How easy is it to find work in the US?

[Alison]

Seen as I'd have to be over in the US in April or May order to get a decent enough job, I think I'm gonna give it a skip, as there's no way I'll be able to save enough money by then


So, the plan is to head to Australia. Baldwin, your post makes me a lot more confident about going there, in terms of finding a job.

[Baldwin]

Just make sure your visa's in order, unlike in the US you won't be finding any undocumented work opportunities here.

Avoid the big fancy cities ; Sydney, Melbourne, possibly Brisbane and the Gold Coast too. There are more jobs there, but the higher cost of living means you'll be taking more of a risk supporting yourself off savings while you try to find one, and once you get one you'll be spending a lot of it on accommodation. Try picking a smaller, less expensive city like Perth.

Be sure to find out which job agencies here are available to you, as a foreigner. A lot of them will only work with people claiming welfare, which you'll be ineligable for, but there are plenty of privately run ones that should cater to damn dirty foreigners who want to steal the jobs of good honest Australians. Be sure to trawl the internet to look for feedback before you sign up with one though, as quite a few are run by shady bastards who'll take advantage of you as much as possible.

If you're hardened enough to work a mining town or tribal lands you can bring in pretty good money. They tend to pay far-above the going rates due to the danger, isolation and general fuckawfulness of living there. Of course, travelling to those places in the hopes of finding a job opening (especially something peripheral and non-essential like kitchenwork) won't work, but they do tend to recruit people through job agencies and fly them in. Experience and education usually isn't an issue, since nobody wants to go there in the first place.

If you want to travel while you work, fruit harvesting is a good choice. A lot of young folks and foreign backpackers follow the harvest trails. The money is all award-rates, and there's generally lots of cheap and available accommodation for harvest workers. ( http://jobsearch.gov.au/harvesttrail/ )

Walk loudly and check your bedding before you get into it and you'll never ever get bitten by a snake. The bottles of blue liquid at the beach are vinegar. Pour them onto jellyfish stings if you get stung. Never drink Bundaberg Rum. Never allow anybody who does drink Bundaberg Rum to get you alone and without witnesses. Don't drive from city to city without registering your plans at a travel-plan-registering-service so they can rescue you if your car breaks. Don't hitchhike without a gun or a deathwish. If an Australian man tells you he's had a vasectomy, he absolutely hasn't. Use birth control anyway. Don't swim in estuaries or saltwater wetlands in the north. Don't drink the water in Adelaide. The Coffin Cheaters, Notorious and Black Uhlans are the rapiest biker gangs, and should be avoided. Check yourself for paralysis ticks every day, because three days of uninterrupted tick-poison is enough to paralyse your lungs and kill you. If you get bit by a giant black spider in the Sydney area, go to a hospital immediately. If you get bit by a gigantic bright-red centipede anywhere in the country, go to a hospital immediately. If you get bit by a leaf-green ant in Tasmania, go to the hospital immediately. All other insect/arachnid/scorpion bites are harmless. Drop bears, hoop snakes and bunyips aren't real, and anybody who warns you about them is just trying to fuck with you. Don't ever let anybody tell you that you're supposed to eat vegemite by the spoonful. Don't feed the dingoes. Never go to Coober Pedy.

That's all the advice I've got.

[Tiny Vessels]

If you want to travel while you work, fruit harvesting is a good choice. A lot of young folks and foreign backpackers follow the harvest trails. The money is all award-rates, and there's generally lots of cheap and available accommodation for harvest workers. ( http://jobsearch.gov.au/harvesttrail/ )

Walk loudly and check your bedding before you get into it and you'll never ever get bitten by a snake. The bottles of blue liquid at the beach are vinegar. Pour them onto jellyfish stings if you get stung. Never drink Bundaberg Rum. Never allow anybody who does drink Bundaberg Rum to get you alone and without witnesses. Don't drive from city to city without registering your plans at a travel-plan-registering-service so they can rescue you if your car breaks. Don't hitchhike without a gun or a deathwish. If an Australian man tells you he's had a vasectomy, he absolutely hasn't. Use birth control anyway. Don't swim in estuaries or saltwater wetlands in the north. Don't drink the water in Adelaide. The Coffin Cheaters, Notorious and Black Uhlans are the rapiest biker gangs, and should be avoided. Check yourself for paralysis ticks every day, because three days of uninterrupted tick-poison is enough to paralyse your lungs and kill you. If you get bit by a giant black spider in the Sydney area, go to a hospital immediately. If you get bit by a gigantic bright-red centipede anywhere in the country, go to a hospital immediately. If you get bit by a leaf-green ant in Tasmania, go to the hospital immediately. All other insect/arachnid/scorpion bites are harmless. Drop bears, hoop snakes and bunyips aren't real, and anybody who warns you about them is just trying to fuck with you. Don't ever let anybody tell you that you're supposed to eat vegemite by the spoonful. Don't feed the dingoes. Never go to Coober Pedy.

