Sam Devlin is the CEO and co-founder of The Careers Department. It is a SAAS content platform that reaches 1.4 million Australian families through schools nationwide. Here, industries can educate, inspire and engage students, parents and teachers into understanding and considering a career in this category. Instead of competing for university graduates in marketing and communications, The Careers Department offers an opportunity for the advertising industry to start the recruitment process earlier and cast a wider net across the country to attract the best talent available rather than just those who fell into advertising.
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Every bum on a seat in a university is big, big dollars. So, I’m so happy to see universities now working so closely with industry to ensure the employability of their students.
Transcription:
Darren:
Hi, I’m Darren Woolley, Founder and CEO of TrinityP3 Marketing Management Consultancy. And welcome to Managing Marketing, a weekly podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media, and advertising with industry thought leaders and practitioners.
The advertising industry is in crisis, a talent crisis. Advertising agencies across the spectrum, including creative, design, technology, and particularly, media, are struggling to attract and keep talented individuals.
Today, I’m sitting down with someone who has a solution to the problem and a problem industry bodies and their agency members are trying to address. Her career started in media, almost nine years ago, an insight she and her business partner Sarah Warmoll had, has created a SaaS platform that reaches 1.4 million Australian families.
To discuss how this can help solve the advertising industry’s talent issue, please welcome to Managing Marketing, the CEO and co-founder of the Careers Department, Sam Devlin. Welcome, Samantha.
Sam:
Thank you.
Darren:
Sam or Samantha, which do you prefer?
Sam:
Sam, always Sam.
Darren:
Okay. It’s like me, you sometimes feel that your parents are calling you to tell you off about something, right?
Sam:
Absolutely. I rarely, get Samantha.
Darren:
Okay. So, look I’m really interested in this because we hear a lot from the industry about how hard it is to attract talent, and yet, there seems to be so many people that would be interested in a career in media and advertising but are possibly missing out on that opportunity.
Sam:
Absolutely. From our point of view, we see students right from year 7, right to when they finish high school in year 12. And it’s so obvious that their understanding or their perception of industry, and not just media advertising, but every industry is so curated by stereotypes and media perceptions of that industry that they’ve decided long ago, whether it’s for them or not for them.
And they’re not really evaluating their future career based on their skills or based on, I guess, an accurate representation of that industry. They’ve picked something long ago and they just kind of fall into it, and that’s why there’s that gap.
Darren:
You also find yourself – because I started my career in science and medical research, and it was because I seemed to have a skill set around that, but it wasn’t actually my passion, which eventually, drew me into advertising.
There are other influences, isn’t there, on kids, as they’re sort of thinking about their future such as teachers and parents.
Sam:
It’s difficult for a careers advisor or a teacher to guide a school even now because industry is changing so quickly, and it has changed dramatically across the last 10 years. And so, what we see a lot of is a careers advisor will say to a student, “You have an aptitude for maths and science. Why didn’t you go into engineering?”
And so, they try and plug subjects into industries, but what you should be doing is saying, “What do you like about maths? Is it that it’s a black and white subject? And that there’s no subjectivity to whether the answer is right and wrong?” Because that says more about your working style. And that working style is applicable across every industry.
And then with the same example, if a student likes art, that doesn’t mean they have to be a graphic designer. You ask them, “What do you like about art? Is it the actual hands-on process? Is it art theory? Is it that the answer isn’t black and white?” Because again, you look at the working style and then apply that across multiple industries.
Darren:
So, I just want to go back to something you just said then, which is this idea that the industry, the needs of industry is changing so much. And I heard or read once that the jobs that are going to be required in 20 years’ time — when people are entering the education system, so not quite 20 years, let’s say 15 years’ time, haven’t even been thought of today.
It makes it incredibly difficult, doesn’t it, to start planning a career or even thinking about it because I think that’s why people go teaching, medicine, accounting. These are the things that seem to have always been there.
Sam:
Well, whilst those hard skills will definitely change, so the relevance of a computer science degree today might not find relevance in 15 years’ time because the hard skills that industry need are shifting.
What is not shifting and what will not shift is the human skill. So, creativity, communication skills, the ability to problem-solve, the ability to analyze information, those jobs cannot be replaced by technology. And your ability to bring those skills to any career makes you future-proofed.
So, when we speak to students, if they wanted to go into media and advertising in say, production capacity, I wouldn’t just recommend to them learn how to learn the process of post-production and upskill yourself in Adobe, learn storyboarding, learn how to use a camera, et cetera. I wouldn’t just recommend that.
