ProGrad Case Study - Thamer
April 29, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
I went to the University of Western Sydney (UWS) and completed a Bachelor of Business with majors in Management and International Management. My previous work experience involved the marketing and purchasing for a small business during Uni.
My experience on the assessment day was good. It was fairly generic, although I it definitely provided me with an eye opening experience and a good understanding of how to react and act in group environments.
The process following the ProGrad assessment day was fairly quick. Following the initial interviews I was offered the job. The main reasons I choose the role was the fact that it was a very interesting company, the culture and the fact that I would be working under a great manager.
My role is that of an Inside sales rep specalising in internet security, email security and data security for a wide and diverse range of organisations. My role mainly involves renewals of current accounts and the some development of new business.
The ProGrad training offers a great understanding of concepts in a practical environment. The content is displayed in such a way that it is easily relatable to the life in general.
- Thamer (ProGrad Graduate)
Injecting Energy into Your Team
April 29, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
Many employees are finding it easy to lose motivation recently, due to the large amount of stress they are experiencing as a result of the economic downturn. Ensuring that employees are energised and want to come to work everyday is essential in reaching high productivity levels and organisational goals.
From my experience it is always beneficial when an environment of trust and strong communication is made use of. Another big motivational tool is ensuring each employee knows exactly what their roles and responsibilities are and developing achievable deadlines to match their tasks.
The economy is also influencing employees’ motivation in regards to job security. To cope with this feeling of stress, organisations needs to keep up their communication throughout the whole company. Talking about current issues, plans of attack and future changes that might come into the workplace often helps employees feel as though they are part of the team and therefore more inclined to feel motivated to achieve team goals.
Sophie
ProGrad is an assessment, training and placement centre. For more information on our services please call us directly on 02 8235 8300 or visit our website at www.prograd.com.au
The Importance of Discretion
April 23, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
During these tough economic times, when it is even harder than ever to secure an interview - it is absolutely essential to be discreet about which interviews you have lined up.
At ProGrad, we run a weekly assessment centre for recent University Graduates and see all too often the dangers of being open about your interviews. Your friends are very likely to be your competition within the job market - and so our recommendation is to be very careful about discussing your interviews with them!
The more people you tell about your interviews - the more likely it is that you will increase the level of interest in them. In telling your friends about opportunities, you are simply encouraging them to apply also.
Almost every week, we are seeing candidates lose out on interviews to their very own friends! Simply because they expressed their enthusiasm for the company they were seeing, and got their friends interested also!
Our recommendation is to keep every interview highly confidential, and be discreet about who you talk to about it!!
At ProGrad we are a specialist in graduate recruitment, if you would like to speak to a ProGrad Graduate Manager about a role, please call us at our Head Office on 02 8235 8300. Alternatively, you can email us for more information at info@prograd.com.au
Music at Work: Calming or Distracting?
April 22, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
From my experience, I have always found listening to music while at work can bring a calming effect to the office and other employees. I understand how some people could find loud music or inappropriate music at work distracting however I feel that it would only be distracting if it was the wrong type of music being played in the wrong environment.
Whether it be the radio playing quietly to provide background noise, or loudly to drown out other distracting noises, I have always found it helps lifts the mood and atmosphere within an office. I often find music in the office can also help improve workplace culture, as employees can listen and sing together, or even just talk about the music being played.
Sophie
ProGrad is an assessment, training and placement centre that specialises in placing and training graduates into business to business sales and marketing roles. For more information on ProGrad, or our services please call us directly on 02 8235 8300 or visit our website at www.prograd.com.au
What’s missing from your Cold Calls?
April 21, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
Over the past 10 months the company I work for has delivered over 250 hours of training in cold calling skills to graduates as they take up quite demanding business to business sales roles for leading Australian organizations.
What I think however is far more impressive is that over this same time frame we have conducted over 7,500 hours of actual cold calling to book business meetings. Anyone who has ever faced a full day of call calling will know exactly what I mean when I say when you’re on a roll its great but when you’re hitting some tough calls - maybe a trip to the dentist might seem like a welcomed break!
So what have we found? Studies have shown that if you invest 10,000 hours into an endeavor diligently you too can join the ranks of expert. Maybe 7,500 hours doesn’t quite make us an expert, but you learn a thing or two along the way!
