Young Achiever of the Year Award

The Baw Baw Skills Centre is delighted to be involved in supporting the Young Achiever Category of the The Best Match Baw Baw Shire Business Excellence Awards for 2015.

On Friday 12th June, the gala event was held at Lardner Park and winner of this year’s award announced. It was a very difficult choice, the nine finalists, Michael Cook, Tyler Dunn, Jason Fahey, Kirsty Hallihan, Callum Hobson, Bradley Johnson, Matthew Powell, Jordan Radosauljevic and Riley Steenholdt were all very deserving of the award. We would like to congratulate Kirsty Hallihan and Bradley Johnson, this year’s joint winners.

Kirsty completed Secondary School at Warragul Regional College and commenced working at HearCare in June 2013, when she began her Certificate 3 in Business on-site Traineeship through Apprenticeship Groups Australia (AGA). Undertaking an on-site Traineeship was appealing to Kirsty as she saw it as a good learning experience, enabling her to gain hands-on experience of working in a Business Administration role, as well as getting on-site training. Kirsty’s role as Client Liaison Officer involves managing all 10 site locations by undertaking tasks such as; answering phone calls, running the head office front desk, scheduling and confirming appointments, Medicare claiming, ordering and returning hearing aid devices as well as many more.

Six months into her Traineeship there was a change of circumstances within AGA, leaving Kirsty to complete her Traineeship coursework without any assistance. Another training organisation took over the training component, however they did not deliver Certificate 3 in Business; they delivered Certificate 3 in Business Administration, which meant Kirsty had to complete additional modules of a higher level course. The Traineeship was then extended by two months due to the transfer and additional units. Kirsty worked very hard to complete the extra modules, often after hours. In the last 12 undertaken training at Fisher and Paykel Healthcare for the administration of CPAP equipment as well as home based sleep study training at Sleep Services Australia.

Bradley has always enjoyed hands-on work, wood and metal work classes were his favourite subjects at school. When he was in Year 11 at Warragul Regional College he choose to complete his VCAL certificate which involved a work placement, two days a week at Custom Transport Equipment (CTE) who specialise in making custom trailers and tiltslides.

He started off doing small jobs, such as cleaning the work- shop and being shown how the company runs on a daily basis. As the year progressed and Bradley’s enthusiasm and work ethic remained strong, he was offered a fulltime Auto Elec Apprenticeship, which he jumped at straight away. Bradley finished Year 11 on the Friday and began his apprenticeship the very next day; it was a very exciting time for him. Now, nearly three years into his apprenticeship Bradley says he’s having the time of his life. No two days are the same and there’s never time to be bored. Bradley attends trade school at Kangan Institute’s Automotive Centre of Excellence which he says it very interesting.

We would like to thank and congratulate all of the young people involved in this year’s awards, the quality of applicants was extremely high.