Let me give you a straight answer first: yes and no.
Yes, it's harder than 2022 and 2023. No, it's not harder than it was before the pandemic. And the way you read that difference will change how you approach your job search.
The narrative most people are running with
International students right now share a common belief: the Australian job market is brutal, more competitive than it's ever been, and basically impossible to crack without already knowing someone.
Some of that is true. A lot of it isn't. And if you're building your strategy around the wrong premise, you're going to make bad decisions.
2022 and 2023 were not normal
Here's what actually happened.
Post-pandemic, Australia experienced genuine skills shortages across almost every industry. Employers were competing for graduates, not the other way around. Roles that normally filled in weeks sat open for months. The hiring peak that traditionally happens in March and April spread across the entire year as companies tried to fill positions whenever they could.
According to Indeed's Hiring Lab, graduate job postings in 2023 were 2.4 times higher than in 2018. That's not a healthy market. That's an anomaly driven by post-pandemic rebounds and widespread talent shortages.
Then the correction happened
From 2023 to 2024, graduate job postings dropped 24%. In early 2025, they were tracking a further 16% below the same period in 2024.
The Graduate Outcomes Survey confirmed it: the full-time employment rate for domestic undergraduates fell from 79% in 2023 to 74% in 2024.
For international graduates, who already face additional barriers around visa status and employer hesitation, that shift has felt even sharper.
But here's what people keep getting wrong
Even with the drop, graduate job postings in 2024 were still 1.7 times higher than in 2019, before the boom.
And three years after graduating, 91% of Australian undergraduates are in full-time work.
The market has corrected. It hasn't collapsed. The problem isn't that jobs don't exist. The problem is that the strategies that worked when employers were desperate no longer work now that they have options again.
What "more competitive" actually means for you
In 2022, sending 30 applications might get you 10 interviews. Today, 30 weak applications might get you one or two.
It means quality matters more than volume. It means timing matters more. Graduate hiring has returned to its traditional peak in March and April. Miss that window and you're often waiting a full year for the same roles to come back around.
It means networking carries more weight now than it did during the boom years. When 400 people apply for 15 spots, a referral or a familiar name moves you out of the pile. In accounting and professional services, the average firm receives nearly 6,000 applications for 225 graduate positions.
That's not impossible odds. But a generic application has almost no chance.
Ask someone who got hired in 2015
Ask a graduate who landed a role in 2015 or 2016 how many applications they sent. Most will say somewhere between 20 and 60.
Ask a 2024 graduate the same question and you'll often hear numbers in the hundreds.
Part of that is because applying on LinkedIn takes 10 seconds. Part of it is that applicant-to-role ratios have genuinely increased in competitive industries. But a big part of it is strategy. If each individual application is generic and untailored, you send more of them to compensate. It doesn't work.
The graduates landing roles right now are sending fewer, better applications and spending the rest of their time having direct conversations with people in their target industry. That's what the data supports, and what we see in practice through our 1-on-1 mentoring sessions.
The honest answer
Yes, it's harder than 2022 and 2023. No, it's not harder than it was before the boom.
For international students specifically, the challenge has always been real. Visa uncertainty, employer hesitation, less of a built-in network. None of that is new. What changed is that the unusually forgiving market briefly masked those challenges. Now it doesn't.
The graduates succeeding right now are not the ones who got lucky. They're the ones who started building relationships and local experience before they needed them.
Headstart mentors landed their roles in 2023, 2024, and 2025, across this exact market. They know what's working now, not what worked five years ago. Book a free call to find out what that looks like for your specific situation.
For a breakdown of what actually gets international students hired beyond the market conditions, read: Your University Degree Doesn't Get You Hired in Australia. Here's What Does.