I am a fully qualified CPA and have 10 years Australian experiance in industry. Three years ago I used to get calls from recruiters asking if I would consider a change of company. Two years ago during the GFC I lost my job but was very lucky to pick up a contract role a week later. That role finished a year ago. Since then I have worked 2 months as an accountant and only had two interviews. Whilst I only apply for roles I meet all the attributes sought I am surprised by the number of rejections (or should I say “never here anything again). I also get responces such as “the position has been withdrawn”.This week I attended an interview where I would guess up to 10 people were being interviewed by the company. I was told all were available for an immediate start. What this tells me is that there are a very large number of accountants that are not working.

Of course if you have no Australian experiance then you are even more dissadvantaged. At the moment I’m seriously considering a change of career. So much for the skills shortage and booming job market we keep hearing about.

Obviously one other failure I made, was to commit myself to a positive outcome here. I gave a small failure, no less a grand failure here, almost no consideration.

This as, perhaps, arrogantly I had never experienced failure, and when the time came where I realised this, and needed disparately to return ‘home’ to correct matters, interpersonal relationships intervene.

The push factors that drive most South African professionals to England, Canada, The United States, Australia (in I believe – is the correct order of numbers ) largely remain; and most certainly my wife would not return to South Africa, under any circumstance despite the obvious advantage in doing so. Misogyny and the relentless assault on women are an essential new core to that countries recent past and inevitable future. It is no decent place for a women.

We easily handle the lack of income, cash flow, and standard of living. The largest difficulty to my deeply diminished sense of self worth, is simply not working.

I have never not worked in my life! I have always known exactly what I have needed to do, and have done so, and for the most achieved whatever I planned and set out to do.

Yet here I am at a complete loss, I have had to recognise how ill equiped I am to simply doing nothing Emotionally this outcome is the most painful, it is this THE hell on earth. A daily walk to Coles cannot and is not a reprieve for a deep sense of an unfair incarceration.

Please help. Please let me out, for I do not know how to punch at your clouds?

Based on the comments here, my account has not been an account with any sort of resonance, Yet I do perhaps hope that you return to scrutinise your response in this Destination Talent blog.

I am still unemployed, and know that I will never be employed here! Not because who I was, and the capability and value I offer, but rather ironically, because of my failure here! I am damned; as I am damned!

I have not been allowed to mounted a first step, no less surmounted it!

Something more to this story? Nope , I think not. Not a word to me anyway but I would be delighted to know?

If ever; I doubt there is anything ‘hidden’ from my side.

I was articled to the largest audit and accounting firm, in a sector that implemented all new group audit practice for the firm, meaning I was amongst a tighter unit pegged to take on plan, structure, implement, some times conduct and then post assess all initial audits, and was, for good measure, actually articled to the incumbent president of the SA(CA) society.

As national serviceman I possibly had one of the most testing, prestigious and responsible postings.

My only hope now is that my great referees do not die, before I ever get to interact with a likely employer.

My major failing is, in retrospect, of making two mistakes

The first was that in South Africa Chartered Accountants (which was my association there) are usually one the highest paid professionals, and with any sort of professional or business success almost certain to be of the highest paid professionals.

[Professional Chartered Accountants in South Africa, are qualified, through their association, to conduct statutory audits, provide financial advice (traditionally) and prepare professional tax advice and prepare tax client affairs. This makes them highly marketable, and restricts those transfer professional accountants over here.]

There are other lessor professional associations in South Africa too, but their public practice capability is proscribed. Some of the newer arrivals here though, would be better to advise on the current status.

I would be very surprised if recruiters here, understood this. ]

The headhunters there thus focus heavily on us, and I was accustomed to having at least a monthly ‘unknown’ yet what became to be an expected, highly confidential call from an insightful recruiter trying to ‘lure’ me away from my company, based on their connections and research of successful corporate management.

I knew (then) how to safeguard a company, grow its capital base, and well, simply do the darnedest thing, make it make money!

(Most of those adept recruiters however failed to check that I too was the owner of that ‘measly’ company, and thus sadly a very unlikely prospect for their recruitment drive. )

But I unfortunately misinterpreted those signals, and over estimated my marketable worth.

My second mistake was to plan on using my professional association. I thus wrote the Australian transfer examinations, well in anticipation and never structured myself, on coming here, to depend on my own corporate being or capital, neither of which are well received in a somewhat socialist country.

If anything else, I approached Australia, too cap in hand. I knew there was to be a gamut of professional adjustment, and I planned an entry that was to me, a way to brush up, and familiarize. There are just so many capabilities that I can offer, and I’d hoped in exchange, and in the while, that I could gauge the holes to and in my aspirations to my future Australian advancement.

Most South African’s who I have met, and who have made fluid transitions, saw no need to do so, and in fact did not submit themselves for refreshment.

I am thus aware of many ‘peers’ who top, or advance successfully into the more strategic levels of management, and do their company;s well.

There diminished network here; a failing for me, they have put to good use, to allow them to devote a focus entirely on their new corporate hosts, and employers and new Australian base..

I may be wrong, but hope that my interpretation is of some additional value.