TRANSCRIPT
“We need migrants to fill different positions. But then when they come in, it takes them a few years in order to bounce back to work. That time is wasted, or underutilised. And that has a really negative impact for the economy because those ones who come in and who are supposed to join the workforce and fill the skill shortage, they can't find jobs.”
That was Dr June Tran, a lecturer of business at RMIT university.
What she's referring to is a troubling phenomenon that has emerged in Australia with highly-skilled migrants being forced into low-skilled jobs such as delivery drivers because they are unable to get work in their field of expertise.
Dr Tran is the lead author of a study which looked at the experiences of 50 recently arrived Vietnamese skilled migrants who struggled to find work as well as 12 employment recruiters.
One of those migrants was Dai Nguyen who migrated to Australia from Vietnam in 2009 and achieved a PhD in electrical engineering from UNSW.
Despite his profession being on the government's skilled occupation list, when he tried to enter the workforce it took him three years and hundreds of applications to be considered.
He found that once he changed his name from 'Dai' to 'Dylan' on the application forms he was able to find work quickly.
“For the first three years when I submit with my Vietnamese name I didn't have any callbacks or anything but after that I decided to change my name to have some English name, 'Dylan Nguyen', so it was easier. And then after that, I got the first job after about the third or the fourth one, I can't remember.”
This experience was also echoed earlier this year when Monash university published a broad two-year-long study in July revealing that ethnic minorities received 57 per cent fewer callbacks from recruiters than applicants with English names for leadership positions.
For non-leadership positions, ethnic minorities received 45 per cent fewer callbacks.
After being given a chance, Mr Nguyen made his way up the career ladder fast and now serves as the Connections Manager for one of the largest renewable energy producers in the country, Iberdrola Australia.
He says since he managed to find a job in his field he has helped other migrants he went to university with by providing information and advice.
“After that, what I did is I created a group and tried to support my friends who also struggling in getting their first job. And now I got the group of about 10 people and now they're all senior managers somewhere in the industry. So I mean the most difficult thing is getting the right information, the right advice.”
Trent Wiltshire is Deputy Program Director of Migration and Labour Markets for the Grattan Institute.
He says recent research conducted by the institute found that international students like Mr Nguyen are often denied the opportunity to work after they graduate due to employers who don't understand the complexities of the migration system.
“We did some work recently on why international students that study here don't perform particularly well once they graduate and try to enter Australia's labour market. So we surveyed employers about why they don't take on those graduate visa holders. And a big part of this is that employers find the migration system too complex. They don't understand it, so they just don't engage with it. So rather than getting involved, they just don't employ some skilled migrants.”
Mr Wiltshire says that Australia's skilled migration system is vital to support a healthy economy, especially with recent hits to the country's productivity.
“Skilled migration is a crucial part of Australia's economy. So skilled migrants come here when they're typically quite young, they provide a very large fiscal dividend, make major contribution to the Australian economy. They also provide productivity benefits, as well, which is critical at the moment with Australia facing pretty weak productivity growth. So definitely large benefits from the skilled migration program that Australia runs. Now we have a pretty good skilled migration programme, but there are certainly some things that can be fixed.”
The Western Sydney Migrant Resource Centre helps newly arrived migrants and refugees to settle in Australia and navigate the complex migration and recruitment processes.
CEO of the centre, Nathan Burbridge finds that one of the biggest obstacles that hurts employment opportunities for skilled migrants is a lack of local work experience.
“One of the biggest challenges from our experience of migrants and newly arrived refugees is their ability to gain local work experience and this critically affects their competitiveness in the jobs market. One of the things that we've looked at very closely is the extent of underemployment that's occurring for these newly arrived people, for example, the committee for economic development in 2021 looked at this and could identify that around 23 per cent of skilled migrants, for example, are employed below their skill level and I think that comes down to the to the business community and their attitude towards giving these people a go.”
Dr June Tran from RMIT says that the discretion from businesses plays an important role, but she believes the Australian government needs to provide financial incentives to organisations to offer migrants that valuable local experience.
“Migrant pathways to gaining such local worksman should be developed. We need to have some schemes like financial support for employers who can provide apprenticeships for migrants and other minority worker groups. It needs mutual effort from everyone involved, government organisation and skilled migrants themselves. Everyone is different, and everyone needs to know the role in the process. Organisations are one thing, but the government also need to have incentives for them to do so.”
