Adelaide has little trouble attracting international IT students, but getting a local job on graduation is another matter. They are locked into looking for IT work in Adelaide and there is very little. Many end up driving taxis or working in restaurants. This edited story was in The Saturday Paper.
“Last year, Chinese international student Scott Cheung, armed with a master’s degree specialising in AI from UNSW Sydney, embarked on a year-long search and more than 300 fruitless applications for a job in the tech sector.
At one point he resorted to holding a sign listing all his IT credentials on one of the busiest footbridges in Sydney’s CBD, desperately hoping a passer-by would stop and look at his résumé.
Now, having secured a position as a web developer in Queensland, he has proof of the difficulties Australian graduates experience finding work in an area the government has championed as this country’s future and the solution to decades of ailing productivity.
Cheung is far from alone in his turbulent jobs seeking journey. Since early 2024, a growing number of Chinese international students – one of the largest cohorts of IT graduates in Australia – have been posting on social media about their struggles to start their careers here.
On the surface, this reflects two well-known trends in global labour markets. The first is that rising economic uncertainty has pushed corporations to save costs by investing more in AI-led automation and outsourcing contracts, leading to a decline in entry-level jobs and cuts to training.
In its soon-to-be released annual “Digital Pulse” report, the Australian Computer Society (ACS) reveals only 1 per cent of IT employers rated Australian graduates as job ready, and 65 per cent reported having to reskill their new hires.
The problem was highlighted this week by Jobs and Skills Australia Commissioner Barney Glover, who told The Australian that research from his statutory body showed “too many engineering and IT graduates are not being hired for jobs they are technically qualified for, because they lack the employability skills that are required.”
The second global trend is that due to increasing visa uncertainty and language barriers, employers tend to favour local graduates over their international counterparts. This isn’t quite true of Australia, where the tech sector has relied heavily on migrants like Cheung for decades.
A report by the peak body representing the STEM workforce, Science & Technology Australia, in 2023 found 56 per cent of university-qualified STEM workers were born overseas.
“While there’s a lot of talk about how AI will change the way we work, there should be more concern for how it’s making it harder for new workers to get a foot in the door.”
Moreover, the demand from industry is strong. Last year, the ACS identified that an additional 52,000 tech workers are needed each year until the end of 2030 to fill roles.
According to the government-affiliated National Artificial Intelligence Centre (NAIC), a key problem for foreign students graduating from Australian universities with AI skills is a lack of pathways to employment.
According to an NAIC spokesperson, the centre’s latest report “reinforces that Australia’s tech workforce continues to rely heavily on skilled migration, particularly in advanced AI roles where domestic pipelines may not yet meet demand”.
“This highlights the need for more targeted pathways that integrate international graduates into the AI workforce,” the spokesperson says.
The failure to offer opportunities for top-flight graduates was highlighted by the case of Zizheng Pan, a Chinese international student who completed a master’s degree and PhD in computer science at the University of Adelaide and Monash University.
Pan moved back to China in July 2024 after an internship with Nvidia in the United States and joined the founding team of DeepSeek – the AI that shocked the world early this year.
Australia has had little trouble attracting them to study: seven of our universities appeared among Times Higher Education’s global top 100 universities for computer science for 2025.
Foreign students can pay up to $58,000 a year for an ICT undergraduate degree, and educators have taken various approaches to ensure those students are well trained to meet the demand. Academics point out, however, that the skill set employers most value is expanding, and goes beyond technical expertise.
Professor Peter Höfner at the Australian National University’s School of Computing says critical thinking skills are now much more in demand in the IT industry, as workers must make decisions about choosing AI tools that work best for companies.
Many AI-related roles also require strong communication skills to facilitate the rollout of AI in non-tech businesses. “This shift may disadvantage graduates who lack industry experience or broader professional networks,” the NAIC spokesperson says.
Adding to the competition for roles, Professor Paul Kennedy at the University of Technology Sydney says alumni have reported that many tech companies over the past two years have been laying off extra staff they hired during the pandemic and outsourcing more contracts offshore. “It just means that there’s more competition for the students that are coming out here.”
Many tech-qualified migrants are also stuck in roles below their capability, without clear pathways to career progression.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 26, 2025 as “AI graduate glitches”