Canberra is well known as a public service town and there’s many opportunities for people to get ahead by joining the public service. Best advice would be first to make sure your resume is looking and reading its best. If you’re not experienced at writing resumes, get a coach or resume writer or even a friend who has experience in the public service to look over your resume, CV, and cover letter.
Public service jobs are sought after and there’s going to be a lot of applicants for most jobs. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get a job straight away. Just keep applying.
Public service jobs can take a while to announce successful applicants. As mentioned above they receive a lot of applications, then have to merit list them, then interview the best candidates. This can take a while. Again don’t get discouraged. It would also be worth having another job or source of income while you do this if you can’t survive off centrelink. That’s where this site comes in handy there will be plenty of jobs that will hire quickly to keep you going in the mean time. It took me years to finally crack a job in the public service and even those were contracting jobs. So apply for those as well.
Look for big intakes if you haven’t been with the APS before. My first job in the APS after a long break was to get a contracting job at Services Australia. They do seem to regulary recruit large volumes of people.
Contracting jobs are great. But also aim to get in as a “Non-Ongoing” or “Permanent Employee” these jobs pay leave, have entitlements and best of all 15.4% super. This really starts to give your super fund a shot in the arm if you manage to stay employed in the APS for a while.
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