When Adelaide-based Global Maintenance Group received a cold-call from Navitas Professional, forward thinking Director Mr Steven Young immediately identified opportunity in the call. Navitas Professional provides post-university, soft-skills Professional Year (PY) programs which contain 12 week industry internships.
“I’d had a particular engineering project in mind that I’d wanted to do, but hadn’t had the time to put into it,” Steve said.
“Not only that, my project included electronic modelling and design, I don’t have those skills sets at a deep enough level to be able to do it justice,” he added.
Ms Anne Diao (pictured right) is a University of Adelaide First Class Honours graduate with a Bachelor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Apart from her academic skills, Anne’s CV showed she was an obvious self-starter with her work history including fruit-picking, waitressing and volunteering with seniors.
“It was this robust personality that I knew would easily ‘fit’ into Global Maintenance’s workplace culture,” Steve said.
“In fact Anne has been so effective I’ve offered her full time work and had been wishing I had two of her,” he added.
“Then when Navitas said they had a mechanical engineer of similar quality who was hungry to get some experience, I saw it was another opportunity for both intern and business.”
So Lu You (pictured left) joined the Global team for her three-month internship in October.
Also a University of Adelaide graduate, Lu has a Master of Mechanical Engineering and Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering. Along with her customer service skills gained from working in a sushi shop, it’s a mix which suits her internship perfectly.
“Although my role is to review and redesign some rollers the company manufactures, I also have to liaise with some suppliers and customers, typical activities I need to perform in a real-world business,” Lu said.
Both young professionals reflect on the practical value their internship has provided them.
“While we are at uni, we learn so much theory,” Lu said.
“But when we get into the workforce, we prove to ourselves that we can do the roles we’ve been learning about.”
Anne nodded her agreement, adding “We’re just starting on our careers as we enter into the internship and so we are bit nervous.”
“But now we’ve proved to ourselves we can perform at a practical level and we feel so much more confident in ourselves, it’s a great start to our careers,” Anne concluded.
For more information about Navitas Professional Year Internships please contact:
Richard Cowley, Internship Placement Coordinator M 0448 064 755 E: richard.cowley@navitas.com
