“ I wanted a job that would provide a variety of experiences, a sense of purpose and most importantly be interesting.”
I have an honours degree in Arts/Commerce from the University of Melbourne and am currently a policy advisor in the Policy and Strategy Projects branch of the Department of Premier and Cabinet. The role involves working on relatively short-term projects, researching policy areas and arriving at a range of conclusions and recommendations.
I wanted a job that would provide a variety of experiences, contain some sense of purpose and most importantly be interesting. A role in government provides all these, and the flexibility of changing roles across portfolio areas as your interests and skills lead you.
After I finished my rotations I worked on ‘Brand Victoria’, a project run out of the Department of Premier and Cabinet to establish a coordinated external facing brand for Victoria in our four key markets – international education, foreign investment, skilled migration and tourism.
In terms of audience reach, it was a highly significant project. While I had done some marketing as part of my degree it is not exactly my background. This is the nature of the way we work in my branch – we operate like a consultancy would, forming project teams to go out and work with various departments or locations within government harnessing their expertise to come up with a result.
The project team itself was quite small, however the scale shifted in terms of stakeholders – there was a massive number of stakeholders, including personnel from government departments and agencies, marketing companies – all passionate about the topic. The task, to explore just what it is that makes Victoria such a unique proposition, was a fascinating exercise.
Throughout the process we learnt much about negotiation and compromise in order to arrive at a product that satisfied the needs of a range of people representing different groups.
We eventually met the challenge of creating a suite of devices that were flexible enough to represent each sector while retaining strong consistencies. It was good to see the branding on show at the Grand Prix.