Training & Careers

It all STEMs from Jaguar Land Rover’s support

DRIVING ENTHUSIASM for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) study, Jaguar Land Rover Australia is supporting two teams of Australian students competing in the Land Rover 4x4 in Schools World Final, being staged in Coventry, England, in July.

The design and engineering automotive leader has also been backing the Australia-wide F1 in Schools program in a move to stimulate high school students into seeking careers in related fields. The sponsorship aims to increase the pool of talent that will seek STEM-related careers, including in the automotive industries. 

Wombat Warriors from Pine Rivers State High School in Queensland will compete alongside fellow Australian team Zircon from Dubbo College Senior Campus, at the upcoming 2016 World Finals of the Land Rover 4x4 in Schools Technology Challenge.

The Land Rover 4x4 in Schools Technology Challenge is run in Australia by Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd with its major sponsor Jaguar Land Rover.

Both teams contain six of each school’s finest minds,” a Jaguar Land Rover spokesman said. “They are required to build a 4x4 remote controlled vehicle within a tight set of design constraints.

“The competition is focused on the practical application of the skills the students learn in school. The students are required to meet regulations and deadlines, work as a team, innovate, interact with industry as part of stakeholder engagement and collaboration, constantly up-skilling in areas where expertise is needed.

“The students take part in the Land Rover 4x4 in Schools Technology Challenge because they love what they do. They may all have different skill sets, different interests, and different ideas – but 4x4 in Schools has pulled them together into a functional, well-oiled machine.”

www.rea.org.au

www.jaguarlandrover.com

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E is for entertainment in e-Learning

AN E-LEARNING ‘quantum shift’ is being engineered in Brisbane by combining a 15 year old e‐learning company, a state of the art global content studio and an exclusive partnership with the Australian Institute of Management (AIM).

AIM is openly calling this collaborative company “a 21st century e‐learning powerhouse”. The e‐Learning Company. 

Brisbane based, The e‐Learning Company – currently operating in the $3 million realm, has just launched its new look and services after 15 years of trading and has announced lucrative new partnerships, which the business leadership believes, will double its turnover to $6 million by the end of next year.

The new e-Learning Company has just announced it will be taking its services to the next level thanks to its partnership with the renowned visual production company, the Cutting Edge Group, as well the Australian Institute of Management.

The e-Learning Company’s new general manager, Jason Aspinall, said, “Never have we seen a content creator join forces with an e-learning business. It would appear that big things are set for the e-learning industry.”

He said this approach would give The e‐Learning Company the capability to take its services international, using the Cutting Edge footprint already established in Asia. With the Asian e‐learning industry worth an estimated $18 billion by 2018, it is worth dabbling in. The sights are not limited to Asia, with a strong desire to conquer the US on the radar too.

Cutting Edge Group director, Matt Lawson called it an unprecedented partnership.

“The e‐Learning Company has positioned itself within the fragmented market that currently exists, as the only e‐learning business to sit within a creative production company who work alongside Hollywood studios and have access to animators, creative directors, editing suits and audio suites – it is something no one in the e‐learning space has seen before,” Mr Lawson said.

““Imagine a company aimed at resolving organisational issues through e‐learning with amazing and engaging graphics and creative concepts which wouldn’t be out of place in a Hollywood movie ‐ that right there is the future of engaging e‐learning for all employees.

“When it comes to creating e-learning that genuinely changes employee behaviour and helps people to get better at their jobs, it means creating something that will connect with people. Having access to the best creatives in the country means we can create those experiences like no other organisation.”

 

The e‐Learning company is already working with Australian powerhouses, including The Coffee Club and G8 Education, helping them take their businesses to the next level through tailored staff training and development services.

The partnership with AIM motivated The e‐Learning Company to help registered training organisations take their face‐to‐face training into a blended learning environment, enabling the training programs to be completed at a convenient time that best suites the learner.

Analysing, designing, developing and deploying compelling courseware is what The e‐Learning Company aims to deliver and this is done through a three part offering; consulting, courseware and learning management systems. This hybrid ensures each unique company is receiving a fully customised program to challenge their workforce in a way that teaches and changes behaviour.

