| 1. I am doing an assignment for school, and have to investigate careers in my chosen industry. Where can I find this information? |
Our careers pages include general information on careers within the industries, and the related training required. These include links to other websites that contain useful information.
If you know of a company or enterprise that employs in your area of interest, you should have a look at their web site.Looking at employmentwebsites can alsogive you an idea about the skills, knowledge and experience you might need to when applying for a job in your chosen field.
| 2. Where can I do work experience? |
The Service industries are extremely large and distributed across the country, with thousands of separate employers. Service Skills Victoria cannot recommend any particular employer for work experience. The best way of finding a work experience placement is to ask several local employers. Your school careers adviser may also be able to help you with this.
Not all employers take on work experience students, so you may need to approach several different businesses before you find a place.
| 3. Where can I find out about rates of pay and other employment conditions? |
Rates of pay and employment conditions are set through the industrial relations system. Individuals may be employed under awards, workplace agreements or individual contracts, and so pay and conditions can vary from state to state and employer to employer, even within the same industry.
The best starting point to find out about average rates of pay for a particular occupation is through the Wagenet website - this site also includes contact details for the relevant state bodies.
| 4. What is a New Apprenticeship? |
New Apprenticeships are a way of combining paid employment in the industry with formal training, leading to a nationally-recognised qualification.
The New Apprenticeships website also provides useful background information on New Apprenticeships and how they work.
| 5. How do I get a New Apprenticeship? |
Your first step is to decide what industry you want to work in, and what qualification you want to complete. Our ‘careers and training' pages include information about the qualifications available for each industry, and the New Apprenticeships available in each state/territory.
Once you have decided which New Apprenticeship you want to do, you will need to find an employer to give you a job so you can ‘earn while you learn'. You cannot be a New Apprentice without a job. Some of your options are:
- Check your local newspapers for job vacancies. Vacancies may be advertised under the industry (e.g. Retail) or under the heading "trainee?or “apprentice?
- The Job Network is a network of organisations dedicated to finding employment for job seekers. To get details of your local Job Network members, or to search for positions, visit the Australian Jobsearch website .
- Approach employers that you would like to work for directly. You could contact the employer on the phone, in person, or by writing a formal letter.
- Contact a Group Training organisation. Group training organisations employ apprentices and trainees and then place them with different employers during their training. To find a Group Training organisation, contact Group Training Australia on 07 3844 3444 or visit the Group Training Australia website .
Once you've found a New Apprenticeship position, you and your employer will need to sign a formal training contract to make the New Apprenticeship official, and to make you eligible for the training. This will be done through a New Apprenticeship Centre.
The New Apprenticeships websiteprovides some additional information.
| 6. I have lost my certificate. What do I do? |
If you've completed a training course or New Apprenticeship, and cannot find your certificate, you will need to request that it is re-issued. To do this, you will usually need to go back to the original training organisation that issued you with the original certificate.
| 7. Can I get a qualification by correspondence or distance education? |
Some training organisations may offer qualifications through distance education or online courses. Each individual training organisation can decide how it wants to deliver the courses, so this option will not be offered by all organisations, or for all qualifications.
Distance education is a way that people in regional or isolated communities, interested in an industry with only a few training providers, or with other difficulties attending traditional face-to-face training, can get training. It can include a range of methods, including online delivery.
The aim of the nationally-recognised qualifications is to ensure that learners have the opportunity to develop their skills, as well as their knowledge, so that they are competent in the workplace. This means that courses leading to a nationally-recognised qualification need to ensure that you can actually demonstrate your practical skills (not just complete assignments or exams). This can be more difficult to achieve under a distance education program.
Different training organisations will offer different approaches to this: an assessor may visit you to conduct assessments, use audio-visual and online technology for the learning and assessment, offer blocks of residential training and assessment. Some may even require that you are employed in the industry, so that your employer can help to verify that you are competent.
It is also worth noting that distance education can be more difficult for some people, and you generally need to be able to keep yourself motivated and focused.
If you're considering distance education, make sure you find out how you will be assessed and what support will be available to you during the program.
| 8. Does it matter if the training course I've found isn't nationally-recognised? |
Some courses hold no formal recognition at all. In these cases, the student may receive a certificate from the training provider, but this certificate carries no formal status within the industry or the vocational education and training system.
Whether this matters or not really depends upon what you are looking to get out of doing the course. If you are doing the course as a hobby or out of general interest, it probably doesn't matter if a course has no formal recognition.
However, if your reason for doing the course is to get employment in a particular industry, then you need to be very careful. People completing courses without any formal recognition may find that they cannot get work because their course does not have any value to potential employers. They often need to repeat their training ?and pay course fees again ?to a different organisation in order to get a recognised qualification.
We advise you to make sure that the course will lead to a nationally-recognised qualification or Statement of Attainment ?before you enrol.
Training organisations usually advertise the fact that courses are nationally-recognised in their promotional material. You can also use the information on this website to identify whether a training organisation is registered to deliver a particular nationally-recognised qualification.
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