Asraa Al Saadi struggled to find work after moving to Australia from Romania. An employment forum aimed at jobseekers from migrant and refugee backgrounds helped her to land a dream job with us!

Asraa trained as a doc­tor, but she had lit­tle suc­cess find­ing a role for years after arriv­ing in Australia.

In Octo­ber 2023 she attend­ed the Black­town Employ­ment Accel­er­a­tor event, putting her in touch with a dozen employ­ers, includ­ing NSW Health Pathol­o­gy, that were active­ly seek­ing can­di­dates across West­ern Sydney.

“All I can say is that a mir­a­cle hap­pened to me that day,” Asraa said. She met with NSW Health Pathol­o­gy staff at the Black­town event and went on to suc­cess­ful­ly apply for a job with the organisation.

Jes­si­ca Lee, Deputy Direc­tor Strate­gic HR & Projects at NSW Health Pathol­o­gy, says attend­ing the Employ­ment Accel­er­a­tor helped raise aware­ness of NSW Health Pathol­o­gy as a poten­tial employ­er with­in cul­tur­al­ly and lin­guis­ti­cal­ly diverse communities.

“Nor­mal­ly, we adver­tise either inter­nal­ly to NSW Health or exter­nal­ly via iwork­forn­sw and oth­er job boards,” Jes­si­ca said.

“We always pri­ori­tise the right cul­tur­al fit and the nec­es­sary skillset to per­form the role. By attend­ing the Black­town Employ­ment Accel­er­a­tor, we were able to tap into a tal­ent pool that may have pre­vi­ous­ly been overlooked.”

Jes­si­ca and the NSW Health Pathol­o­gy team had the priv­i­lege of help­ing sev­er­al can­di­dates, includ­ing Asraa, through the recruit­ment process.

As for Asraa, it wasn’t just the con­ver­sa­tions at the event or access to net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that inspired her – it was the sup­port she received from Jes­si­ca and Rho­da Kip­tanui, Head of Diver­si­ty and Inclu­sion, through­out the appli­ca­tion process that made a dif­fer­ence in land­ing her dream job.

“This assis­tance pro­vid­ed me with some much need­ed men­tal and emo­tion­al clar­i­ty and allowed me to per­form in my inter­view,” Asraa said. “I have always dreamed of work­ing at West­mead Hos­pi­tal because of my love for the med­ical field and the prox­im­i­ty to my home – but the fact that it came true is unbelievable.

“I am more con­fi­dent thanks to their help and am work­ing towards my goals of mak­ing my kids proud of me – my dreams have real­ly become a real­i­ty,” she concluded.

Asraa is now work­ing as a tech­ni­cal assistant/pathology col­lec­tor (phle­botomist) at NSWHP West­mead, which is based at one of the busiest hos­pi­tals in the state. She is cur­rent­ly fin­ish­ing her pathol­o­gy col­lec­tor train­ing and is work­ing in the out­pa­tients depart­ment, but she’ll soon join the rotat­ing col­lec­tions ros­ter at NSWHP’s Auburn, Black­town and Mount Druitt Hos­pi­tal col­lec­tion centres.

Col­lec­tors like Asraa are the friend­ly face of pathol­o­gy, pro­vid­ing com­pas­sion­ate and reas­sur­ing sup­port dur­ing the some­times anx­i­ety-induc­ing sam­ple col­lec­tion process.

Find all NSW Health Pathology’s cur­rent job oppor­tu­ni­ties here.

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