We are proud to announce the Winners of the Graduation Competition. Thank you to all our graduates that have submitted many wonderful, inspiring and creative entries. We will post all the entries (one per week) on our OTEN blog http://flexiblelearning.tumblr.com/

The winning entries are from the following graduates

1st Prize - Leonie Moss (iPad 2 Wifi 16GB, retail value $526)

2^nd Prize - Belinda Thurtell (iPod Touch 8GB, retail value $199)

3^rd Prize - Jasmine Wilson (MiGEAR e-book reader 2GB internal memory, retail value $72)

OTEN Award - Most Outstanding SEEK Learning Student

Sarah Oquist receiving the Jim Shaw Award for Most Outstanding SEEK Learning student from Tony Barrett, General Manager, SEEK Learning. 
I am really honoured to have received the Jim Shaw Award.

My name is Sarah Oquist and I have graduated with a Diploma of Human Resources in 2011.

What an honour it is to represent all the students here tonight and make the address. When I received and opened that first package from OTEN, I thought to myself - what am I doing? It was 7pm. I could hear the loud noises of my husband putting the kids to bed. I was tired (as usual),  had a part-time job to manage, a get back into shape fitness regime,  family responsibilities,  my oldest daughter wasn’t even 2 ½ and my son had just turned 1.

sooooooo

I left that package right where it was for a while and it took a bit of courage and a few weeks before I could look at it again!

The reason that I took this course was that having worked in a standalone Human Resources job for a long period of time, I wasn’t comfortable with the breadth of my knowledge in my area of expertise and wanted to round out my skills in order to have the confidence to look for another job.

For the next year or so I, I picked up the books at 8pm most nights, that was after a long day with work and the kids.  Through the fog of tiredness I really started to enjoy it, I found myself absorbed in the material and was making great progress.

The study was only interrupted by the many calls that I needed to make to the “help desk” and I was very thankful for all the great advice that I got about the texts and assignments.   I didn’t even feel embarrassed when I felt I was asking the “dumb questions” because the teachers always put me at ease.

The next big step for me was looking for a new job. It was tough because I was looking for something part-time so I could still spend time with my kids and my long suffering husband who had been alone most nights for the last year!

In October 2010, I secured a new job and was so happy to be able to put into practice what I had learned from my course.

With the new job, I had to put my studies aside for a few months, one last subject to go, I completed it early in 2011.

What I got from study that I hadn’t expected was a reinvigoration for learning. It has been a while since I had done formal study (and the last time I had a bad experience so I was quite hesitant). I had a great sense of satisfaction from increasing my knowledge and now I am looking at embarking on my Masters (but don’t tell my husband!).

A huge congratulations to all the students here who I am sure all have stories to tell of how they came to be here, the challenges of distance learning, juggling all sorts of responsibilities. I think I speak for us all to say we are all proud to be recognised for our hard work.

Last but not least, a huge thank you to the staff who supported us all on our journeys to get here. They face the challenges of not knowing who it is at the end of the phone line but supported us always and to those that put together this night, thank you.

OTEN/Rotary Career Interview Series - Health Services

Background

My career journey commenced after I finished my High school Certificate and I decided that I really wanted to get into Education. So I did Adult Education at UTS and then I also had additional interest along the way, for group work.

That was one of the modules that I studied and so I enrolled at the institute of group leaders and did training in that particular field.

Along the path, I have worked in Community Health for about 25 years, always considering Education as I dealt with particular popularities and learnt more and was able to go into a little more deeper level of learning and understanding.

I then branched out and worked away from the department of health and worked in private industry, worked with Doctors and the Medical field and also training.

I started doing training in areas relevant to practiced staff and then I went on to the area of Mental Health and this is where I found my niche in that area.

I am the coordinator in the Mental Heath training unit, so I am actually building the unit.