I would say, but also, make sure that you’re across the client creativity process and communicating with a client, writing a brief, getting feedback, analyzing the success of it, because that is never going to be able to be outsourced by a computer.
Darren:
Now, the way you’re talking then, Sam, I feel like I need to say to people you started your career in media, didn’t you? I mean, you really do understand that category because you’ve got experience in that.
Sam:
I did start in media. I always wanted a job working in TV or radio or something glamorous like that. But my parents were from a construction background. And when I was in high school, I did not know how to enter that industry. And equally, my parents didn’t really know how to advise me at all.
And that is the same story for so many students. You’re often limited by your parents’ network because they’re the ones who guide you into different areas. And so, when I finished school, I studied commerce, which gave me an ability to go into a range of industries and I just had to plug those skills into media. Yeah, I kind of fell into it.
Darren:
And it’s also perhaps why when we look at the advertising and media industry, so many people working in it, have parents or relatives that worked in it. And that became their entree.
Sam:
Definitely. And I think the media and advertising industry is unique in that the road to entry is still very much underpinned by internships and work experience and building a body of work. And that’s how you get your first paid position. Not a lot of other industries are still like that, which is interesting.
Darren:
I also think there’s a big problem for the industry in that, because it’s not a profession — I say to people all the time, the advertising and media and even marketing is filled with people that don’t necessarily have a qualification.
I’ve got a science degree and I worked in advertising, and yet, when it comes to recruiting people into the industry, the starting point is some relevant degree. It seems quite limiting to me as an approach to if you’re looking for talent that’s more than your ability to pass a bachelor degree, why are you only looking for university graduates?
Sam:
So many tech companies and also consultancy firms are now looking way further down the pipeline and they’re starting to recruit students directly from high school and they’re saying to them, we will upskill you in those three years between when you would’ve been a graduate.
So, that student might be studying at university whilst working at, say, Atlassian, and they’ve been upskilled on the job whilst they do it, or they might go direct to industry and then that company is upskilling them with short micro-credentialing courses whilst they’re in industry.
And I think that’s a great way to do it because if you wait for students who have finished university with a certain degree, they might not even be in your pipeline to recruit because they might have studied something completely distant to advertising and media and now, they’re out of the pipeline altogether.
So, I think it’s really naive when industry say it’s too early to be speaking to students in years 9, 10, and 11. Why? Because if they don’t make a decision then, or they don’t consider media and advertising then, they’re never going to be in your pipeline.
Darren:
Well, Nathan Brown, who used to be part of the Australian industry went to the U.S. and ended up CEO of PHD Media for the USA. And talking to him, that was back in, well, before COVID, 2018, 2019. He said they deliberately moved away from college graduates in the U.S. to high school graduates for two reasons.
One is they found it so hard competing with the big consulting firms, accounting firms, technology firms to attract college graduates. But what they found is when they started focusing on high school graduates, they were able to choose and recruit on aptitude who had the curiosity, who had the thinking approach.
They were then able to train them in their very specific way of doing things. So, they gave them intense on the job training. And he said the third thing was that in many ways, it mitigated the risk because with college graduates, they found themselves paying more because they were college graduates, they had that expectation, but often they didn’t have the aptitude, they didn’t have the approach.
And so, you could invest a year or more to the point that you realize that person wasn’t going to work out. Whereas they could take on a lot more high school graduates and really give them this intense training and cherry pick the very best from that group. He said it was just phenomenally beneficial to the company, but also to the students themselves.
Sam:
We do this on the Careers Department, there’s the opportunity for students to do virtual work experience modules. So, they get a hypothetical brief from industry.
So, one example, they have to wire frame a website. And so, they get given a problem, they have to build out the UX and then do the UI, and build a presentation.
The student work that we receive is phenomenal because they have such a wide set of skills. And if they’re willing to spend 10 hours of their time doing a virtual work experience module on our site and upload it, they’re not getting paid, it’s not to get a job. It’s not for any other reason. Just that they are keen to upskill themselves.
That is an amazing hunting ground for industry to then offer that student work experience with them, physical work experience because they’ve already proved that they do have that curiosity and that drive.
I guess they also don’t have the confidence to reach out to industry themselves. For some of our students that we work with are in towns that are 11 hours from Sydney or they’re in the Pilbara or they’re in Weipa, they’re so remote. They’ve never imagined that they would be the ones to get an opportunity to work for a Westpac or a Network Seven, they wouldn’t even apply.
