July 29, 2025, by Jackie Thompson
From UoN to working for the Austrialian Government in Canberra
Emma O’Flaherty, UoN graduate
Hi, my name is Emma, and I graduated from UoN in 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Geography. My plans after graduation were honestly just to try to get any sort of job relevant to my degree. My preference was to work in government or something environmental.
From UoN to working abroad
I have gone from waitressing to working in the federal government, so it has been very different. I started working when I was 14 years old in a café and continued in similar jobs up until graduating. After graduating, I began my first corporate job with an entry-level role as part of a 10-month graduate program. Upon successful completion of this graduate program, you were guaranteed permanent ongoing employment. After finishing the program, I was promoted to my current role.
My current role
Currently, I am a program officer in the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations within the Australian Government. My department is responsible for ensuring people have access to safe, secure and well-paid work. This includes providing initiatives to upskill and train people, services and support to help people overcome barriers and promoting fair, productive and safe workplaces.
Making the move overseas
Before I had even finished university, I faced a lot of rejection from graduate programmes and entry-level roles that I had applied for during my final year. I felt quite a lot of pressure to have something lined up after university, as it seemed all my friends had, and I did not want to go back to waitressing. Due to this, I thought to extend my search a bit wider.
While applying for the UK Civil Service Fast Stream, I received an advertisement for the Australian version and thought, why not? Despite applying on a whim, as I progressed through each stage of the application for the Australian Government Graduate Program, I realised this could be it. I felt like this was too good of an opportunity to pass up on, so I graduated in July, found out I was successful in August, moved to Australia in January and started work in February!
Working abroad – the highlights and challenges
The highlights have definitely been the friends I’ve made. The graduate program felt like the first year of university in a way as everyone was coming from across the country to be in the same city, for the same opportunity. This was comforting as for most of us it was our first time in a corporate environment, full-time employment and living in Canberra so navigating it together really bonded us.
I would say the biggest challenge was the first month when I moved to Australia as it was very overwhelming. When I first arrived, I was incredibly jetlagged, didn’t know anyone or anything about Canberra and was in a hotel for the first three weeks with just a suitcase. I had a lot to organise in a very short amount of time with it only being a couple days before my hotel stay was due to end that I found a place to live.
The stress didn’t end there though as I had the first day of my new job coming up to worry about. So, while the first month won’t be the best, you will begin to become more settled as you meet people, get adjusted to the city and country you have moved to and start work.
My future plans
My current role involves quite a bit of administrative work as well as things like stakeholder management and consultations, procurement, report writing and preparing executive briefing materials. I have also been able to travel with work through a couple domestic trips such as to Melbourne and regional towns in New South Wales and South Australia.
There have been plenty of wider development opportunities my department have offered, including completing a First Aid course, fire warden training and becoming a graduate buddy for one of the new graduates in the program this year.
My aspirations for the future are to try different roles and work areas to grow my skills and capabilities and learn what I enjoy doing, whether this is within my department and the wider Australian Government, or back home in the UK.
My advice for students thinking about working abroad
My top tips if you are thinking about working abroad would be to be open-minded and willing to adapt to change. Living in another country really will be what you make it; you will have to put yourself out there to make friends and explore your surroundings.
More practically, there will be a lot of paperwork such as passports, visas, bank accounts, driver’s license, healthcare, tax file number, sim card etc which is pretty time consuming and can be a pain.
In terms of Australia, I would say coming to Australia for a corporate job compared to travelling here or working as a backpacker are very different. In my case, I moved to Canberra so no beaches, a surprisingly cold winter and full of public servants. Australia is a really big country with a lot of variety so travelling state to state is not as easy as a quick one-hour drive. If you have any choice in where you move to in Australia, I would give it some serious thought on which city, state or area would be the most suitable for you and for your career.
If you’re thinking about working abroad in the future, visit our webpages and make use of GoinGlobal, an international database of careers information and job vacancies. Access is free for UoN students and graduates.
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