This interview highlight was initially recorded and presented on Vision Australia Radio's Talking Vision radio program in May 2023.
Sam caught up with a Vision Australia Career Start participant, Georgia Parsonson, to hear about her experience.
The Vision Australia Career Start program is designed to provide graduates who are blind or have low vision a kickstart into their career through a fully funded and meaningful 12 month workplace opportunity. And it's my great pleasure to welcome one of the recent career start graduates, Jorja Parsons, who joins me now. Jorja, welcome to Talking Vision. Thanks so much for your time today.
Thank you for having me.
Tell us about the Career Start program for people who might be interested in signing up.
It's a program for recent graduates, not just university graduates. I think it's you can have a diploma or a bachelor's or a master's. And the program is basically designed to give graduates who are blind or vision impaired the opportunity to build the skills and experience for entering the workforce. So it's a 12 month program. You have nine months working within Vision Australia in a team that's relevant to your qualification or your career goals, and then you have three months with an external employer for just more networking opportunities, more experience. And yeah.
And you are heading off on that three month placement very shortly. So tell us about the process there and also perhaps why you picked the organisation you did?
Well, mine was fairly straightforward, so I'm going to be doing my placement with Green Cross and Virgin Australia and Green Cross have had a volunteer partnership for I think it's about a decade now. And so with that previous relationship and then with my career goals and whatnot, it was sort of easy to kind of arrange things in a way where I could just kind of slip into their communications team from the Vision Australia one.
So what sort of things did you get up to in those nine months working in communications?
Built my interviewing experience with interviewing Vision Australia clients. So writing stories from those interviews, profiles and things like that. And those went onto the Vision Australia website, the internal one and the external one for the public, really. They also went on social media platforms. Some of them went out into were released on external platforms. So newspapers and magazines and things like that did a bit of travel to Melbourne for work trips with the external platforms. I did some pitching to newspapers and magazines, so that was a new experience.
And Georgia, there is a buddy that participants in the Career Start program do get in touch with and during their time at Vision Australia. So tell us about your mentor and, you know, the experiences that you had with them.
So we are given a mentor and a buddy as part of their program. So the buddy is someone who has participated in the program previously. So I was assigned a graduate from last year who was part of the internal communications team, and so she just helped me get accustomed to the program in the early days, answered my questions and things like that, and then let me loose on Vision Australia after that. And then there's also the mentor who works at Virgin Australia, who has had similar experiences with vision impairment. And they just give advice. They're there for questions, they're therefore networking, they're there for all the help we really need. So I've had two mentors and they've both been really good with just giving me some advice for how to progress my career from the Career Start program, which has been really helpful. And yeah, having a buddy and a mentor has been really a great part of the career Start program.
Out of those things that you have done over the past nine months in communications, what's been your favorite, if you can, I guess, narrow it down to one of all those things that you've mentioned there. Do you have a sort of a favorite or something that you're really passionate about getting involved with and you know that you look back really fondly on?
I think just building up my confidence with interviewing is probably my favorite thing. I had a lot of anxiety about it going in, so just being able to do that with confidence now is probably the highlight.
It's never easy doing interviews, even if they aren't ones that go to where it's, you know, ringing people up, talking to people you haven't talked to before. And yes, I definitely can relate with that one. Now, Georgia, what advice would you have for people who are thinking of. Signing up for the Queer Start program.
Definitely apply. Definitely Take every opportunity you can to learn and grow your skills and experience. So don't hesitate to try new things.
I've been speaking today with Jorja Parsons, son, a participant in the Career Start program at Vision Australia. Over the past nine months, heading off on her placement very shortly. And we wish her all the best. Georgia, thank you so much for your time today. It was a pleasure having a chat with you.
Thank you for chatting with me. I appreciate the opportunity.
If you're someone you know would be interested in taking part in the 12 month Career Start program, there's still time for you to do so. Applications close on Friday the 12th of May, so get your applications in. Simply head to Vision australia.org. That's Vision Australia or one word.org where you can find more information about the career start program. Or if you'd like to get in touch with the graduate coordinator. Melissa Rattle you can of course give her a ring on 0432 846 107. That's 0432 846 107. Or send her an email at Melissa dot rattle at Vision australia.org. That's Melissa dot rattle at Vision australia.org.