Australian Resume Format

Your Career, the Australian Government's careers site, and most recruiters expect:

1. 1.Contact details — name, suburb and state, mobile, email, LinkedIn.
2. 2.Career summary (or career objective for students) — three or four lines.
3. 3.Key skills — tools, methods and standards you can evidence.
4. 4.Employment history — most recent first; title, employer, location, month and year, a one-line context statement about the employer, then achievements.
5. 5.Education and training — qualification, institution, year; licences and tickets (a White Card for construction, for example) if relevant.
6. 6.Referees — two, ideally recent supervisors.

Length: two to three pages for experienced candidates; one to two for graduates; one page for casual and part-time roles. Australian recruiters accept length when every line carries evidence, and lose patience with long duty lists.

Tone: direct and plain. Australian readers notice overstatement quickly — let numbers do the selling.

Reference checks are a standard late step in Australian hiring, and many employers phone referees rather than reading letters. Two referees is the norm — ideally your current or most recent supervisor and one other manager.

You can either list them (name, title, organisation, relationship) or write “Referees available on request”. Listing names without phone numbers, as in the sample, is a good middle ground: it shows the people exist without publishing their details. Always ask permission first and brief your referees on the role.

If your referees are overseas, say so and give a time zone. An Australian recruiter will happily call a referee in Mumbai or Manila if they know when to call.

Government jobs — Australian Public Service, state and local government — and many university roles assess you against selection criteria or capabilities listed in the job information pack.

The format varies. Some agencies still ask for a response to each criterion; many APS agencies now ask for a short statement of claims or “pitch”, often one or two pages, explaining how your experience matches the role. The Australian Public Service Commission publishes guidance on applying, and agencies often refer to the Integrated Leadership System to describe capabilities at each level.

Whatever the format, use concrete examples with the STAR structure (situation, task, action, result) and keep to the word limit — reviewers stop reading at it. Your resume summarises your career; the statement proves the specific claims. Do not merge the two unless the application asks you to.

Student visa holders can generally work up to 48 hours per fortnight while their course is in session and unlimited hours during scheduled breaks (Home Affairs, checked 13 October 2026) — confirm the condition on your own visa and put matching availability on a part-time resume. After graduating, many students move to the Temporary Graduate visa (subclass 485), which carries full working rights for its term. Applying from overseas? The format is the same; add your working-rights line and be explicit about your relocation date. See the international students guide, the student visa CV guide if you are still applying to study, and the Indian resume to Australian format guide.

Australian employers routinely ask about working rights, and many job ads state that applicants must have them. Put one line under your contact details:

• Australian citizen or Permanent resident
• Temporary Graduate visa (subclass 485) — full working rights until March 2028
• Student visa (subclass 500) — available up to 48 hours a fortnight in semester, full time in breaks (state availability within your own limit)
• Skills in Demand visa (subclass 482) — sponsored by current employer — the 482 is employer-sponsored, so a move usually needs a new sponsor
• Requires employer sponsorship

For the same wording in the US, UK, Canada and Gulf, see how to write visa status on a resume.

If you need an employer to sponsor you, the Skills in Demand visa (subclass 482), which replaced the Temporary Skill Shortage visa in December 2024, is the main temporary route; permanent employer-sponsored and points-tested routes sit alongside it. Your resume's job is to win the offer — the visa criteria are assessed on documents.

Many occupations also require a skills assessment by a designated assessing authority before a skilled visa. For engineers that is Engineers Australia, which asks for a “detailed CV” as one document among several; the Engineers Australia CV guide explains what that means in practice. Keep the job titles, dates and duties on your resume identical to what your employer reference letters say — assessors compare them.

SEEK is the dominant job board in Australia; LinkedIn and Indeed follow. Government roles are on APSJobs and each state's jobs site, and Workforce Australia lists roles too. Recruiters on SEEK often see your profile snapshot before they open the file, so keep your SEEK headline and the first lines of your resume consistent.

Larger employers screen through applicant tracking systems — Workday, SAP SuccessFactors and Oracle Taleo, plus PageUp, an Australian-built system common in universities and government. All of them parse a single-column, text-based resume best. Check yours with the free ATS resume checker and use the Australian cover letter format for the letter.

The usual mistake from the US is cutting to one page; from India, keeping the photo, declaration and 10th/12th marks.