GCCA | Graduate Careers Council of Australia

Graduate Careers Australia

ergo - Number 87 June 2002

HEWSO – A Word from the Winning Team

The late nights and bleary-eyed mornings are over. No more twice weekly pilgrimages to the university to meet our fellow conspirators to discuss the cultural significance of the Radiohead albums in between frantic bursts of forced productivity. The coffee machine is still nursing its smoking wounds. The awards have been presented, the city of Melbourne pillaged by invading Queenslanders and the mighty maroons have returned home triumphant (and slightly hung over). Yes the 2002 Higher Education Workplace Skills Olympiad (HEWSO) is over for another year.

Forty Teams Compete

Along with over 40 other teams from 15 universities across Australia, our team of 10 final-year students from Griffith University spent the month of February competing in HEWSO 2002. We were each linked up with a host employer, ours being the Queensland Department of Main Roads, and presented with a business issue/problem currently being faced by the organisation.

In the four weeks allocated to us we produced a business report, a project management report, a website and presented our findings to our client in an on-site presentation. We were privileged enough to be awarded first place in the country. We all feel that this was a valuable experience for us and we are thankful for being given the opportunity to participate. It was very rewarding to be able to pool our talents with people from diverse backgrounds to a real organisational challenge. In addressing this we learned that the core skills we are taught at university are applicable to just about any field.

Through our HEWSO participation the team believes that we have increased confidence in dealing with business clients, improved our teamwork skills in multi-talented teams and have learned how to deal with high-pressure project management in practical situations. We are confident that the significant skills and experience gained through our HEWSO participation will prove attractive to graduate employers.

I would encourage anybody considering becoming involved in the competition to do so. For employers it is a great opportunity to strengthen ties with universities and potentially market their organisations to the upcoming best and the brightest, whilst getting high quality work at little expense. A number of people in our team have been offered further work with our client organisation and we’ve all taken away some great experiences and some good friends.

Thank you to everybody involved in making the competition the success that it was, and I know that the standard of the competing teams will only get bigger and better in years to come.

For more details go to the HEWSO page on this site.