The ABS team understands the values of relationships with stakeholders, and the importance of networking. This was validated to our 2nd and 3rd year cohorts of students by encouraging them to attend our two excursions held in Semester 1, 2018.
The first one was to “Professional Advantage” an IT company based in North Sydney (https://www.pa.com.au). Run by Avondale Alumni Derek Rippingale, the firm gave their time to give students a tour of the three story building, and the opportunity to talk to staff about their career journey, and how many of them literally fell into positions due to people they knew or networks like “LinkedIn”.
Students were then given the opportunity to reflect on the importance of CVs, and some even put their own CVs up for analysis by the group to seek improvement. The lesson here was if you only had 10 seconds to review a CV, what would you really see? They were then briefed on the importance of choosing the right staff with the right cultural fit. They also directed students to their blog for further information https://blog.pa.com.au/business-intelligence/power-bi-to-the-people/. Feedback from the day was overall that students enjoyed visiting a real life business, talking to real employees and finding out how to improve their CVs to get past the 10 second rule.
Figure 1: Professional Advantage:
The second excursion was two fold, firstly it involved a tour of the Palmdale Group (https://www.palmdalegroup.com.au/) facility at Ourimbah, including the grounds, the Chapels and the crematorium. Students were given the opportunity to ask staff questions regarding the industry, potential growth, challenges that lie ahead and were treated to morning tea in the new café, an identified growth area of the business. Part 2 of the excursion was a visit to Life Health Foods, (https://www.lhf.net.au/) where the CEO Dean Epps gave a presentation of the growth of the firm over its 3 years since its inception. Students were then given a tour of the factory, and were given a taste of the products along with a presentation done by marketing in terms of future growth within the plant based food industry.
Figure 2: Life Health Foods:
Students enjoyed the variety of businesses that they visited and especially the behind the scenes tours. Some students were interested in potential internship programs offered by the businesses, in the hope they would gain some real world job experience before they graduate.
Finally the Life Health Foods HR manager gave a talk on the importance of engagement on your resume, showing that by going above and beyond the norm, will put you in front of other graduates, thereby confirming stakeholder engagement and networking can help students in their quest of the importance of being earners.
Another enriching student experience provided by Avondale Business School.