Joshua Evans

What is my job about?

My job at the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) is, ultimately, to support the people in our society to have safe, secure and well-paid work with the skills for a sustainable future. My team does this by supporting retrenched workers through the development of policy and by delivering programs that help retrenched workers process their loss of work and successfully transition to new jobs. I help the team by developing case studies on business restructures, and by talking to different organizations and members of the public about our policy and programs.

My graduate job is half-way between the policy and communications sides of my team. Policy workers are kind of like academics, as they’re paid to know stuff and develop ideas about what government should do with a specific problem. They also tell the government how it should spend it’s money. Communications talk to people about these ideas, to make sure they’re developed with the people who are going to be impacted by them. When I left the blue-collar engineering workshop to go into a white-collar office, I was concerned that I wouldn’t enjoy work but I’m happy to say that my job is much better than I thought it would be!

My background

I grew up in Lane Cove and Gladesville in Sydney, Australia. To me, the most important stages of my life have been times where I’ve had to develop my philosophy on life – my worldview – and forming the important relationships that are my foundation today. Formative times for me have been as a teenager, where I first started thinking for myself on important questions about life, when I first started working as a Boilermaker and when I went to university as a mature age student. Meeting my wife, getting married and becoming a father have also shaped me a lot too.

I got to my current position as a graduate by completing a Bachelor of Arts in Modern History and by successfully applying to the Australian Government Graduate Program (AGGP) generalist stream in 2023. Prior to this, I worked as a Boilermaker for 11 years, which DEWR noticed and was part of the reason I was offered a position. My career history has been an asset, providing useful insights and transferrable skills into the work I do now.

An important part of my personal journey has been shifting from the goal of self-advancement to trying to find a way to use my job to contribute to society.

This can be done in any job, as almost every job has something to offer to others, but I didn’t learn this until I reached a dead-end with my career and was forced to re-evaluate my beliefs and choices. Public service is a great way to combine employment and contributing to society.

Who could do my job?

Someone with a different background could definitely do my job. They might even benefit from their background, as DEWR looks at all of your life experience as valuable. One of the biggest assets of the graduate program is that the government invests a lot in you and trains you well. You don’t need anything more than a good attitude and willingness to learn to be able to succeed. Coming from a background on the tools, it was difficult to become an office worker, but the graduate program has supported me really well, the work is interesting and there are genuinely lots of good opportunities.

Coolest thing about my job

I love that I get paid to learn things and talk to people. I enjoy the privilege of being able to ask important people, on behalf of the government, to tell me the answers to questions that I have. People I talk to are usually ready and willing to help, which has surprised me about the influence that my work has, even as a graduate. It’s something to appreciate and it's important to remember that the influence must be met with responsibility.

The limitations of your job

The limitations of my job that stand out to me are that politics plays a large role in deciding whether policy gets implemented or not. While this year my teams request for funding to, essentially, prevent workers from suffering badly from future business collapses has been granted, this may not always be the case. Public servants need to accept that we exist to serve the elected government, and elections can change what is done by government and how, possibly resulting in reversal of previous government decisions.

Advice for a student

When I was a student, I wondered often about my career plans and about how I was going to get a job when I finished university.

3 things I wish I’d known earlier are:

1. The public service is a really good option and is much more interesting than I thought it would be. There are roles that are a good fit for every kind of person, background, belief etc., so don’t overlook the departments that aren’t household names.
2. Train (or study) in something that you’re good at and use that to benefit others.
3. Make friends by meeting regularly with the same people. This improves life satisfaction as you’ll form good bonds. Don’t neglect this at university, it’s probably more important than your marks.