1) Be careful of the advice you take when it comes to cold calling. There are plenty of people queuing up to give advice and even train on the subject. Yet if you probe a bit further they may spend more time training than actually doing it themselves “do as I say not as I do!”
2) Some people advocate using scripts and some prescribe the drawbacks, pitfalls and recommend a more free flowing approach. One thing for sure if your phone call gets off to an awkward start, it can go downhill very quickly from there.
3) Be genuine; put yourself in the call and always remember the reason for your call.
4) A call cold has a time limit and a commercial benefit.
In our business model we use a script as a starting point, yes I know what you’re probably thinking that’s not genuine, it artificial and who really wants to be called and on the receiving end of the script? Well the script is our starting point to ensure our sales teams build their skill set via routine and practice. Its effectiveness in terms of hitting KPI’s occurs several months post hire as they adopt their own style and personality in the call. Actually what I feel is going on is the salespersons attention moves away from the script and onto the client. As a Sales Manager for leading advertising company recently told me he knows his teams run their cold calls effectively when they really “put themselves in the call”.
Listening to a piano student learning the scales on their 3rd lesson is painful but necessary. After mastery of the fundamentals, listening to an accomplished musician is a pleasure in fact the most successful musicians can make the mundane sound great in fact it looks effortless. We hear the final performance but we don’t hear the hard work that went into developing the style!
So let’s review, the script is our starting point; it also helps to, as Steven Covey points out, “keep the end in mind” and also have a purpose and reason for the call. Ours is to book the business meeting - a cold call really does have a time limit. A potential client books a meeting not because they like me but because they see a potential commercial benefit in doing so. If our calls are too free flowing and open ended we could probably have great discussion on the phone but why would you want to meet with me?
Kingsley -Training Manager Prograd
ProGrad have been working successfully with organizations in both Sydney and Melbourne over the last 4 years. We have worked with over 500 organizations placing and training over 1000 graduates across a variety of industries.
If you are interested in finding out more about the training and opportunities we have available, please contact the Operations Team on 02 8235 8300. Alternatively, you can email us at info@prograd.com.au for more information
Case Study- Greg, Mediaworks
April 20, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
Before applying to ProGrad I studied an Advertising Degree and did work experience at some media agencies. ProGrad assisted me in getting a job as an Account Manager at Regional Mediaworks which is the largest regional media provider in Australia.
The ProGrad training courses have a strong structure and a good level of involvement from the participants of the program. ProGrad is a good resource for people with a lot of ambition and desire for career development and progression.
Greg, ProGrad Graduate
ProGrad is an assessment, training and placement centre for graduates looking to start their career within the business to business sales and marketing sector. For more information please call us directly on 02 8235 8300 or visit our webpage www.prograd.com.au
“Gen Y makes its contribution to the mess we’re in”
April 17, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
Written by: Erik Jensen April 16, 2009 - brisbanetimes.com.au
Nicholas Bolton may be Australia’s foremost prat. Now 27, he was among the youngest ever to make the front page of The Australian Financial Review, and one of the few to have appeared topless in The Age’s business pages. He is the best proof that karma does not exist.
This week, Bolton made $4.5 million trampling over the mum-and-dad investors he once pretended to represent. He cut a deal with Theiss-John Holland to offload voting rights on a parcel of 77 million worthless shares, letting his own resolutions fail, and leaving amateur investors to cover instalments in a company he said he wanted to wind up.
If he had anything resembling principles, he signed them away at Tuesday’s meeting. And he wasn’t even there to do it in person.
Young people have been cast as the unwitting victims of the recession - a generation that has seen nothing but growth, and is now struggling with the loss of its jobs. Some have called it a comeuppance, an end to our blind-eyed consumption, but no one has come out and blamed us.
When young individuals stray into the headlights of recession, they do so as a novelty - as the tousle-haired Bolton, all pink lips and smirk in the days after realising he stood to lose $95.8 million on part-paid shares; or the handsome Jerome Kerviel, who lost 4.9 billion euros at Societe Generale last year.
Bolton has been called a market activist, a rebel shareholder taking on Macquarie Bank. In reality, he is a prat who tried to wind up one of the country’s largest infrastructure projects on the eve of a recession, then switched tact and agreed to wind up people’s savings instead. And he is just the tip of a prat iceberg.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, almost half the Australian finance sector is under 35. There are 185,000 of them, in tailored suits and milk teeth - bandits with their Dollarmite piggy banks. Six thousand are still in their teens. These victims of the recession may never have known struggle, but swathes of them were responsible for causing it.
