University Career Investigation Report: Retail and Tourism Industries

This career investigation report evaluates opportunities and threats within the Australian retail and tourism industries, focusing on career prospects for MBA graduates. The report analyzes the current state of the retail sector, including employment rates, the demand for skilled workers, and potential saturation. It also explores the tourism and hospitality sector, highlighting its contribution to the Australian economy, job vacancies, and the increasing demand for skilled labor. The report identifies threats such as part-time employment trends and high employee turnover rates, as well as intercultural challenges. Additionally, the report provides creative job-seeking strategies, including personal branding on LinkedIn and identifying ideal job roles. The report concludes with recommendations for navigating these industries and overcoming challenges, offering valuable insights for students seeking career development in these fields. The report also includes an executive summary, table of contents, introduction, body, creative job seeking strategies, intercultural challenges, recommendations, conclusion and reference list.

Running Head: CAREER INVESTIGATION REPORT
CAREER INVESTIGATION REPORT
Name of the Student:
Name of University:
Author Note:

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Executive summary
The retail industry of Australia provides enough job opportunity for the fresher candidates but
also facing some problems like stagnation in the demand of skilled employees. On the other
hand, the tourism and hospitality industry of Australia is also suffering with lack of skilled
labour. Moreover, the increase in part time employees can be a potential threat for the aspirants
to opt for the hospitality and tourism jobs. In this regard, the report critically evaluates both the
opportunities and threats and also prescribes some recommendations that can help the aspirant to
deal with strategic job searching and intercultural threats in workplace.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Body.................................................................................................................................................3
Career opportunities and threats in industry 1.............................................................................3
Opportunities in Australian retail industry..............................................................................3
Threats in Australian retail industry........................................................................................4
Career opportunities and threats in industry 2.............................................................................5
Opportunities in the Australian tourism and hospitality industry............................................5
Threats in the Australian tourism and hospitality industry......................................................6
Creative job seeking strategies....................................................................................................7
Powerful personal branding in LinkedIn.................................................................................7
Identify ideal job role and listing with priority........................................................................7
Intercultural challenges................................................................................................................8
Recommendations........................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
Reference.......................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
Choosing the right career option is very crucial and imperative for the individuals to
ensure the future success and progress in career development. Therefore, many of the job
aspirants are choosing the industry carefully so that it will help them to proceed towards the
future benefits. For people with Masters in Business Administration, it is also crucial to opt for
the industry wisely and bring forth more advantages to further development and competitive
edge. In fact, the good experience and working in reputed companies are always become very
significant for the MBA students to get better jobs in future. Therefore, they intend to start their
profession in better companies where they can use their skills profoundly and gain valuable
experience that shape their future employment.
In this regard, the current report is going to evaluate the career opportunities in two
different industries such as retail and tourism. The body of the report will find out the best
possible option to proceed and the creative job seeking strategy for the career development.
Moreover, the potential intercultural challenges and a recommendation is also going to discussed
in this report.
Body
Career opportunities and threats in industry 1
Opportunities in Australian retail industry
The retail industry of Australia is highly lucrative and one of the successful industry in
the country with an average growth of 3.7%. Therefore, the demand of human capital is also very

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high in the retail sector of Australia. The report of Australian Jobs (2020) showed that more than
1 million people are employed in the retail employment in 2018. However, the employment in
retail industry is increased steadily at an average rate of 3% (Australian Jobs 2020). The general
market report shows that the retail companies are trying to hire people with knowledge and skills
and currently the retail market of Australia is filled with only 32% skilled employees. Therefore,
people with master’s degree in business administration has a great opportunity to get a job
placement in the renowned retail companies. It is important to note that demand in the retail
labour market and the growth of the market creates better opportunities for the job aspirants to
pursue their careers in the retail sector of Australia. For the qualified and skilled aspirants, the
retail companies are also offers some lucrative designations like senior store manager, Assistant
manager and sales assistant. Moreover, it can be stated that in the retail sector in Australia, an
average of 16% employees have bachelor or higher degree. One of the main reason is the high
qualification criteria set by the retail companies for managers and executives.
It seems a very promising and lucrative opportunity for the MBA students to pursue their
career in the retail industry of Australia. They can get less competition in the labour market as
well. Therefore, the retail industry of Australia should be the first choice.
Threats in Australian retail industry
There are some threat in getting job in the Australia retail market. For instance, the
employment opportunity in the market has been constant for five years. There is no change or
increase in the demand of the workforce. It is a serious threat for the aspirants that the retail
industry of Australia is on the verge of its saturation. Frequent layoffs of the employees is
considered to be one of the pertinent issue that the Australian retail sector is now facing. As per
Cook (2019) it can be stated that in 2018, more than thousand workers were terminated from the

