Research across 510 graduates shows what gets you hired in Australia

There are a hundred things you can do at university to improve your chances of getting hired. Most of them don't matter.

Join every club, attend every networking event, take on volunteering roles, sign up for leadership programs, become a residential advisor, show up to every career fair on campus, and stack your resume with co-curricular activities.

You can do all that and still find yourself months away from your first Australian offer.

Breaking down everything you can do

First, a quick framework to make sense of everything that follows.

Every activity you do at university falls into one of three buckets.

Curricular (embedded): Things built into your degree. A compulsory internship worth credit, or a group project assessed by your faculty. The university puts it in front of you and you do it.

Co-curricular: Activities run by the university but sit outside your formal degree. Things like leadership programs, volunteering hubs, hackathons, and student clubs where you have to choose to show up.

Extra-curricular: Things you go out and find yourself. A self-arranged internship, paid part-time work in your field, independent volunteering. No university involvement whatsoever.

Most students assume everything in these three buckets is equally useful. The research says otherwise.

3 findings that’ll surprise you the most.

Before we get into what works, here's what the research says about how value actually gets created.

By the way, this isn't intuition. It's backed by a study from Denise Jackson and Ruth Bridgstock on graduate employability in Australia, surveying 510 graduates across three universities.

If you want to go through the research paper, here’s the link.

1.Meaningful interaction with professionals is the single biggest predictor of value.

It doesn't matter as much what type of activity it is. What matters most is whether you actually got to work closely with real professionals during it.

Two students can do the same internship at the same company and walk away with completely different outcomes.

The one who got assigned real work alongside real professionals, sat in on meetings, got feedback directly from a manager, and had their thinking challenged, walks away with something the other person doesn't. Not just experience on paper, but a reference, a way of thinking, and a professional relationship that can open doors for years.

Surface level contact will help you very little. Instead of watching from the sidelines, your internship needs to give you an opportunity to work with professionals.

2.Duration matters less than you think.

How long an activity lasts had no significant impact on the perceived value of an internship in the research. Quality of the experience beats weeks clocked every time.

A six week internship where you owned real projects and worked closely with a senior team member is worth more than a six month internship where you’re largely ignored.

3.International students face a structural disadvantage, and it's worth naming directly.

Employers have been observed to favour domestic students in hiring. This isn't speculation. It shows up in the data and it shows up in the experiences of the students I work with every day.

This doesn't mean the game is unwinnable. It means you have less margin for error. Every activity you choose, every professional relationship you build, every internship you chase needs to count more because you are starting from a position where some employers have already made assumptions about you before you walk in the room.

Knowing this going in doesn't make it fair. But it does mean you can stop being surprised by it and start being strategic instead.

What actually moves the needle?

#1: Internships. Full stop.

Both the ones built into your degree and the ones you arrange yourself are rated highly. But self-arranged internships are rated higher.

When you chase it yourself, you show up differently. The employer knows you wanted to be there. That signals initiative and drive in a way a compulsory placement never can.

But not all internships are created equal. Here's what to look for when evaluating whether one is worth your time.

You want real work, not busy work. If the role description is vague, if nobody can tell you what you'll actually be doing day to day, or if previous interns spent most of their time on admin, that's a signal. The internship needs to put you in proximity to real problems and real decisions.

You want access to people, not just a desk. The research is clear that meaningful interaction with professionals is the single biggest predictor of value. An internship where you sit in a corner and rarely speak to anyone above you is worth less than one where you're in rooms with people who can teach you something and eventually vouch for you.

You want something relevant to where you're trying to go. An internship in a completely unrelated field gives you workplace experience but not industry credibility. Both matter, but if you're choosing, choose relevance.

One thing worth knowing: paid or unpaid makes no difference. The research confirms it. Pay had no significant impact on perceived value. Don't let the absence of a salary be the reason you walk away from the right opportunity.

#2: Extra-curricular activities matter more than you think.

Volunteering, clubs, and competitions signal initiative, social awareness, and the ability to commit to something beyond what's required. Leadership roles and challenging group projects build self-confidence in ways academic assessment rarely does.

But here's the caveat most people miss. This only holds if the activity connects to the career you're building.

Here's what that looks like in practice.

Two students are both chasing a career in marketing. One joins the university photography club because they enjoy it. The other starts writing content for the university's student-run business magazine, pitches a social media campaign for a local nonprofit, and enters a national marketing case competition. Both are doing extra-curricular activities. Only one is building something relevant.

The test is simple. Can you draw a straight line between the activity and the skills or relationships required in the career you want? If the answer is no, it's not that the activity is worthless. It just won't move the needle on your job search.

One more thing worth knowing. Extra-curricular activities are where most international students underinvest because they're already stretched thin between study, part-time work, and visa obligations. That's understandable. But these activities are also one of the few places where you can build professional relationships and industry credibility outside of a formal workplace. Used well, they close the gap. Ignored, they leave it wide open.

#3: Paid work during university has real value.

But the type of paid work matters more than most students realise.

Paid work in your target field is the most valuable. If you're chasing a career in finance and you're working part-time at a financial planning firm, even in an admin capacity, you are building industry familiarity, professional relationships, and contextual knowledge that your peers sitting in lectures simply aren't. That experience compounds fast.

Paid work outside your target field still has value, just in a different way. Working in hospitality, retail, or customer service while studying engineering or accounting doesn't give you industry credibility. But it gives you something else: proof that you understand how workplaces function. Deadlines, accountability, managing relationships with supervisors, navigating different personality types under pressure. Employers can see the difference between a graduate who has never had a job and one who has.

The mistake students make is dismissing unrelated paid work entirely when building their resume or preparing for interviews. Don't. Every job you've held has taught you something transferable. The skill is knowing how to articulate it.

#4: Good grades alone are not enough.

Maybe a degree was enough of a differentiator 20 years ago. It isn't now.

A 2025 employability report by Cengage Group found that while 89% of educators believe they are preparing students well for the workforce, only 69% of employers agree.

That gap between what universities think they're producing and what employers think they're receiving has been widening for years, and graduates are the ones caught in the middle.

What this means in practice is simple. When most applicants have a degree, having one stops being a differentiator. Your transcript might get you in the room, but what you've done outside the classroom determines whether you get the offer.

This isn't an argument against academic performance. Grades still matter for graduate program applications, and certain employers who use GPA as a screening filter. But grades are a floor, not a ceiling. They set a minimum threshold. Everything above that threshold is decided by what you've built outside the classroom.

I’m not asking you to be a bad student. Just make sure you're also building hands-on skills and real experiences that translate directly to the job. The students who land strong offers aren't the ones with the highest GPAs. They're the ones who treated their time at university as more than a degree.

Knowing this going in doesn't make it fair. But it does mean you can stop being surprised by it and start being strategic instead.

Bottom line

When you're chasing your first offer, it's easy to feel like you need to do everything. You don't. You need to do the right things.

Prioritise internships, especially the ones you go out and find yourself. Make sure the activities you're committing time to are actually building something relevant to where you want to go. Get close to real professionals, not just real organisations. And don't dismiss the paid work you've already done. It counts more than you think.

That’s exactly what you’d find inside My First Australian Offer as well. Students who land strong offers and get into great graduate programs aren't the ones who did the most things. They're the ones who did the right things consistently.

That's the whole game.