But then I look in the back end of our side and see the quality of the work that they’re uploading, and I think why doesn’t industry speak to these kids?
Darren:
So, give us an idea of how does the Careers Department work, and what is the platform that you’ve created?
Sam:
So, it’s been a bit of an evolution. Its current form now, high schools license the program. So, they pay $3.50 to access the program per student per annum. That gives them access to skills modules where they can learn how to read Google analytics, how to synthesize data, how to make findings with it. They can learn Photoshop, they can learn Lightroom, they can learn CAD. So, those skills for the future of work.
And then we’ve got virtual work experience modules where they participate in mock briefs and upload those bodies of work into an e-portfolio. So, the whole program’s about exploring industry through podcast, videos, VR, and then putting what they’ve learned into practice.
So, we’ve aligned it to curriculum, the Australian curriculum, and it’s embedded in schools nationally. We just hit 25% of Australian high schools and now, using the program, which is a huge milestone for us, which is very exciting.
But it’s been an evolution in the sense that initially, it was a free to access platform and it was monetized by industry partners saying, “We can’t reach that volume of students. Would you make branded content with us?”
So, it might be we want to promote a nursing course, so we would go in and follow a graduate nurse around and she would speak to what she’s doing and what she learned and give some advice and we’d host it.
Then schools started saying to us “We would pay for this. Like we would pay for this program. Why don’t you lock it off and make it a structured in-school platform?”
And so, that took us about two years to switch from, I guess, an advertising model where we were just embracing what I’d learned from media about selling eyeballs to being a product that’s SaaS and now, used in schools.
Darren:
Fantastic.
Sam:
Yep.
Darren:
Look, it’s a fascinating idea. What was the genesis of it? You and Sarah were sitting there talking about careers, were you? And you suddenly thought that there must be an opportunity of opening career opportunities here.
Sam:
I truly think this problem is not unique. And so many people you speak to, you will ask them, “How did you get where you are in your career?” And they will say, “Oh, I fell into it,” or “I started in this industry, and it didn’t work out.”
And we just started thinking about the process of careers advisory from school. It’s so flawed, it’s so fragmented. Every school runs a different program. There’s no mandated curriculum. It’s kind of like no one really engages with their careers advisor in school.
You can go into their office as an open door policy, but it’s not structured. And so, it needed to be fixed. And equally, careers advisors are so passionate about what they do, they want to make a difference, but they don’t know how because they don’t have the content to engage students in the process.
So, we just want to fix that broken model and offer some value because access to industry should not be limited by your parents’ network or the school you’re at. It should be accessible to everyone.
Darren:
Yeah. Well, look, it makes sense. And going back to the problem that the industry’s facing, I just feel like because they’re always fishing in the same small pond, that they’ll always get the same people over and over again. And that must be a diminishing pond.
I mean, as you said, there are people out there in rural Australia, there’s people all over this country that possibly have the right aptitude and the interest in a career in media and advertising, but they would not even begin to know where to start, would they?
Sam:
Absolutely. I went to this conference not long ago a few months back, and it was with graduate employers, and they were talking about the talent shortfall. And maybe a week after, I was having a coffee with someone who’s in that circle and they said to us “We get 3,000 applicants for a graduate position at our consultancy firm per year, but we can’t find the right talent.”
And so, really, it’s not a question of a shortage of applications, it’s that businesses are fighting for that top 5% of candidates, and they only want a certain kind of student or a certain kind of candidate, rather than maybe diversifying what they’re asking for and training internally, making that candidate the top 5%.
Darren:
Because the other thing that we’ve seen happen certainly in the last decade is universities being much more interested in working with industry to develop courses, whether they’re degrees, certificates, diplomas that has content that’s relevant to industry as well. This idea of just churning out sort of cookie cutter qualifications is becoming less and less valuable.
Sam:
And I am so happy to see that happen. I think universities, there should be an onus, a sense of responsibility from these universities who are businesses to ensure that their content is aligned to industry and that those students are employable.
Because from someone who works in schools every day, you look at a course like exercise science and you look at how a course is marketed and they might, in this shiny TVC, this 30-second TVC, you’ve got an AFL team running onto a field, you’ve got a physio following them, and then underneath, it says, “Study bachelor of …”
Darren:
Sports, medicine …
Sam:
Sports science, yeah. Then that student finishes that course, and they realize, “Okay, I’m a sports scientist, what does that mean?” It means nothing. Your employability options are so limited. That course is really a steppingstone to go into physio.