In order to do this I had to have an understanding in the Mental Health sector and be able to work and build partnerships with existing training providers so that we could complement each other and work together. Thereby being able to offer an even wider range of topics. So now I also train. I train suicide intervention and where necessary, cause I do have the TAAE as well, so I am able to do  training competency based training too.

Current Industry Context

Working in the area of Education, particularly in the field of MENTAL HEALTH, HAS CHANGED VASTLY OVER THE LAST 15 YEARS.

There is an increasingly awareness of the need for training in Mental Health and an understanding of the newer concepts, such as recovery, which has come into the context as well.

So that’s an expanding area, where people who choose to work in that area will able to be used widely as the government decides to expand and have projects that have programmes that are devoted to both the careers of Mental illness and also the Mental Health system.

SO THERE’S A LOT OF OPPORTUNITY IN THE AREA OF MENTAL HEALTH AND ESPECIALLY IN TRAINING.

Industry Advice and Tips

The area of Community Services and in particular Mental Health, is a expanding area and a growing area.

I believe anyone who enters this area needs to consider, if they have a feel for it, YOU DEFIANTLY DON’T GO INTO IT FOR THE FINANCIAL GAINS, BUT THERE IS A LOT OF SATISFACTION FROM IT. But also because it is an expanding field, there’s a need for newly skilled people. So I think that you’re a relatively new field and that you need to realise that you will have an opportunity to take your own personal skills and build on them.

Me, I think you need to be prepared to continue your own Professional Development, as I referred to before, I always continue to learn, but there’s a lot available now through social media.

So you don’t just have to rely on the set text in a particular course.

If you’re adventurous enough and interested enough and passionate enough in the field of providing information for people, of training them or working with them as a disadvantaged population, you’ll find that you can obtain a lot of information which will take you to areas that will probably be restricted to, if you stayed within the course content.

So my advice to new people going into this field, especially Community Services, is to ALWAYS CONTINUE TO LEARN, TO ALWAYS HAVE GOOD SUPERVISION.

No matter, because you are a human being, you’re in a field that’s a caring field, it’s important that you gauge and PROTECT YOURSELF FROM AN AREA OF BURNOUT and that you’re able to manage your own stress.

It would be quite hypocritical to be working in Mental Health for your own mental Health to be compromised.

So I think any worker in Community Services needs to protect themselves and to be aware of re traumatising themselves by hearing stories or are thinking of people in a negative way.

Also, it’s important that they continue to network.

By continuing their studies, you’ll be able to link up with other people and then you’ve got mentors who have got the potential to network with people who can answer the areas that you won’t always be able to answer. To draw on and enrich the work that you do and prepare yourself and to meet the challenges that you will meet in the Community Sector.

Networking

I’ve already mentioned that it’s important to network with people who work within in related fields and as an individual I joined Rotary, not because I had a lot of spare time, I can assure you, but I hope that it might be an outlet to use my own skills in my own community and I, because I do train in suicide intervention, I actually believe I will have the opportunity to go beyond my own community to the whole of Australia and to gain the support of people who are like minded and who want to link into the community.

In saying that, there are other, may other opportunities that you can link in with similar networks, LINKEDIN is one of the – is an example in particular, in mywork place, that I use to find people who have additional information and can also build opportunities for expanding in the area that I choose to work in.

View Video http://ow.ly/7AZJC 

Industry Expert - OTEN/Rotary Career Interview Series - Electrical Contracting

Background

I started my apprenticeship with a company my father worked for, he was an electro mechanic and I used to do a little bit of weekend work with him and I rather enjoyed the work.

So I completed my apprenticeship and the TAFE course.

I was seconded to go over to Tasmania for a small period of time.‘Came back, worked for the company again.’

I then moved on to Wormald’s – which was doing fire alarms, as a supervisor and after that I decided I would like to start up my own electrical contracting business, which I‘ve  now done and have been doing for the last 35 years or so.