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retail companies in Australia. The number of full time workers in the Australian retail sector is
dropped by more than 7,000 in previous years whereas the number of par-time workers had been
increased to 11,300 (Cook 2019). Therefore, it will be a serious threat for the MBA aspirants
who are willing to get employment in the Australian retail industry sector. Moreover, the rate of
permanent employee recruitment is also poor in compare to the part-time employees. Therefore,
a significant trend can be seen in case of getting job in the retail sector of Australia. The report
also stated that in 2019, the unemployment rate in the retail industry of Australian was spiked
from 0.1% to 4.9% (Australian Jobs 2020). It is considered to be a grave concern for the new
aspirants to get job in the Australian retail sector. Moreover, it seems to create negative impact
over the long-term advantages of employment in the particular sector.
Career opportunities and threats in industry 2
Opportunities in the Australian tourism and hospitality industry
According to the government report, it can be argued that the tourism industry is one of
the major contributors of the future economy of the country. Nearly $40 billion has been
contributed in the previous financial year that proves the magnanimity and progress of the
industry. The current labour force in the Australian tourism industry is more than 900,000. It is
considered to be 81% of the total employment percentage in Australia (Tra.gov.au, 2015). This
blooming industry provides enough opportunities for the skilled aspirants. The government
report shows that there is still 7% vacancies in the tourism industry with an estimated figure of
38,000 workers in both permanent and non-permanent basis (Austrade.gov.au 2020). Moreover,
it is also expected that the demand for skilled labour in the Australian tourism industry can be
heightened to 60,000 skilled labour within 5 years. Therefore, it poses huge opportunity for the
MBA students to use the opportunity of labour shortage and enter into the tourism industry as a

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professional. The competitiveness in the market also opens the labour market for the MBA
students to execute their marketing and financial skills in order to cater more strategic
advantages for the business organisations. It can be stated that the growth in business and
exposure lead the hotels and restaurants to hire skilled people who have enough understanding of
the market trends and execute proper strategy for the future sustainability of the business.
Therefore, a new opportunity is also opened for the MBA students to join in any hotels and
restaurants as a marketing executive or financial executive and bring more insights into the
success of the organisation and self-career development as well.
Threats in the Australian tourism and hospitality industry
There are still some threats regarding the career opportunity in the tourism and hospitality
industry of Australia. Influx of season labour has created a trend of part-time employment in the
tourism and hospitality industry. As a result of that the business companies are highly interested
in recruiting people as part time employee rather than employing permanent staffs. It definitely
helps the business companies to reduce its operational costs and enhances the profitability to a
great extent. As a result of that there are limited scope for the MBA students to get a job in the
tourism and hospitality industry of Australia. In addition to this, high turnover rate of employees
is also a significant aspect in the Australian tourism and hospitality sector. It is almost 66% in the
tourism and hospitality industry of Australia (Tourism.australia.com 2020). The high rate of
employee turnover reflects the poor labour force and fluctuation in the employment where
majority of the employees are seasonal. Due to this uncertainty in the Australian tourism and
hospitality industry market, it becomes a challenge for the MBA students to pursue their careers
in the respective industry. Furthermore, the recruitment and retention difficulties are also
supplemented by the lack of appropriate skills the employees. The statistics shows that 69% of

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the employees are suffered with skill deficiencies. Therefore, from that point of view also it is a
threat for the MBA students to get job in the tourism and hospitality industry in Australia.
Creative job seeking strategies
Powerful personal branding in LinkedIn
The powerful personal branding can be a creative job seeking strategy that the aspirants
can use. Based on the research of Brems et al. (2017) the advent of technology has its impact on
the recruitment and personal branding practice as well. Currently, the social media is considered
to be one of the important tool for the aspirants to find out the relevant jobs that they are going to
seek. In response to this, developing a personal brand is very imperative for the job seekers to
gain the attention of different recruitment cells (Johnson 2017). LinkedIn is the best platform for
creating a personal brand where the person can strong professional image so that some recruiters
will be interested to interview him. For getting job in the retail sectors this kind of personal
branding through social media platform has very limited impact as the giant retailers are still
practicing the traditional interview sessions with the aspirants. Therefore, the personal branding
in LinkedIn will not help the person to get the dream job that he or she is expected to get.
However, for the hospitality and tourism industry, the personal branding process is very effective
as many of the Australian recruiters belonged to the hospitality and retail industry have their
profiles in digital platforms like LinkedIn (Petruca 2016).
Identify ideal job role and listing with priority
There are plenty of online job portals that can be useful to identify and prioritise the jobs
as per the requirements of the aspirant. However, it is essential to create close understanding of
the job description and desired qualification that are useful for an individual. There are also some

