zingy (no chapter longer than one page) guide written by a downsized copywriter, Ian Oshlack, called A Survival Guide to Retrenchment, Redundancy, Recession and the Whole Damn Thing. Typical sentence: "As you get older you become a lot more street smart." Thanks Ian, I just hope that's true!
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