Gladstone school students are learning first-hand what it means to enter the workforce through Gladstone Ports Corporation’s Work Placement Scheme.
Over the last six months the GPC/LNG Dredging team has taken on a number of work experience students in accounting, business administration and environment.
Placements are from all Gladstone schools with coordination through the School and Industry Network.
The program has been a successful introduction to the workplace with students undertaking inductions prior to starting the program, wearing site requirements for PPE, working industry hours, and working with the industry leaders of today that the students want to become in the future.
Gladstone State High school student Hayden Holley , 16, has been hired casually with pay over the school holidays after excelling in his work experience with GPC’s LNG Dredging team in early December.
“ I started doing work experience through school and I was asked to come back and work through the holidays, ” Hayden said.
“In the future I would like to become a mechanical engineer, but I thought I would try something different and try accounting work as I love mathematics and problem solving.”
Hayden’s work ethics impressed LNG project commercial manager Michael Stone so much so, that Haden has now been hired in the LNG Dredging Commercial Department with pay over the Christmas break.
“Hayden stuck out as a very mature young man who could be given tasks and be left alone, ” Mr Stone said.
“He can be set a task at the beginning of the day and I don’t have to go near him for the full day. He is a very mature capable young man and that is what attracted him to us in the project team to invite him back for a longer period.”
Hayden’s goal is to get as much industry experience as possible and start university in 2013.
“It’s great to have all these industries here in Gladstone,” Hayden said.
“There are lots of opportunities going around in Gladstone and these jobs are the best available and I’m going to make sure I’m a part of it all.”
THE GPC operate two work experience programs, a Work Placement Scheme and a Vocational Placement Scheme. The Work Placement Scheme gives high school students an opportunity to view first hand, the many and varied career opportunities available throughout GPC, while the Vocational Placement Scheme allows university students to gain valuable work experience.
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Dredging Today Staff, January 5, 2012; Image: westernbasinportdevelopment