“We are incredibly passionate about challenging behaviours and inspiring a change in our clients. It’s not about creating training, it’s about creating change,” Mr Aspinall said.

“We are the best at working with businesses to find solutions to their training needs that will ultimately lead to better behaviour, lower costs, and ensuring their teams have a greater impact on the business’ success.”

Currently housing 25 staff in its Brisbane headquarters and already experiencing the need to expand the in‐house team of specialists by five within the first month, The e‐Learning Company has established the most talented and dedicated teams imaginable with a strong emphasis on client’s individual needs and a solution focused approach.

Within its past 15 years of business, The e‐Learning Company has gained credibility through successfully winning 15 LearnX and iDesignX awards, recognising and promoting the best talent across the world of learning. These awards demonstrate the triumph of talent The e‐Learning Company holds within the industry.

“I’m so excited to be joining such a force in the industry and be part of a major shift in the future of e‐learning and what that will bring to Australian businesses as well as overseas,” Mr Aspinall said.

www.elearningco.com.au

 

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Onboarding? Leaders put their ICT heads together

TWO of Australia’s most successful HR and recruitment software companies – Expr3ss! and HROnboard – have are collaborating to improve applicant selection and the employee onboarding experience.

It is an unusual partnership – and one rarely witnessed in the competitive HR technology space – in which each company’s strengths are utilised to improve outcomes for their clients. 

Over the past two years, both companies have had rapid growth and will now combine to offer each other’s cloud-based solutions as a strategy for continued expansion.

“Companies that use Expr3ss! are slashing staff turnover rates to low single digits and making much smarter hiring decisions,” Expr3ss! co-founder and chairman Glyn Brokensha said.

“Sadly, resumes have no correlation with the way people actually perform in the workplace, and it’s the same with interviews as well. To address that problem, Expr3ss! has all job applicants complete their proprietary online survey, proven in the field to be highly predictive of success in role,” Dr Brokensha said.

“Using an expert system algorithm, each applicant’s responses are analysed against benchmarks developed from the company’s own successful employees. This quickly determines whether they have the best skills, attitudes and cultural fit for the company.

“As a result, hiring managers can quickly identify which applicants will be suitable long before reading a CV.  Also, the software automates the scheduling of interviews, posts the job ads across a range of job boards, cuts time spent on recruitment tasks by as much as 50 per cent and reduces recruitment costs,” Dr Brokensha said.

According to HROnboard founer and CEO, Peter Forbes, once the right talent is secured, the applicant experience through to day-one of employment is critical and plays an important part of building the organisation’s employer brand.

This is where HROnboard helps its clients, working with companies that typically conduct more than 50 ‘onboards’ a year across a range of industry sectors, Mr Forbes said.

“Our customers are very focussed on creating and maintaining a good employer brand,” he said. “Demonstrating that brand to new employees is often one of the reasons why they adopt HROnboard to welcome them to the workplace. The partnership with Expr3ss! gives our customers a fantastic tool for selecting candidates based on cultural fit. 

"More and more we’re seeing organisations adopt best-of-breed, pure play HR solutions so they can give employees the best experience. Because we’re exclusively focused on employee onboarding and offboarding, having an awesome recruitment provider like Expr3ss!, means we can help our customers from candidate selection right through to the new hire's first day.”

Roy Hill, an iron ore mining company in Western Australia, is a customer on the record as “impressed” with the amount of time it has saved automating its recruitment and onboarding processes.

“We saved eight days of labour, with eight people sitting in a room,” Roy Hill HRIS specialist in remuneration and benefits, Christo Visser said. “That’s 64 days of effort saved. That is over and above the investment we’ve made. We’ve already made our money back.”

Mr Brokensha said, “The collaboration between Expr3ss! and HROnboard gives customers access to a fully integrated recruitment and onboarding process, with tools to find the right candidates for their culture and integrate them into the organisation with a streamlined, engaging onboarding process.”

www.expr3ss.com.au

www.hronboard.me

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ABC launches 2016 Women in Broadcast Technology scholarships

ACKNOWLEDGING the International Women’s Day #PledgeForParity, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has launched the 2016 Women in Broadcast Technology (WIBT) scholarships.

