Dreaming of an interesting, high-paying, and flexible job? A career in tech might be for you!
If you’re a young Australian contemplating what’s next and aren’t sure where to start – the Tech Council’s Virtual Work Experience is your first step towards a career in Tech!
The Tech Council of Australia, together with Year 13, have launched the National Virtual Work Experience Program for young Australians in secondary school and post-school leavers facing barriers to employment.
Tech jobs are amongst the fastest-growing and best-paid jobs in the economy, offering a diverse range of exciting roles – and this program gives you a chance to experience them!
What sets the Virtual Work Experience apart from traditional online offerings is its incorporation of real-world workplace content, offering a genuine and immersive learning experience.
Moreover, this program is designed with accessibility and scalability in mind, ensuring access even in remote regions and for people with diverse abilities. Our core mission is to facilitate connections between students and tech employers, providing a tangible glimpse into the world of tech.
What does the program involve?
An exciting lineup of Australia’s leading technology employers, in collaboration with the Tech Council, are sponsoring the program. Each experience within this program focuses on a high-demand technology role including cybersecurity specialist, data scientist, software engineer and NBN network engineer.
These experiences deliver an overview of the job role, with engaging video content featuring young tech professionals from sponsoring companies who will share their insights.
Learners get an inside look into a “Day in the Life” of these professionals, explore the various pathways into these roles, and work on skill-based activities. By completing these activities, learners will earn a certificate that they can proudly display on their resumes or their LinkedIn profiles.
Virtual Work Experience Program Sponsors
Our virtual work experience program is made possible thanks to the incredible support of our program sponsors, who are members of the Tech Council of Australia or partners of the Digital Employment Forum. These sponsors have provided valuable content to help you experience Australian technology workplaces. Even better, they’ve covered the production costs, ensuring that these experiences are entirely free for learners and schools.
Commbank
Whether you’re passionate about customer service, driven by data, or called by creativity, a career with CommBank is for you.
You’ll be more than just an employee. You’ll be a partner. You’ll be given opportunities to grow professionally, and the room to grow personally. It’s a chance to bring your skills to the table and mix them with the best.
CommBank is a place where the power of collaboration is harnessed to build a brighter future for all.
NBN
At NBN, we help lift the digital capability of Australia by connecting homes and businesses everywhere.
NBN offers diverse and exciting career opportunities, with roles spanning network engineering, customer service, product development, and more.
Our people are given the opportunity to grow their careers as they drive the nation forward. Whether you’re just starting your career or a seasoned professional, working at NBN is an opportunity to build Australia’s future and changing the way Australians live, work and play.
Microsoft
Microsoft offers a wide range of career opportunities across fields such as technology, engineering, marketing, sales, and operations.
As a technology company, Microsoft’s mission is to empower people and organisations around the world to achieve more through technology.
Some popular career paths at Microsoft include software engineering, program management, data science, product marketing, and cybersecurity. Microsoft also offers various internship programs, entry-level positions, and leadership development programs.
Why Virtual Work Experience?
FAQs
The program is available to all Australian students between Years 8 and 12, including students in public, private, independent, and religious schools. It can also be accessed publicly by any young person/post school leaver under the age of 23.
The program can be accessed through either the Year 13 website, or through Career Tools for schools. The Career Tools platform is actively used in 2223 schools across all states and territories.
The program is now live across all States and Territories.
The experiences will be accessible for two years from go-live date.
There is no formal application to participate in the program.
Schools interested in the program with access to Career Tools can deliver the program through the platform.
Alternatively, schools and learners can access the program independently through the Year13 website.
However, students are required to create a Year 13 or Career Tools profile to access the experience. This is required to effectively provide ongoing services to the student and does include some personally identifiable information including email address and name. This information is not accessible to the Tech Council of Australia or the sponsoring partner.
The Virtual Work Experiences will take at the most 3 hours to complete. However, some learners may be able to get through it faster. They can be completed all at once, or in multiple sessions.
Support is available for teachers through lesson plans and online delivery of lessons by the Tech Council of Australia and partners, and Year13 technical support as needed.
For any enquiries, please email: community@techcouncil.com.au or contact Year 13, here.
The experience is adaptive and can be accessed via smart phone, tablet, laptop or desktop devices.
As the experience is targeted at high school students, we expect they will be able to access an internet connected device in either a school, library, or home environment.
The online content is available via all modern browsers. Some students may be required to install an update to their browser of choice if it is significantly out of date.
Closed captions and transcripts are provided on all video content.
1.5mbps download speeds are sufficient to access the most download intensive components of the Virtual Work Experience when viewed in SD480p.
An offline version will be made available for distribution to schools via email where bandwidth is not sufficient for students to access the web content. This content may be printed (with video transcripts included) or used on a local network to include video content.
