How to get into internship/residency in Australia? Tips and tricks for Malaysians' doctors! Part 2 of 2

Picture 1: Evening running after work

Thank you for the overwhelming support in the first part of my article. So the question now is that? How can you apply for work in Aussie as a doctor? What are some of the tips and tricks to tackle this?

In order to arrive to this step, you must first be qualified to apply for a job as a doctor in Australia. This means that you need to be eligible to be registered with AHPRA. Please refer to the flowchart in my first article to learn more about this (click here). Once you are eligible to apply for a job, next you need to know these:

• Each of the states in Australia would have their own recruitment campaign that will usually be made known online between May to July each year.
• You would need to create an individual account for each of the health system, e.g. Victoria, Queensland, Northern Territory, etc in order to lodge your application with their state department of health.
• At this point of time, you must know which hospital in that state that you wanna apply to work, e.g. Monash Health in Victoria.

How can you know which hospital that is good for you? Chat around with people who is working in Australia. Also if you are interested to specialise, do read up about specialisation requirement as not all hospitals are accredited for advance training in Aussie. Next steps would be as follow:

• You will be asked to upload a complete curriculum vitae into the application portal and each of the state would have their own template for curriculum vitae that you must follow in terms of the content.
• The trick here is after applying via the state portal, you MUST INDIVIDUALLY EMAIL the HR at those hospitals which are your favourite to get noticed.
• This tip is universal and is especially important for Victoria state where you must email the HR in order your application to get noticed. 

Picture 2: View of the emergency department of where I am working right now in QLD

How can you know that your application has moved on to the next stage? If you are invited for an interview, be it video interview or recorded interview, rest assure that your chance of getting the job is much higher. The unspoken rule for the video interview is that you must dress professionally, appear enthusiastic and you show interests in the hospital. Have your own opinion and plan of what you want to achieve so that you can tell them how the hospital can be part of that journey. Once you are done with the interview, the next step is waiting. 

• It can be as fast as few days to few weeks before you hear back from them. But be courteous and do follow up with them the day after if they haven't give you an answer.
• Please make a mental note that many hospitals in Australia is still requiring bigger workforce so your chances of getting the job is pretty good as long as you have satisfied the AHPRA requirement for registration.
• Know that even if you are rejected by all of the interviews, you will still be pooled for the "late vacancy management" where you will be offered to fill up a vacant position at any hospitals with unfilled positions towards the end of the recruitment stage, usually circa December period.

What can you expect is that, once you have secured the job and you have accepted their offer, the next step would be even more tedious. 

• You will need to get AHPRA approval for you to practice in that hospital. This will usually be done by the HR and you will need to closely work with them.
• You will need to get your work visa (482 temporary skills shortage) by applying with the Dept of Home Affairs and getting your new employer to send them a nomination.
• You will need to provide proof of English test competency whereby the common tests opted by Malaysians are either IELTS or PTE-Academic. Personally, I have sat for PTE-A and it was quite tricky. I will write more about this test in my next posting.

Once you have fully satisfied the registration requirements by AHPRA and secured the job, it will become a waiting game for both AHPRA and your working visa to be approved. The estimate time for these twos to be approved and the total timeframe would be 2-3 months.

The most important thing to do during the application is to EMAIL the HR team with cover letter and your curriculum vitae so you could get noticed by them

All in all, the process can be quite tedious but if it's done right and is planned properly, it won't be too hard. In my next weekend blog post, I will describe more about the working as a doctor life in Australia and how to kickstart your life as an expats in Australia. If you are interested to know more, do drop me a message on my twitter.