“They are young, confident, affluent and have no memory of tougher times,” The Observer noted last year. “But Generation Y now faces its first recession and a future very different to the one it expected.”
All that is worst about Generation Y is worse still in Bolton. After Tuesday’s shock, while no one was certain what Bolton had planned, it looked as though his company structure would allow him to keep the money and default on his payments all at the same time.
“He’s just ruined his corporate life forever,” said Jim Byrnes, Alan Bond’s bankruptcy adviser and a representative of the US hedge fund that was BrisConnections’s largest investor after Bolton. “I’d trust Mr Bolton like I’d trust a rabbit with a lettuce leaf.”
Bolton was lucky. He has shown himself as a bed-haired Rumpelstiltskin. But for a generation who grew up with money - and for whom money had a great deal to do with worth - a recession might be the first step towards re-evaluating life.
For a group of people typified by arrogance, who flitted between jobs and took out mortgages they could never repay, unemployment might be a welcome kick in the teeth. Not for everyone, but for many.
For my generation, for Australia, nothing will capture the recession like a scene on Australia Square last December. A week earlier, Macquarie Bank was celebrating Christmas on Cockatoo Island. There were four boats and two bars, women serving shots from water pistols. Now, suddenly, there were redundancies: young men paying for their own drinks, market analysts who had watched everything but their own jobs.
A 25-year-old from the finance division summed up the mood. He had started at the bank two years earlier on twice the average wage. “I was a Master of the Universe,” he said, “and they didn’t even use lube.”
Erik Jensen is a Herald journalist.
The Do’s and Don’ts at an Assessment Day:
April 7, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
Assessment Days are used as a way to assess potential employees for key competencies. The process will generally include a range of tasks such as group games, psychometric testing, interviews, presentations and case studies.
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Sophie
For more information relating to graduate careers, please contact ProGrad directly on 02 8235 8300 or visit our website www.prograd.com.au
Why Use An Assessment Day Process?
April 7, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
Assessment Days, such as the one used by ProGrad are designed to use a variety of tests and exercises to see how graduates interact in a business environment. Some common exercises that are used include group discussion, problem solving games and psychometric testing, all with an aim of determining which applicants have the most suitable attributes for the roles available.
The assessment days are not designed to test technical skills and knowledge, but are used to determine which candidates have business related skills and competencies that can be transferred into the business world.
Basic attributes that are typically desired include confidence, professionalism, strong communication skills, loyalty, determination and team working abilities.
Successful?
Well done, however the interview process isn’t over yet! You may have just made it through to the next stage in the organisations recruiting process. For further interview techniques please see the website www.progradsydney.com.au
Unsuccessful?
If you are not successful at the assessment day, don’t let it affect you, there are many different reasons why an organisation may have not chosen you to make it through.
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The assessment day was only testing against the needs of that particular role or organisation; your next interview/assessment day may test against totally different competencies.
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Use the assessment day to your advantage – view it as a positive experience and take all you can to apply it to your next interview process.
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Ask for feedback – Otherwise you will never know how to improve.
Sophie
For more information relating to graduate careers, please contact ProGrad directly on 02 8235 8300 or visit our website www.prograd.com.au
ProGrad graduate statistics:
April 7, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
In a recent survey of ProGrad graduates placed across a variety of vertical markets, the following was discovered:
- 30% of ProGrad graduates surveyed said “demonstrating the value to buy” was the most difficult part of selling their product/ service.
- 42% of ProGrad graduates surveyed said that “recognition” is one of the greatest contributing factors when it comes to them staying in their role.
- 40% of ProGrad graduates surveyed said they plan to be in their role for 3 or more years.
- 40% of ProGrad graduates said that “continuous sales training” is critical to the overall success in their role.
- 50% of ProGrad graduates meet with their direct line managers on a daily basis. 10% meet on a monthly basis only.
- 60% of organsations surveyed have noticed at least a 20% reduction in sales revenue over the past 2 months.
- 54.5% of organisations alluded that ‘designing a new selling strategy’ is the main way they intend to overcome this drop in revenue.
- Jarrod