ABS deputy director of technology, Margaret Cassidy said the scholarships aimed to attract the best talent and provide greater opportunities in a technical workplace. The ABC is offering eight women across Australia studying a technology-related discipline “an invaluable hands-on opportunity to experience the fast paced and rapidly evolving broadcast media environment”. 

ABC Technology employs technologists based in all eight states and territory capital cities and provides scholarship opportunities’ at all of these locations.

The unique scholarship opportunity includes a $1000 book allowance and four weeks paid work experience alongside leading technical engineers at the ABC.

“As well as ambition and a passion for the industry, the other essential pre-requisite we’re looking for is that our female applicants are currently enrolled in an electrical or communications engineering, electro-technology or computer systems/shared technology related course at TAFE, university or registered training organisations,” Ms Cassidy said.

“Women are under-represented in technology teams across Australia. As an equal opportunity employer, the ABC aspires to nurture a diverse and people-focused culture.”

Ms Cassidy commended the #PledgeforParity movement on social media, “whether it be to help women and girls achieve their ambitions, call for gender-balanced leadership, respect and value difference, develop more inclusive and flexible cultures or root out workplace bias”.

Entries for the 2013 Women in Broadcast Technology Scholarships close on May 6, 2016.

Twitter:  #WIBT2016 and updates @ABCWIBT.

abc.net.au/careers

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HealthcareLink innovates medical recruitment

AUSTRALIA’s  first onlinehealthcare recruitment platform,Healthcarelink.com.au, is experiencing rapid growth in the number of jobseekers and employers joining its platform over the past year.

HealthcareLink’s founder and CEO, Kopi Nadarajah said the platform had attracted more than 7000 healthcare and medical professionals searching for jobs, with over 3600 registering since September 2014. 

He said the niche online job platform is the first of its kind in Australia, allowing healthcare jobseekers to create online profiles, apply for jobs and even be headhunted by employers.

“We’re ecstatic about how both employers and jobseekers in the industry have responded to our service,” Mr Nadarajah said.

“Employers have more choice as to how they want to look for and hire new staff, and healthcare professionals know they can find the most number of healthcare jobs on our platform.”

Employers seem equally attracted to HealthcareLink’s open and transparent approach to medical recruitment, enjoying the simple and direct approach to posting jobs and searching for suitable candidates using the platform’s unique search functionality. There are more than 1300 employers on the platform, with more than 1200 since September 2014.

According to a report from professional services firm McKinsey & Company, online job platforms are set to deliver up to $28 billion to the Australia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2025.

HealthcareLink’s Mr  said with this increasing support for its open approach to recruitment, HealthcareLink has brought out an innovative new service to its platform called ‘Referral Rewards’.

New to the healthcare and medical industry, HealthcareLink’s Referral Rewards service aims to give employers increased choice in how they find the best suitable candidates. Employers agree on a price with HealthcareLink and can request the entire HealthcareLink network to refer suitable potential candidates. If selected, the referrer is rewarded with the agreed amount.

“Referral rewards is offered in a number of other industries, so why should healthcare lag behind?” Mr Nadarajah said. “Vacancies in Australian healthcare affects the whole community, and that’s what HealthcareLink is about – increasing the efficiency in filling vital gaps in our community.”

www.healthcarelink.com.au

 

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Qld construction charts new training course

CONSTRUCTION Skills Queensland (CSQ) has initiated a new training plan to help counter the recent construction cycle downturn and prepare for the next major upturn.

CSQ has released its 2015-2016 Annual Training Plan, with CEO Brett Schimming outlining a targeted strategy “to help the industry adapt to a complex and changing landscape” by focusing on regional support. 

Mr Schimming said the cyclical nature of the construction industry was nothing new, which is why CSQ will invest more than $33.5 million in training and skilling initiatives to assist Queensland’s building and construction career seekers, apprentices, workers and employers over the next 12 months.

