Expat Success Stories – Michael Gavaghan

With years of experience in the hospitality industry back home in London, you could say Michael Gavaghan landed on his feet when he arrived in Sydney back in February. After travelling Queensland for a month, he now works as a venue manager for Keystone, one of the biggest hospitality groups in the country. In another instalment of our expat success stories, here, he tells us what it’s like to work in Australia’s booming industry.

The Move

I came here with the pretence that I didn’t want to get into a career or anything, to just have a bit of fun and work along the way, so I thought I’d just be a bartender or waiter. I didn’t expect to get into a managerial role or become a manager straight away.

The Job Search

I used this website called Seek. There’s a lot of hospitality recruitment and I just sent my CV off to quite a lot of venues and actually, because I had so much experience, Keystone was one of the only ones that called me back. I was applying for waiter jobs and stuff and bartender jobs, but Keystone were opening a new venue, so I started talking to them about that.

The Job

I’m managing a refurbishment at Gazebo up in Potts Point and it’s launching in early October. I came on board after a few months’ training within other venues with Keystone and just learnt how they work and to get used to the Australian market. It’s been pretty hands on; I’m seeing the magic of learning the legal side of the job and then seeing how the different licensing laws and liquor laws are really just as strict as the UK laws.

The Industry

The Australian market has grown quite quickly in a very short period of time. Within the UK, there’s always been that deciding element and the celebrity chef. Whereas in Australia, it’s a little bit more recent, so I think the high-end of the industry is quite young. There’s a lack of talent, if I’m honest. Here in Sydney, people are only just starting to take hospitality seriously now. If you look at places like Melbourne, it’s a lot more hospitality-focused. The service standards there are a bit better than what they are in Sydney, but Sydney’s coming along quite a lot.

The Keystone Family

All the Keystone venues are very different – they’ve got nightclubs and then bars and some nice dining rooms. I do go to quite a lot of them. We get key nines, so you get to eat for 50% in certain venues and certain nights of the week. It’s an encouragement to go out there and a bit of a reward as well.

Experience

I’ve been quite lucky in the sense that I found a good job when I started looking for one more or less straight away. Because of the experience that I have within the hospitality industry specifically, there’s a lot of potential out here for change in skilled managers because of the market growing so quickly. They want good, skilled managers and they can offer sponsorship for you to stay if you want to. If you get the right venue, they can give you the training, but backpackers tend to think that hospitality is something you can fall into. You do need something about you, either the personality or the skill. We can’t teach you how to sing, but some people think that they can just be a waiter. One of my friends works in banking; he came out here, got into hospitality and hated it. He was useless at it, because he thought he could do it and it would be easy. It’s harder than it looks.