Key Aspects of Career Development 2023 Event Recap
Our October networking events focused on Key Aspects of Career Development with our speakers sharing practical examples on how you can secure your first role, decide if you should undertake advanced studies and how best to position yourself to secure promotions, access capacity-building opportunities and develop a rewarding career.
Young Australians are compassionate global citizens who want to share in developing and implementing dynamic solutions to global poverty. However, the aid, development and humanitarian sector is small and very competitive as projects and programs are increasingly being delivered by local development practitioners residing in-country. It is consequently becoming harder to secure a first role and develop a career.
Our speakers were professionals working in the sector and in academia, and they shared an array of unique insights, tips and ideas.
Events were held in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra with Brisbane joining online. Here is a short recap from Melbourne!
Melbourne
Our October WiAD event in Melbourne unfolded as an enjoyable evening of conversation, and discussion, with an impressive, if not very different, span of experience between our three speakers.
Bardie Barclay-Sutton and Tricia Malowney OAM were the two invited guests, bringing a vast amount of experience from all areas of the development workforce, which lent itself brilliantly to the topic of ‘Key Aspects of Career Development’ and they were very well received by the 10-12 gathered in the upstairs lounge at the OXFAM offices.
The third contributor was our own WiAD facilitator, Jill Scanlon, who was also asked to discuss learnings from her experiences, having volunteered and worked in the field, as well as from an academic perspective, now teaching about International and Community Development from both a theoretical perspective and a practical one.
Learning about Tricia and Bardie’s different pathways in their work lives was enlightening, often amusing, and drew much discussion over the latter part of the evening. Aspects which emerged, and were perhaps unanticipated, were the importance of the craft of storytelling when networking – getting your message across briefly, succinctly but purposefully. The oft-repeated advice, especially to women, was to take opportunities when they arise and try to ignore the urge for retaining comfort zones, underlining the reason we should all occasionally step out of them. One keen discussion point raised by Tricia was about recognising the positives around intersectionality and how to use those to your benefit as well as to prod a bit of awareness raising in others.
The evening again succumbed to the pressure of the clock and a long and interesting evening of stories, discussion, questions, advice and more, ended with many thanks to the guests and to those who attended, many of whom may have left with some new thoughts or plans around possibilities that lay ahead in their career pathways.
Jill Scanlon - WiAD Communications Director
Sydney
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A massive thank you to our speakers - Karen James, Michelle Imison, Aniker Fletcher, Bardie Barclay-Sutton, Jill Scanlon, Tricia Malowney and Emily Moreton - all those who attended and of course, our city leaders, who so generously shared their time to ensure that all events were a success.
We hope to see you all again at our ONLINE event in November!