I’m not sure about other Australian states but here in Tasmania library jobs are far and few. As a recent Masters graduate, I have been applying for graduate programs within various Commonwealth government departments. This involves going onto their websites to apply. The following are links of the government departments I recently applied for:

• Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
• Bureau of Statistics
• Australian Taxation Office
• Department of Human Services

The government recruitment process is quite similar across all departments. They require you to provide the following:

• Personal details
• Qualifications
• Work experience
• Answers to short selection criteria questions
• Referees

It’s quite a simple and straightforward process. Once you get through this first stage, you can then do an online test (similar to the written public service tests conducted regularly a few decades ago). If you’re successful here you are then invited to attend the interview. Unfortunately, due to its popularity and competitiveness (about 6000 applied for the Department of Foreign Affairs and about 2000 for the Department of Human Services) I didn’t make it to the interview stage.

I’m currently working on the ASIS grad program. Well it’s technically not a graduate program but rather an invitation to apply to become an Intelligent Officer. I’d highly recommend you  to apply for this job as it sounds like an exciting employment prospect. I guess the only drawback to this is you might have to move to Canberra where its head office is.

Unfortunately, the four grad programs I applied for have all closed for the 2014 intake but I’m happy to say there are more Commonwealth department graduate programs you could try (although I’m not sure of their closing dates). You can find the list here.