Equally, you look at courses like medical science, what’s a medical scientist? I’m not sure. But again, that’s a steppingstone for so many students into a post-grad degree or criminology. I talk to students all the time. I mean, the trend’s shifting a little bit now, but a few years ago, so many students wanted to do a Bachelor of Criminology.
And I would say, “Okay, well, what does a criminologist do at the end?” And they’ll talk about CSI and I’m going to be on a crime scene. But if we look at the reality of that, the person who’s on a crime scene, they’ve come from a police background or they’ve come from a science background. A criminologist, that degree in essence is an arts degree.
And those degrees were almost capped at some universities. And every bum on a seat in a university is big, big dollars. So, I’m so happy to see now universities working so closely with industry to ensure the employability of their students.
Darren:
See, I think it’s interesting (and drawing that back to marketing), how successful and popular Mark Ritson’s mini-MBA in marketing is. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but Mark is a very highly respected marketing professor. He was at Melbourne Business School, and now he’s set up his own mini-MBA in marketing.
And I think it’s successful because it’s fulfilling a need. And that is that there is not a lot of people working in the industry that want to go back and do a whole MBA. But there is enough of them that realize they don’t have that deep academic knowledge around marketing and the application of marketing that they want to go and do that.
And I think it’s a really good trend, this idea that in a career like marketing, media, and advertising, you could go into it without a specific qualification, but certainly, the aptitude and interest in doing it and be able to build your skillset over time with on-the-job training and academic courses and other ways to support that.
Sam:
I am a huge fan of micro-credentialing and-
Darren:
Is that what it’s called? Micro-credentialing?
Sam:
I mean, it’s just so accessible. People could get a license with the Careers Department and upskill themselves in so many skills that are relevant to a media agency.
And if we look at a media agency, for example, you don’t need a comms degree for that. They’re looking at someone who can communicate with clients. They can read a schedule, they can understand the scope of a brief, they can digest information, they can speak to a creative team.
Those skills are taught in so many degrees. Like from a science degree, I’m sure the entire degree, you’re synthesizing data and pulling that into something that’s digestible. That is exactly the same skillset that’s applicable in an media agency. So, it’s about finding someone with those skills and then upskilling those hard skills that they need, the micro-credentials whilst they’re on the job.
Darren:
So, what do you think, because I know the industry spends a lot of time and effort on things like careers exhibitions and things like that. That’s not really the time when people are thinking about their career. Is that it always feels to me a little bit too late.
I find the people that are at those career exhibitions, which are a great way for someone to make money, but they’ve already sort of made a decision about what their career’s going to be.
Sam:
I’m obviously biased, but I do think you need to start so much earlier. If someone is not aware that an industry exists when they’re in year 9 and 10 and year 11, the data just shows there’s such a small chance they’re going to end up in that industry.
So, for instance, to go back to media, we’ve got a virtual work experience task where students need to develop a media spend schedule for a client brief. So, I think it’s a sports drink. And so, they have a target market and they need to work out which mediums they’ll use in their schedule.
So, they can use out of home, they can wrap buses if they want, they can do digital out of home, they can do TV, they can do radio, they can do social, and they have to work out which mediums they’ll use in conjunction with each other and why, and find budgets, which they kind of fiddle around and come together with that.
The students would have no idea what a media buyer does. If you asked the average year nine student, what’s a media buy, they wouldn’t know. But through the art of doing a task, then they’re educated that it exists and then they go into your pipeline for recruitment later.
So, it’s just far too late to be talking to them when they’re finishing uni. They’ve already made their decision. They might be doing a medical science degree by that point.
Darren:
Well, it’s true that in some ways, the university degree, if you are very specific about what you want to achieve, it’s certainly a steppingstone. But I just wonder how many students find themselves doing a degree as a way of doing something productive while they really sort out what they want to do in their life.
Sam:
Absolutely. The data, and it’s a little bit … it hasn’t been remeasured since COVID, but in 2019, one in five Australian grads were dropping out of a uni degree in the first 12 months.
Darren:
Wow, that’s a big, big … 20%.
Sam:
Yeah, it’s huge. But it’s understandable because you pick a course just based on the name. Like that criminology example, I want to be a criminologist, and then you get there and then you start to kind of assess employability options and you think, “Oh my God, it’s not what I thought.”
Darren:
Yeah, it’s funny because one of the things of doing a medical laboratory degree was there was years ago a show called Quincy and he had this sidekick Sam, and that was for me, the access to that job. My parents were working class people, never been to university. I was the first one in my family to go to university and I think they were sure I was a doctor because that was the only way they could relate to a degree in medical laboratory science.