“Currently we are seeing a reduction in the engineering construction sector, which has been offset partially by some growth in the residential sector,” Mr Schimming said.

“Construction continues to be a significant industry contributor to state growth in Queensland so it’s vital that we invest in training and build a skilled workforce capable of delivering the projects of the future.”

Mr Schimming said skilling and workforce development required a regional focus.

“We’re now focusing on the regions in a much more precise way, with workforce analysis and planning building a clear picture of the occupations that will be strategically important in the future.

“CSQ recognises that workforce trends vary considerably across the state, so we have developed detailed regional plans to help us carefully target our skilling programs and investment.

In addition to changes in workforce demand, Mr Schimming said new technologies were starting to have an impact on the industry. 

“We now have 3D printers, ‘cool bricks’ and increasingly sophisticated building software. New technology is enhancing project collaboration and we are designing better and building faster,” he said.

“There has also been a rapid increase in the number of buildings and dwellings using pre-fabricated components. We are straddling a technology gap, at one end of the spectrum we have a generation who have never been without a mobile phone, and at the other are those who never even touch a computer.

“This highlights how important it is to keep training and skilling throughout your career. You have to keep up to date with the changes. There will definitely be an increasing demand for specialist knowledge in the future.”

CSQ is also offering offers funding for a number of short courses which can help workers in the industry to upskill.

www.csq.org.au

 

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Southern Cross Uni ‘connects’ with Huawei

 

 

CHINESE technology giant Huawei, in partnership with Southern Cross University (SCU), hosted the ‘Building a Better Connected Education’ themed 2015 Education Summit at the Gold Coast on September 3 and 4.

The event presented a key discussion forum addressing the trends and challenges shaping the future of education in the digital age.

More than 150 people attended the summit including section leaders from the Queensland Department of Education and Training, International Data Corporation (IDC) industry analysts, senior representatives of Huawei’s partners and customers from the education industry such as Peking University and Blackboard, along with international experts and academics specialising in digital education.

SCU vice chancellor Peter Lee said re-inventing its digital networking facilities and systems, with input from Huawei, was helping to transform the university’s capabilities.

“SCU is a multi-campus institution,” Professor Lee said. “We had a need to update our network facilities to meet the expectations of students, including the use of mobile devices on campus, as well as the capacity to video-conference across our campuses.

“With Huawei, SCU will build an agile and reliable network to provide teachers and students with network access anytime and anywhere. High-speed internet connectivity and data transmission will also enhance daily operations and management.

“The advanced network infrastructure will be an essential part of driving the future development of SCU.”

“Information technology is transforming the way we teach, learn and administer in the education world,” Huawei Enterprise Business Group vice president Dong Wu said.

“At Huawei, we are committed to collaborating with customers and partners in the industry to develop the intelligent, agile and innovative ICT architecture needed to create better connected education.”

Massimiliano Claps, the head of government, healthcare and education research at IDC Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), said, “Traditional teaching and learning approaches are being replaced by hybrid and diverse learning methods where students are at the centre of the learning process.

“Teachers are no longer just lecturers and learning is no longer confined to classrooms. With digital transformation, personalised online learning is gaining greater momentum.”

Huawei South Pacific ICT solutions marketing director Sue Bryan said, “Huawei’s smart campus solution is designed to integrate a variety of education resources on campuses through an agile network that can be easily customised to cater for different needs.

“The solution allows customers to improve the reliability and stability of their information systems and mitigate network operation and maintenance pressure – and by extension costs – by leveraging virtualisation management.

“We expect these ICT technologies to drastically improve learning efficiency and to help drive the transformation of the whole industry.”

Ms Bryant said Huawei was committed to working with partners and customers to provide primary education institutions, universities and vocational schools with innovative ICT solutions, “including agile campus, education cloud and smart classroom products and services”.

Key institutions using Huawei ICT solutions include Imperial College London, Newcastle University (UK), Peking University, Tsinghua University, Southern Cross University and Northern Michigan University.

www.huawei.com

 

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