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key factors that can influence the aspirant in prioritising the jobs properly (Smith 2017). For
instance, salary package, the qualification of the job role, job description, job designation, place
of job posting and so on (Wei et al. 2018). In this regard, the aspirant can use the online job
portals for retail jobs with MBA qualification. It is pertinent to note that the driving factors will
influence the aspirant to enlist and prioritise the jobs as per the requirements and effectiveness.
In fact, for the retail jobs, the aspirant can focus on the reputation of the companies and the
current employment situation so that it will be beneficial to get the dream jobs that the aspirant is
looking for. In addition to this, for the tourism and hospitality industry also, there are number of
websites that can help the aspirant to chalk out the desired jobs (Altmann et al. 2018). However,
for the tourism and hospitality industry the job role and the designation are very important
because there is no such issues regarding salary package or the location. Therefore, the person
can focus on those two aspects and enlist the options accordingly.
Intercultural challenges
Communication is the most significant problem that can be face in an intercultural
workplace. As per the article of Holmes (2017) it can be stated that in an intercultural workplace
employees are facing problems in non-verbal communication. The body language and the
differences in expression creates significant problem and in result it will create communication
gap within the organisation. Henceforth, communication can create big issue for aspirants in
intercultural workforce. It is essential for the people to focus on choice of words and prepare
themselves professionally so that an effective and healthy communication can be delivered.
Apart from this lack of acceptance and respect are also identified as potential threat for
the professionals in an intercultural organisation. As opined by Kunasegaran et al. (2016) in a
intercultural workplace, respect from the colleagues and subordinates is considered to be a

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fundamental aspect. However, in many cases the difference in culture can lead to non-acceptance
from the other employees and colleagues. As a result of that conflict arises in every cases. Later
on, it turns into animosity or even create violence in organisation.
Gender discrimination can also be developed in a intercultural workplace where people
will not appreciate a female manager. It is very offensive and derogatory. Discrimination is a
very insidious threat that cannot be traced or visible easily (Pham 2018). Therefore, some people
take advantages of such situation and damage the organisational environment to a great extent. It
is essential to retain a positive environment within the organisation so that unity and integrity
within the workforce can be maintained.
Recommendations
In response to this, some recommendations are going to be suggested in order to
overcome the challenges and choose the job properly. The recommendation are as follows,
 It is important for the aspirant to set some goals and objectives at first so that it will be
helpful to select the desired jobs properly and prioritise it effectively. The goal and
objective setting is a self-development practice. However, the aspirant can take
suggestions from seniors or any experts.
 Developing a professional communication for diverse culture is also a very important
training that the aspirant must follow. Training on the non-verbal communication will
help the person to communicate with any employees smoothly despite of having cultural
differences.
 A personality development training is also required so that the aspirant can shape a
professional and bold personality that will influence the employees positively. It will also

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eradicate any kind of gender biasness among the employees as they respect the
personality and position of the aspirant.
Conclusion
The report critically evaluates the potential abilities of different job market in Australia.
Both the hospitality and tourism and the retail market provide some negative and positive aspect
that are critical to the decision of opting the right industry. Moreover, the potential intercultural
threats can also create threat for the aspirant. Therefore, the recommended measures must be
followed and prepare in a pro-active manner. It can be concluded that the report critically
highlights the employment opportunities in two different market and also highlights two different
strategies to choose the right option.

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Reference
Altmann, S., Falk, A., Jäger, S. and Zimmermann, F., 2018. Learning about job search: A field
experiment with job seekers in Germany. Journal of Public Economics, 164, pp.33-49.
Austrade.gov.au, 2020. Tourism Employment In Australia - Austrade. [online] Austrade.gov.au.
Available at: <https://www.austrade.gov.au/Australian/Tourism/Policy-and-Strategy/labour-and-
skills> [Accessed 27 March 2020].
Australian Jobs, 2020. Retail Trade. [online] Australian Jobs. Available at:
<https://australianjobs.employment.gov.au/jobs-industry/retail-trade> [Accessed 27 March
2020].
Brems, C., Temmerman, M., Graham, T. and Broersma, M., 2017. Personal Branding on Twitter:
How employed and freelance journalists stage themselves on social media. Digital
Journalism, 5(4), pp.443-459.
Cook, T., 2019. More Layoffs Point To Worsening Jobs Crisis In Australia. [online] Wsws.org.
Available at: <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/04/05/jobs-a05.html> [Accessed 27
March 2020].
Holmes, P., 2017. Intercultural communication in the global workplace, critical approaches. The
international encyclopedia of intercultural communication, pp.1-16.
Johnson, K., 2017. The importance of personal branding in social media: educating students to
create and manage their personal brand. International Journal of Education and Social
Science, 4(1), pp.21-27.