Sam:
When you said that your parents didn’t go to uni, I find that we face this all the time where parents will give advice based on their own experience and what they think is best for their child.
So, TAFE or vocational pathways are so opportunistic for students and going … so say you got a certificate in carpentry then went on to do your builder certificate, own your own business — that is such an opportunistic area to go into.
Darren:
That was my brother.
Sam:
Yeah. But what we’re finding, and what I find so interesting when we survey students, is if their parents haven’t gone to university, they will push their child to go to university because they perceive that to be the more prestigious road that will offer more employability options and a higher salary later in life, et cetera.
But the current state of our workforce doesn’t really reflect that. And so, it’s funny where students who have parents in trades specifically are being encouraged to go to university rather than pursue a trade and that’s the parent’s own bias impacting a student’s decision. I guess the psychology behind it was quite interesting.
Darren:
Also, I think, well, because they do have an important role to play. So, part of that education process is also helping parents understand that this is a legitimate career. I mean, my parents thought going into advertising was just a terrible thing because they perceived I was going to cure cancer (wasn’t going to happen).
But yeah, that advertising was somehow not really acceptable to them. And in fact, I know Rocky Ranallo who runs the Western Sydney copy school says they really struggle to get kids to join or sign up because they don’t see a career and their parents don’t see a career.
Sam:
Yeah. Well, parents are the key influencer for school leaders. So, one of the iterations of the program last year, we started giving access to the program to parents. And so, students could share content from our site with their mom and dad.
And when we were tracking the open rates, it’s so interesting that the parents would open the email from their child. They would look at the piece of content that their daughter or son had sent them, and then you’d track them on the side and they start exploring in these other industries.
And I think maybe they’re kind of doing some correct exploration for themselves because the workplace has changed so much that they don’t themselves know what options that are out there.
Darren:
Well, I’m not even sure it’s for themselves. I think they just want to be able to have a more informed conversation when their child is saying to them, “Oh, I’m thinking about this or thinking about this,” that they can actually engage in that from a perspective of knowledge rather than going, “Oh, that’s nice dear.”
Sam:
But think in the media industry, how many people, if you weren’t from a media advertising background would know what as we said, a media buyer does or someone who’s in the data analytics team or someone who works in trade marketing versus consumer marketing, or all of these titles are so specific to an industry. How would a parent be in a place to guide that?
Darren:
I have no idea.
Sam:
A hundred percent or UX design. Sometimes when we are running this UX design workshop in schools, I watch the teachers in the classroom and it’s almost like you are teaching them at the same time the students are being taught, because they had no idea that that existed themselves.
Darren:
But that’s the positive thing because I think if you’d say to most even teenagers about media, you would have to assume that their mind would go to influencers and social media.
Sam:
YouTube, TikTok. Yeah.
Darren:
And so. the idea that there is actually a whole lot of careers behind that because you know the truth is that less than 1% will actually ever be able to make a living out of their content that they’re putting on YouTube or TikTok. But that there’s actually really rewarding and fulfilling careers behind that. Must be a great entry point for the industry to start engaging in those conversations.
Sam:
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean we are talking about I guess all the problems with the industry and how it’s so fragmented, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s also a great space to be in because you are working with students who can … we live in Australia, and we’re so privileged to live in a country where there is no industry or job that is out of reach for a student.
And it’s exciting to be in that position where we can inspire the next generation to really do anything they want. It’s just about giving them the awareness of that opportunity earlier.
Darren:
So, Sam, what can the industry be doing? Because I know if I hear one more agency or one more industry body say the big problem for us is attracting talent. What should they be doing? How can they reach beyond in some ways competing for university graduates and start as you say, influencing that decision much earlier?
Sam:
I think it’s just engaging with platforms that work with students at a grassroots level. So, that example I gave you about students participating in a media buying exercise, helping businesses like us pull together a fictional scenario like that and giving us assets to take into schools so that students are inspired about the opportunities that exist and being better about telling career stories in an engaging way.
And it’s ironic to think that the media and advertising industry who are underpinned by creativity and selling products and marketing, then don’t do a great job of doing that themselves. I don’t think I can watch another video of someone sitting in front of a green screen talking about why they love their job because every day’s different and you should enter marketing.
Because like everyone’s job’s different every day. Like that’s not a unique insight. So, let’s get smarter about how we encourage young people to explore careers. And it shouldn’t be a boring topic to explore.
