This week’s event workshop was jam-packed with job readiness information from Amanda and awesome experiences from Michaela and the Rec Team and our guest speaker Ben King from Stadium Stomp and King Performance Events.
This recap will cover Amanda and Michaela’s presentations, with Ben King’s experience to follow in part 2.
In case you missed it, the recording can be found here, otherwise, I’ve recapped some key takeaways from the second workshop below.
We first heard from Amanda, the Skills and Job Centre Team (SJC) Team Leader who presented on job readiness and transferable skills to the event industry.
Resume tips, tricks and no-no’s
- Keep your resume to two pages maximum - you’re not writing an essay here! Keep it short, punchy and packed with keywords that you have pulled from the job description.
- No paragraphs! Dot points or short sentences preferred
- Consider text and font size - choose something suitable
- No borders, pictures or table. The resume scanner will not like that one bit!
Key takeaway #1: The SJC has a variety of services to help students and alum
You heard that right, the SJC is here to help past and present students, as well as friends and family with resume and cover letter development, interview techniques, assisting with employment, career counselling, workshops, and more to support you finding employment.
Key takeaway #2: We already have transferable skills that apply to events
Amanda spoke about 3 types of skills that we may have all acquired through previous work experience, but also pertain to the events industry. If applicable to you, make sure you include these skills on your resume;
- Customer Service/Problem Solving (retail, sales, call centres)
- Multi-tasking/Communication (volunteering, warehousing, hospitality)
- Organisational (admin, leadership, support roles)
Resume help
Hands up if you’ve ever had a hard time writing your resume or cover letter, or feel like something’s missing but you’re not sure what. Fear not, Amanda suggested two awesome websites that provide feedback and assess your suitability for the role based on your resume and the position description.
Where the jobs at?
- Seek
- Indeed
- Jora
- Career one
- Arts hub
- Grad connection
- Linekdin
- Australian job search
- Facebook employment groups (South east employment board)
Next up, we heard from Michaela, Manager of Student Engagement and Success on her experience navigating and adapting to a COVID-event safe schedule with the Rec Team.
The Rec Team and Michaela work on delivering all kinds of events and excursions to create a campus-life vibe for all Holmesglen students, but as soon as COVID hit, the Rec Team pressed pause on their entire scheduled program. With new information and restrictions changing daily, the goalpost for delivering live events kept changing, making adapting to the situation tedious and uncertain. COVID threw one massive spanner in the works, and it forced everyone to re-evaluate the plan moving forward.
Key takeaway #4: Pivoting to online delivery sparked some great wins but also challenges
Michaela and the Rec Team were agile and responsive to the new landscape, which enabled them to have some fantastic wins. International Nurses Day being one of the highlights, the Rec Team organised virtual ‘relax and rejuvenate’ and mindfulness sessions, as well as sending out pamper packs in the mail. This series of events for International Nurses Day promoted gratitude for the new workforce and had some fantastic engagement with students.
Another win was running virtual O-Week across the whole month. Normally, students would attend O-week on campus, only to be overloaded with information that would just be forgotten once their course started. Facilitating O-week over one month by repeating workshop sessions created more opportunities for students to engage and participate.
With the highs, also came some challenges. Michaela and the Rec Team discovered they had some new and unexpected competition. With lockdown in full force, students were spending time with friends and family or watching streaming services, rather than being engaged with events. That, compiled with screen fatigue are some challenges the Rec Team are continually working to overcome.
How do I find out about future awesome events, you ask? Well, the Rec Team continues to host a range of virtual events that will tickle everyone’s fancy, so why not join the Recreation group so you never miss another event again!
Stay tuned for recap part 2 on Ben King and his unique events!