 

Current Industry Context

CURRENT INDUSTRY IS CHARGING AHEAD. There’s a lot of different sort of work out there now. More computerised, but until they can get away without any hard wiring, I’ve always got a job.

Industry Advice And Tips

If you’re going to enter the industry today I believe the best thing is to DO ADDITIONAL COURSES if you can. ‘especially in the electronic side of it. Maybe the alarm side and specialising in something like that.

And if you are going to to an apprenticeship with a company, I’d try and GET AN APPRENTICESHIP WITH A COMPANY THAT DOES A VARIED STYLE OF WORK, not just the one style of work.

Networking

I was well known in the Strathfield area, doing my electrical contracting, but I felt that it would be something that I could do to give back to the community, so I joined Rotary.

I knew a lot of people in Rotary, but having known them, THEY HAVE CONTACTS THAT HAVE CONTACTS, that have contacts. So I believed that it’s a good thing to get to know as many people as you can.
View video http://ow.ly/7tCot

Industry Expert - OTEN/Rotary Career Interview Series - Building Construction

 

BACKGROUND & CAREER

I’m a structural engineer by training, I finished – I finished training at Sydney University in the 70’s, but I joined a specialist contracting company soon after that and worked in that and a few years later I started my own construction company.

In the same business, which was Post Tension, and I ran that business for some years by myself and then subsequently gained a friend’s sharehold and all together I ran that business for 30 years. It was probably the second largest Post Tension company in Australia, when I left the company.

CURRENT INDUSTRY CONTEXT

The industry at the moment, we are talking about 2011, is in an interesting state, for a number of reasons.

One is there has been a

GREAT DEAL OF CONSOLIDATION AT THE TOP END and you will all of heard of companies such as leighton's and Teece and Hollands and companies of that size and type.

They’re essentially now totally overseas owned, so at the top end of the market – the construction market, not so much the building market – that is entirely overseas owned and it operates very much on a sub contract basis and basically those companies, those large companies are essentially construction managers and they employ sub contract companies to do the physical work.

Much the same applies in the building industry, except that there are a larger amount of companies and by and large they’re not  foreign owned.

At the moment there is a shortage of availability of funds for infra-structure. The commercial office building market is, at the moment, fairly quiet, but the building market for the units is fairly strong.

I think that will continue, there's population growth and I think there is further consolidation of the market. People are moving back into the cities, because of travel times and costs and consequently they are, they’re  more interested in buying units and town houses and the like than before and so that, I think, will be the direction in which, at least the residential industry heads, there’ll still be expansion into the suburbs, but I think this will be inevertably slow.

Of course the other thing that will cause residential building to move ahead is de-centralisation, for instance I’ve been in Goulburn recently, I've been to Orange recently and both cities are growing quite quickly in terms of population and in residential expansion of normal residential homes, so, that’s (ahh) – that’s probably where, for the present at least, the future lies in that form of construction.

INDUSTRY ADVICE & TIPS

You have a number of choices.

You can join a, let’s say a home builder and do whatever they require of you.

You can join one of the larger companies and with the prospect of at least starting off, on sites and then perhaps moving on to a project management role and then perhaps a management role.

I think from my experience theBEST SINGLE TIP I COULD GIVE YOU, if anyone’s studying building or engineering or a similar disapline, is at some stage to also, and this is very important, ALSO STUDY MANAGEMENT OR COMMERCE OR BUSINESS.
That type of rounded training will give you a much better propects for the future in terms of job promotion and job satisfaction – I think, because you know you come to a stage in your life where you don’t want to be on sites any more, or you want to be doing other things and that, that educational background, whether you do it straight after what you do here or whether you do it subsequently, is still going to be very valuable to you and, as a sideline, it will increase your salary prospects significantly, so that’s my tip.

NETWORKING

I would consider networking as probably your single most effective way of staying within the full knowledge of the industry that you’re in.

In other words, keeping up with the latest developments and trends and so on.

But also in looking for new opportunities, if that’s what you are – are doing at the time.