Like how long do you spend at work? You spend so much of your life at work? Like it’s worth finding something that you’re excited about, and we all see the importance to enjoy your job. Like let’s inspire people younger, get them on the right track earlier.
Darren:
Yeah, absolutely. So, there is an opportunity here, isn’t it? Because really, rather than waiting and competing for the students that have already made a decision and put themselves into a marketing or comms degree, because in some ways, they’ve already made that decision.
Sam:
Yeah, but I do and I-
Darren:
Or do you have to do both.
Sam:
We work with a lot of industry partners and we talk about work experience in high school, and the traditional work experience relationship where a student in year 10 comes in and does a week at a media agency. That is not operationally realistic anymore.
Because A, from the industry point of view, they might never see that kid again and they have wasted time and resource and energy in having that student come in. B, sometimes they don’t have work that they can give to that student to fulfill the time. C, that student might have just got that placement through a friend of a friend of a friend, and they’re not engaged at all.
So, it’s not operationally realistic and that model is harder and harder and harder for schools to roll out. So, I think it’s about getting smarter about how we engage them and that’s doing virtual work experience opportunities. Not just saying, okay, it’s too difficult to work with students because we don’t want to open the floodgate and have a hundred applicants who want to come into our agency and do physical work experience.
Darren:
It’s a really good point because that old schoolwork experience literally became a drain on everyone involved.
Sam:
And it’s also for the student, like there’s no worse feeling — and I think we can all relate when you start a new job, and in that first few days of the job, when you’re still trying to find your feet, there is no worse feeling than thinking that you are a burden on someone’s time or you don’t know what you are doing and you don’t want to annoy anyone.
That’s probably the experience for so many work experience kids and I don’t know whether that model necessarily works. But it’s also we have to appreciate that often, work experience was the catalyst for someone saying, “Yeah, I really love this or on the flip side, this industry is not for me.”
So, it’s how do we reinvent that experience but in something that is realistic for schools and for industry.
Darren:
But that’s what I loved about the examples you shared of putting virtual work experience, being able to put projects on there.
Because in many ways when we talk about talent, we are looking for people that can solve problems and come up with interesting solutions. In a way, you’re doing a selection process because the response that they come up with on the platform is in a way, a selection process as well, isn’t it?
Sam:
Yeah. The virtual work experience program, it’s doing extremely well in schools, and schools love it. But Sarah and I (my co-founder), we want to know, and we want to work out the balance where we can also add that human element in as well.
And we are working with the Seven Network at the moment and we put some virtual work experience modules on our site and students had to pull together, and they had to script and produce a 30-second or 60-second bulletin that could go in the news.
And the human element side of it is that we are saying to the students, there will be a winner from each state and that will be judged by real people from the Seven Network who work in the industry. And the engagement in that module has been significantly higher than other virtual work experience modules because there still is that human element.
And for us, I’m really excited to explore that space where we can yes, ensure scalability because it is digital and it means that a student in Weipa in far north Queensland can access the same module as someone in North Sydney and Sydney. But how do we also add that humanistic element that a student feels like they are connected to the Seven Network as well.
Darren:
And also, acknowledgement as well, getting feedback because just creating it is one part, but then actually getting feedback, and in some ways critique or praise or just acknowledgement for a job well done.
Sam:
Yes, I think some of the student responses are so amazing. The people, the judging panel from seven are gonna be nervous that their jobs will be replaced.
Darren:
So, obviously, Sevens on board as an industry partner. Can you name some of the other industry partners that see the opportunity here?
Sam:
We have the most amazing group of partners. We’re so lucky. We work with Rio Tinto, we work with the Australian Defense Force. We work with ACOR, we work with the Australian Retailers Association. We work with a consultancy firm, Seven Network, as I mentioned. There’s a few others in the pipeline.
Darren:
It’s a good mix though. Yeah, and very broad.
Sam:
Yeah. Well, every industry is experiencing-
Darren:
A shortage, yeah.
Sam:
And whilst every industry is looking for different students, collectively, they’re feeling the strain of what they perceive to be a shortfall of talent. But really, it’s about solving the problem in a different way and just starting it inside the pipeline earlier.
Darren:
Sam, this has been a great conversation. Thanks for making time to come and have a chat on Managing Marketing.
Sam:
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
Darren:
Look, I’ve got a question for you because when I was a young boy, I wanted to be an astronaut. What was it that you wanted to be when you grew up?