That's all the advice I've got.

Thanks for turning me off of going to Australia ever.. I'm scared.

[Dulce]

Good luck finding a decent job here in the U.S. when I go apply for one, all I get is a waste of my time and energy. The interview takes the stamina out of my comfort zone. School is fun to go back to refresh your memory but the teachers/students look at me like if I'm a little weirdo.

[Alison]

Just make sure your visa's in order, unlike in the US you won't be finding any undocumented work opportunities here.

Avoid the big fancy cities ; Sydney, Melbourne, possibly Brisbane and the Gold Coast too. There are more jobs there, but the higher cost of living means you'll be taking more of a risk supporting yourself off savings while you try to find one, and once you get one you'll be spending a lot of it on accommodation. Try picking a smaller, less expensive city like Perth.

Be sure to find out which job agencies here are available to you, as a foreigner. A lot of them will only work with people claiming welfare, which you'll be ineligable for, but there are plenty of privately run ones that should cater to damn dirty foreigners who want to steal the jobs of good honest Australians. Be sure to trawl the internet to look for feedback before you sign up with one though, as quite a few are run by shady bastards who'll take advantage of you as much as possible.

If you're hardened enough to work a mining town or tribal lands you can bring in pretty good money. They tend to pay far-above the going rates due to the danger, isolation and general fuckawfulness of living there. Of course, travelling to those places in the hopes of finding a job opening (especially something peripheral and non-essential like kitchenwork) won't work, but they do tend to recruit people through job agencies and fly them in. Experience and education usually isn't an issue, since nobody wants to go there in the first place.

If you want to travel while you work, fruit harvesting is a good choice. A lot of young folks and foreign backpackers follow the harvest trails. The money is all award-rates, and there's generally lots of cheap and available accommodation for harvest workers. ( http://jobsearch.gov.au/harvesttrail/ )

Walk loudly and check your bedding before you get into it and you'll never ever get bitten by a snake. The bottles of blue liquid at the beach are vinegar. Pour them onto jellyfish stings if you get stung. Never drink Bundaberg Rum. Never allow anybody who does drink Bundaberg Rum to get you alone and without witnesses. Don't drive from city to city without registering your plans at a travel-plan-registering-service so they can rescue you if your car breaks. Don't hitchhike without a gun or a deathwish. If an Australian man tells you he's had a vasectomy, he absolutely hasn't. Use birth control anyway. Don't swim in estuaries or saltwater wetlands in the north. Don't drink the water in Adelaide. The Coffin Cheaters, Notorious and Black Uhlans are the rapiest biker gangs, and should be avoided. Check yourself for paralysis ticks every day, because three days of uninterrupted tick-poison is enough to paralyse your lungs and kill you. If you get bit by a giant black spider in the Sydney area, go to a hospital immediately. If you get bit by a gigantic bright-red centipede anywhere in the country, go to a hospital immediately. If you get bit by a leaf-green ant in Tasmania, go to the hospital immediately. All other insect/arachnid/scorpion bites are harmless. Drop bears, hoop snakes and bunyips aren't real, and anybody who warns you about them is just trying to fuck with you. Don't ever let anybody tell you that you're supposed to eat vegemite by the spoonful. Don't feed the dingoes. Never go to Coober Pedy.

That's all the advice I've got.

Jesus. You should be on the tourist board.


And now I'm terrified. But thanks for the info!

[Blitz!]

And now I'm terrified. But thanks for the info!

Don't worry Alison, I've been to Australia, did Sydney, Brisbane and Perth ... it's pretty awesome, a completely different experience to Europe or the UK

[Baldwin]

Australia's a pretty huge continent-sized country and I have no idea where you might end up going. If somebody wrote a "quick advice on how not to get killed by stuff in Europe" it'd be just as long, if not longer with all your bears and your hooligans and your world wars.

Australians like to play up how dangerous Australia is and how everything's trying to kill you, because it makes them look like tough, rugged Steve Irwins. The Tourism Board likes to conveniently forget that there's anything dangerous here at all because we have a reputation and they don't want to scare off tourists by mentioning death adders and paralysis ticks (and then they act all surprised every time one of our crocodiles eats a German).

So yeah, don't be afraid. I've lived here my whole life and I'm not even slightly dead. There's stuff that's dangerous, sure, but all you need to do is show some common sense. Don't go shoving your hands into nooks and crevices where snakes or spiders might live. Go to a hospital if you get bitten by something poisonous and you don't know what it is. When you see signs warning that some sort of cthulu-esque horror lives in the watering hole, don't go swimming there. Basic, obvious stuff.