MOST GOOD POSITIONS, REALLY THESE DAYS COME UP THROUGH NETWORKING, rather than advertising or, other than of course, internal promotion.

So networking’s a very valuable tool, apart from what ever social benefits it delivers to you.

Rotary is an organisation which is primarly aimed at doing good things in the community and helping people raising some funds for various charities, some charitable initiatives as well and is a network of it’s own, but strickly speaking, Rotary is not a business network. It is a group of people with a common goal of doing good things within society.

It used to have more of a commercial edge, but of course people join Rotaries – there would be a Real estate agent, or a doctor or whatever, joining and they were all from an area and they worked together.

There is still a large element of that, and if you feel you want to do good things within the community, help others, then I think Rotary is an excellent organisation to join and be a part of.

You can become a part of it to whatever degree you like. You can spend as much or as little time doing things with it as you like, but it’s certainly a way of giving back something to the community.
View the video http://ow.ly/7m9yq

Industry Expert - OTEN/Rotary Career Interview Series - Real Estate

BACK GROUND & CAREER

When I first left school it was important to me to start working, there was a lot of unemployment around at the time and I decided I would work in the public service.

So I took a role at the water board and was there for about 4 years.

During the time I was there I had started studying the Real-estate course at TAFE.

Like a lot of people, a lot of people get attracted to the real-estate industry because they  had relatives or friends that were involved in it and it looks good.

That’s what I thought; I had an uncle who was doing it at the time. He was successful; I thought I’d get started in that.

So I did the TAFE course. One day I just sat down and started phoning real-estate offices until I got some interviews and I started working for the industry in 1981.

I worked for  a couple of different employers for about 3 or 4 years and then the opportunity came up to run my own office. Which I took and have run with it since then.

TIPS AND ADVICE

One of the things I have found within the industry now and the time that I’ve been involved in it, is that PERSISTENCE and RESILIENCE are 2 of the strongest traits in a successful real-estate agent.

When you commence looking for work you might come up against a lot of knock backs, it may be difficult for you to find work within the industry, but believe me, you’re going to get the same knockbacks time and time again, maybe day after day, once you’re in there and the most successful agents in the real-estate industry are those that have persistence and resilience to come back from what they see as success one day, seeming like failure the next day. THE ABILITY TO GET UP AND KEEP GOING. You also need to embrace technology.

Lastly, but by no means less important, DON’T GO IN HALF HEARTEDLY.

If you are going to commence a career in real-estate – go into it as a career and (ahh) get stuck into it right from the beginning. Put all your efforts into it and it will pay off.

VALUE OF NETWORKING

Like all industries that you may be involved in, networking is very important.

The age old saying – IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW, IT’S WHO YOU KNOW.

It’s extremely important within the real-estate industry.

Often it comes from conversation with somebody you know with either Rotary or down the road, or whatever community venue you are attending at the time, who just happens to mention “Oh hey – could you come and see me on Monday, I’m thinking of selling my house?”

So networking is all important and in Rotary it is a Community Service group.

You don’t necessary join Rotary simply for networking, but it is a bi product of people who often become good friends. Networking becomes natural and business flows from that.

The same way iT does out in the community organisations, through schools and through your involvement in just the general running of the suburb that you’re within.
View the video http://ow.ly/7eZCx

Are you thinking about a Career Change or Transition? Webinar Recording

Are you wondering about managing career change or transitions?
Thinking you might have made some mistakes in managing your career previously?
Our Career Development team here at OTEN kindly presented an online session just for our OTEN LinkedIn community on this topic on August 3rd 2011. If you can spare 30mins then you can play the recording https://webconf.det.nsw.edu.au/p92435276/ to discover some good tips and strategies.

Some of the topics include:
• Career decision making factors to consider
• Knowing and finding ‘reliable’ web information
• Where to get more personal help

You can download the Powerpoint presentation at http://ow.ly/d/ivd