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With a stable home base in Carlton, my next task was looking for a casual job in the hospitality sector – perhaps working as a barista, waiter, or even a bartender. The initial outlook was positive. I was close to Lygon St and Brunswick St, both popular restaurant and café destinations with a dizzying number of establishments. I also had a template to follow for my search, after hearing about Madoka’s experience moving to Melbourne on a working holiday visa and finding hospitality work within a few weeks. It seemed like getting out there was the missing ingredient. I started going door to door on a quiet Monday, targeting restaurants that appeared to have a lull, and avoiding ones that seemed to be actively serving customers. To prepare, I had spent countless hours looking at online job postings on Gumtree and Seek, to get a sense on what local spots might be hiring. Embarking on my walk, I was also armed with a folder of freshly printed resumes, the nicest shirt I currently had with me, and my recent haircut. Who wouldn’t want to hire this guy? I started with some of the restaurants on Lygon Street, with such diverse names as Apertivo, Heart Attack and Vine, Milk the Cow, and Grill’d. I was met with politeness, and about half took my resume. The person at Grill’d was kind enough to mention openings at their other locations. I worked my way towards Fitzroy, and dropped more resumes at a bar called Taquito, a coffee roaster called Industry Beans, and a restaurant called Hecho in Mexico. I thought that perhaps my Spanish would come in handy there. Many places asked if I had an RSA, the responsible service of alcohol certificate, which I had indeed secured a few days prior – giving me a sense that I was on the right track. On Tuesday, I headed back to Fitzroy for another pass. Another set of cafes, bars, and Mexican restaurants including Amarillo, El Camino, Rooks Retreat, Sila Espresso, Wolfhound, and the Union Hotel. More friendliness, regardless of whether they had openings or not. On Wednesday, I went north to target a specific spot – the newly opened Fomo Cinemas, which I had heard about from the girl at Shakespeare in the Park. One of the owners listened to my pitch and took my resume. He explained things were still settling from their grand opening, with a possibility of openings in March, and wished me luck. Since I was in Brunswick East, a suburb I had never visited, I stuck my head in a few spots like Bridge Road Brewing, Craftsman’s Corner, La Candelaria, and Teller. I knew that higher-end places were less likely to hire a newbie, but I also figured I might as well try, especially when in the area. The bartender at Craftsman’s Corner very tactfully rejected my inquiry due to lack of experience. On the other hand, the staff at Teller was happy to take my resume despite being relatively fancy. These contrasting experiences made me wonder whether all the politeness I had been encountering was just good hospitality, regardless of my prospects. I felt more qualified to drop a resume at La Candelaria, a casual Colombian restaurant. That evening, while making a curry chicken dinner, I had a nice chat with Alex, the quiet Frenchman. He was working at Brunetti, an Italian café, though not the main location on Lygon Street. I asked him for tips on searching for a job, and he emphasized that experience was really important to employers – to the point that his friends had embellished their resumes with fake entries to get their foot in the door. He wasn’t advocating for this method, but it was still insightful in a depressing way. On Thursday, I rewrote my resume to blow up the experience section – leaning on past jobs and volunteer work that were real, but playing up the customer-related aspects. I returned to the local library, the Kathleen Syme, and cobbled together some spare coins to pay for the print job. I knew the updated resume would help, but I knew that my lack of direct hospitality experience and my short timeframe (~3 months) were also working against me. On Friday, I tried a few cafes and successfully dropped resumes at Brunetti and Sea Salt. I happened to catch the manager at Sea Salt -- though he didn’t introduce himself as such, it was clear from his aura. In an efficient one-minute conversation, things started out encouraging but hit a wall as soon as he heard my 3-month timeframe. Again, the interaction was friendly, but the slight change in tone and efficient conclusion was everything I needed to know. A welcome break from the job hunting was lunch with Michael, an Australian who worked as a fellow R&D Engineer at Medtronic Santa Rosa. We had never been on the same project, but knew of each other, and he had offered some guidance on my housing search when I first moved to Melbourne. It was fantastic to meet in person, hear about his current job at a neurotech start-up, fill him in on Medtronic news, and generally catch up. The pandemic had cut his time in the US short, and moving back to Australia had been logistically difficult, but he had just bought a house and it seemed like things were back on a normal trajectory. Our lunch spot was Heart Attack and Vine (one of the places I had dropped my resume). The beautiful pattern on my flat white was a subtle reminder of how unqualified a barista I would have been there. The pork sandwich was absolutely delicious, the best meal I’d had in days. Saturday morning, I slept in and reflected on the job search. While I knew that I was building the right habits – going door to door, using online searches for research, emphasizing experience – I knew it was going to take a while to get my foot in the door. Places just didn’t seem to be desperate for workers. I didn’t see a single “Help Wanted” sign on any of my walking tours. And the longer it took, the more my 3-month timeframe was going to work against me. I started thinking about my goals more broadly – I settled in Melbourne not because I wanted hospitality experience, but because I wanted a home base with interesting things to do and a launching point to see other regions of Australia. While a hospitality job would give me interesting life experience, and extra income to fund my travels, it came with large opportunity costs – the upfront search time, the pressure to stay in Melbourne to pick up shifts, and the general exertion of this challenging line of work. I tallied up my expenses and projected my total costs for staying in Melbourne, and realized that with some belt-tightening, I could manage to stretch my savings and still enjoy the regional travels I had in mind, without relying on the supplemental income.
I decided to put the job search on hold. It was a hard decision to make, but it seemed to better align with my goals. Ironically, now I didn’t have the budget to enjoy the restaurants I had visited on my resume dropping tour. But sometimes that’s how things go. Saturday afternoon, I took a tram north to the Merri Creek trail, and worked my way back south. The paved path crossed under several major roads and train lines, so it was a continuous journey but with a mix of terrain. Eventually the creek rejoined the main Yarra River, going through a peaceful slice of wilderness that was only disrupted by the unusual sound of a giant set of windchimes being carried into a meditation park. It was comforting to think that my job hunting decision was going to make this kind of rejuvenating adventure a more regular occurrence.
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Grant MenonFreeform blog to share my travel experiences with my friends, family, and future self! Archives
April 2024
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