Working Holiday & 417/462 visas
Farm Work & 88 Days: A Resume That Gets You Picked (417/462)
Specified work is the eligible regional work — often farm and harvest jobs — that a working holiday maker completes to become eligible to apply for a second year in Australia. For thousands of people it is the price of that second year, and competition for the good jobs is real.
Good here means legitimate pay, decent hours and honest contractors. A one-page resume built around what farm employers actually care about is one of the cheapest advantages available to you.
This guide extends the Working Holiday visa resume guide into the regional and harvest lane. One honest note first: the rules about what counts toward your days are precise, vary by industry and region, and do change. Confirm them from the Department of Home Affairs. This page is about getting picked; the counting rules are theirs.
What a farm employer skims for
A grower or contractor filling a picking crew is not reading a corporate resume, and the conventions that matter in an office are irrelevant here. Five questions decide the hire.
- Will you turn up? Reliability is the entire decision. Evidence: finished seasons, completed contracts, anything you stuck at
- Can you physically do it? Outdoor work, heat, repetition. Evidence beats adjectives — sport, labouring, previous harvests, a gym habit
- When can you start and how long will you stay? Harvest windows are short. Available immediately, committed through the season (Nov–Feb) is worth more than any skill list
- Can you get there? Regional properties are not on bus routes. Your own car plus a manual licence is a genuine competitive advantage, so say it plainly
- Any bonus skills? Forklift (LF), tractor or machinery experience, licence classes, first aid — one line each
Answer all five in the top third of one page and you are ahead of most of the queue before your history is read.
The one-page farm resume
A harvest resume is a short, concrete document. Anything longer than a page signals you have misunderstood the job.
Jonas Weber · currently Bundaberg QLD · 04xx xxx xxx · jonas@email.com Fit and reliable worker on a 417 visa — completed a full zucchini season at [farm/contractor], own car (manual), available immediately for the full harvest. Work rights: 417 Working Holiday visa Licences: Driver's licence (manual) · Forklift (LF) — current Recent work: Picking & packing — cucurbits (Bundaberg, 3 months, season completed) · Warehouse hand (Berlin, 1 year)
Notice what is absent: no photo, no date of birth, no nationality line, no two-page history. Farms are informal places, but the standard Australian format never hurts you and often helps.
Season completed is the strongest phrase available on a harvest resume. Contractors lose real money on workers who quit in week two, so proof that you finished a season answers their biggest fear directly. If this is your first season, substitute the nearest true thing — completed 12-month warehouse contract, worked full summers on family farm.
Protect yourself while you earn your days
Two warnings belong in any honest guide to regional work, because the same conditions that make these jobs accessible also make them easy to exploit.
Legitimate pay only. Real employers pay award rates into your bank account and issue payslips. Arrangements paid in accommodation credit, or in cash below the minimum wage, are not just exploitation — they can leave you without the evidence your visa application needs. Losing the pay is bad; losing the year is worse.
Keep your own records as you go. Payslips, dates, employer ABNs, photos of rosters. You are the person who will need to prove your days, and reconstructing them at the end from memory is how people fall short.
On wages and entitlements, the Fair Work Ombudsman publishes the current rules and they are worth ten minutes before your first regional job. The TFN and first-job basics apply here too.
Getting the good jobs
The better regional jobs are found in different places from the worst ones, and knowing where to look is most of the advantage.
- Apply where the formal jobs are. Packing sheds, larger growers and established contractors advertise on the main job boards and hire from resumes, which is exactly where a clean page beats the crowd
- Time the region. Harvests move around the country month by month. Arriving as a region's season starts beats arriving at the tail of it, when crews are already full
- Use your network, but verify it. Hostel noticeboards and worker group chats surface jobs fast. Check any pay claim against the award before committing weeks of your life to it
When your resume answers the five farm questions on one page, you are ahead of most applicants without having done anything clever.
Want that page built in the right format in a few minutes, with a cover letter for the contractor who asks for one? The builder shows you about half of it before you pay.
Check your ticket line
Paste the lines from your resume that list your tickets — RSA, White Card, First Aid, police check, whatever you hold. Or paste the whole resume and we also check where the tickets sit. Nothing is stored.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I even need a resume for farm work in Australia?
- For a lot of picking jobs arranged through hostels or word of mouth — sometimes no. But contractors, packing sheds, larger farms and regional employers with formal hiring often ask for one, and a clean one-page resume gets you ahead of the crowd that shows up with nothing. It costs you one page to be the easy 'yes'.
- What counts toward the 88 days of specified work?
- The rules are specific: certain industries (like plant and animal cultivation, fishing, some construction) in certain postcodes, with conditions on how days are counted. They also change. Don't rely on a blog — including this one — for visa-counting rules: check the Department of Home Affairs website for the current definition before you commit to a job for visa purposes.
- What should a farm work resume emphasise?
- Physical reliability (real examples), availability and transport (your own car is a genuine advantage), any machinery or licence (forklift, manual driver's licence), and evidence you finish what you start — seasons, contracts, sports. Farm employers hire for 'will turn up at 5am in week four', not for polish.
- Should I put my visa and passport details on a farm resume?
- Work rights, yes — one line: 'Full work rights — 417 Working Holiday visa'. Passport number, date of birth, photo: no. Australian resumes leave personal identifiers off, and farm work is no exception.
- How do I make sure my 88 days actually get counted?
- Keep your own records: payslips, employer ABNs, dates worked. Paid work is what counts, and underpayment scams exist in this space — a legitimate employer pays into your bank account with payslips. If a deal smells wrong (pay 'in accommodation credit', cash below minimum wage), it can cost you both money and visa evidence.