Armed with two masters degrees and substantial work experience, Sarah* didn’t expect it would be so difficult to find work in Australia.

Forced to abandon a PhD when she fled her home country, Sarah arrived in Australia hoping to find similar work to the senior project officer role she’d left.

But she got few interviews, apart from an experience which saw her let go after an unpaid “trial period”, even when she started applying for work she was vastly overqualified for.

“I didn’t know it would be hard getting work here, but the major problem I encountered was that I was on a bridging visa and people don’t really know what a bridging visa was,” she says.

Australia’s visa system is complicated at the best of times. For many employers looking to hire, understanding the various work rights and time periods of different refugee and asylum seeker visas proves too difficult.

Since 2011 around 78,000 people have been given refugee status in Australia but around 30,000 are still under assessment.

There are a variety of visas they could be on, including bridging visas, temporary protection visas, safe haven enterprise visas and a range of permanent visas. Recent changes in legislation and policy taking away or changing peoples’ entitlements on the visas has only added to the confusion.

But a guide for employers, created by Deakin University’s Centre for Refugee Employment, Advocacy, Training and Education (Create) is seeking to change that, helping employers understand the rights attached to each visa and the benefits and complications in hiring someone with a refugee background.

The 10-page information booklet is the result of a study by Deakin, Monash and Australian National universities into why some organisations actively hire people from refugee backgrounds and others won’t.

Prof Alex Newman, Create director and associate dean at Deakin’s faculty of business and law, says the centre’s research drew from its engagement with Career Seekers – an employment program which assisted with the guide’s development – and interviews with human resource managers across 23 organisations.

“Many organisations assume hiring refugees is fraught with challenges and barriers, when, in fact, the large majority of people from a refugee and asylum seeker background are entitled to work in Australia,” says Newman.

“A lot of them just didn’t have a clue really about who they could hire, so that was a big issue,” he says.

Sarah volunteered and got some assistance from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre but she found it difficult having to re-explain her visa and circumstances to various case workers.

Sarah says she was fortunate in that her class of bridging visa, with its entitlements and rights, put her “ahead” of others, but few employers understood the differences.

“One copywriting position was very keen to have me but they said they didn’t know much about it,” she says.

“Others think [a bridging visa] can be revoked overnight and you can be detained straight away … and they think maybe they would get into trouble by hiring you.”

Guardian Australia has previously interviewed refugees on Bridging Visa Es, which last only six months but frequently roll over, who struggled to find employers willing to take them on.

The guide also outlines the benefits of hiring someone from a refugee background, including documented high loyalty and lower turnover rates than the general population.

When Waseem Abouna, who has a degree in mathematics and experience with a large Middle Eastern company, was looking for work he kept coming up against the same issues – employers wanted local experience and local networks.

Through Career Seekers he found a paid internship with Konica Minolta which turned into a full-time job.

“Many refugees come and have the same professional work, they have experiences and degrees,” says Abouna.

“Employers should trust them. They know about hard work. They have experience and knowledge. They should give them a chance.”

Many employers Create has worked with have taken conservative approaches, perhaps hiring one person on a short-term contract, and then gone on to hire several more.

“It’s about getting to know people and understanding that you can employee people who benefit the organisation and who bring a diversity of culture and perspectives,” he says.

“We hope this guide can highlight practical steps that any Australian organisation can take to employ those recently arrived in Australia, either as humanitarian migrants or those who have sought asylum on our shores.”

*Name has been changed to protect her identity