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So RMIT, for me, got me job-ready and graduate-ready.
For instance, I'm working on the Cheese Marketing Team now at Lion.
It's really thanks to that work integrated placement at RMIT.
My motivation for taking up extracurricular activities, I think, from high school
right through to university days and still even now is just that it teaches you so much more
about the skills that you're going to need to implement in your career down the track.
Teamwork, communication skills, leadership skills, these are the sort of things that, again, you're not going to pick up in a text book.
You need to develop and implement those skills early on and practise it so that by the time you get out into the real work force
you're ready to go with it and these are the sort of skills that you're going to pick up from doing extracurricular activities.
So when I was at university one of the extracurricular activities I got involved with
was the L'Oreal Brandstorm marketing competition.
So our team won a free trip to Paris and more importantly, for us, it was pitching our idea then, when we got to Paris
against I think it was about 38 teams from across the globe.
So something like that to get involved in when you're about 20 years old is really priceless and
it's fantastic that RMIT is involved in competitions like the Microsoft Protégé and L'Oreal Brandstorm
so it's definitely a selling point and I'd highly encourage students to get involved in
real life practical business cases that are available to them.
So I think the digital skills that are needed to be successful in today's marketing environment are crucial.
So I think employers in today's world are looking for graduates to go just beyond social media,
it's not about browsing the internet, only, and knowing how to use social media;
it's about making sure you're on top of trends and using things like LinkedIn, Prezi,
seeing how you can incorporate PowerPoint into your daily work because all these things, today, are mandatory.
It's not a nice to have anymore, you really have to be on top of your game
so that in a day-to-day business environment that you know how to use those things like the back of your hand.
So students can start planning and preparing for a CV, I think, really early on.
HR recruiters are obviously looking through thousands of CVs everyday
so what is it about your two pieces of paper that's going to make you jump off the page?
So I think employers, today, are definitely looking at LinkedIn profiles before they go and recruit and hire a candidate.
Include in your LinkedIn profile any sort of experiences whether it be volunteer work or sport or extracurricular;
all that is crucial 'cause I think it speaks volumes about your personality and
tells the employer about how is this person going to fit into my organisation?
So the advice I give students to go beyond their course work in the first year or two at university and
is definitely to go about doing things that can make you employably-ready and grad-ready, I guess.
So get involved in extracurricular activities, undertake a work experience placement
whether it be a volunteer placement or a paid internship.
There are certain things that you can't learn in a textbook
and you just have to be out there in the real world to get that sort of experience.