Navigating coursing rivers, raging fires and job interviews - meet Bachelor of Science alumni Johanna Tachas.
Johanna is an environmental science graduate from the University of Melbourne who completed a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Estuarine Ecology (the study of organisms that live where rivers meet the sea). She has a strong passion for nature, conservation and science communication. Johanna recently secured a graduate position at DELWP where she works as a graduate fire officer. Her role involves fieldwork, the planning and implementation of fuel management strategies and an emergency management role as an operational fire-fighter.
During her Bachelor of Science, Johanna completed the Job Ready employability short course which increased her confidence in interviews and job applications and helped her secure her job at DELWP.
Why did you decide to enrol in the Job Ready program?
I was terrified of interviews and didn't have a clue how to prepare my CV. I wasn't sure where I was going wrong with my CV for science jobs as I had been successful in attaining casual retail or hospitality jobs in the past. I wanted to overcome this fear and understand what employers were looking for to ensure I was putting effort in the right places when editing my CV and preparing for interviews. Before the course, I had felt quite hopeless towards job seeking as most of my peers and mentors had discussed the difficulty in finding a job in the environmental science field.
How has your Job Ready experience impacted your studies and intended career pathway?
Just after finishing the course I decided to apply for my first grad program. I had heard of these grad programs being both prestigious and notoriously difficult to get into due to their extensive interviewing and screening processes. Job Ready gave me the confidence to apply for a grad program and working for Victoria Jobs throughout 2020. Since completing the course I applied for 5 jobs and received 4 interviews, beforehand I was missing out on the interview due to my written application.
Tell us about your full-time job at DELWP.
I work in the fuel management team which is in charge of planning and implementing hazard reduction burns. It involves working with other individuals who nominate areas that require fuel management so both written and verbal communication skills are important. I usually set my own deadlines but must continually keep on top of the weather to look out for opportunities to complete certain burns which have increasingly reduced windows of time to complete.
Day to day involves writing engagement plans, traffic management plans, mapping burns, and discussing or meeting with planned burn operation officers. Other days are fieldwork days where I help with the operational side of planned burning and physically ignite or monitor burns. To ensure I am successfully completing my required tasks I check in with my direct supervisor and ask for feedback.
What was the biggest challenge of your full-time work?
Not expecting too much of yourself in the first month or two especially in a graduate job where you are expected to learn as you go. And being asked to complete tasks you have no idea where to start or have no experience in doing - just take your time and break it up into the parts you do know and the things you will need to ask for assistance to complete.
How do you feel that your Job Ready experience helped prepare you for this opportunity?
Job Ready has helped me develop an interview and CV skill-set that most likely got me through the group interview stage of the four stage job application process. By practicing behavioural questions and understanding or exposing myself to the STAR method before the interview process I was not as surprised when coming across the questions I did during the interview.
What was your favourite experience as a student in the Job Ready program?
Although the scariest and the most daunting as I hadn't had much STEM interview experience, the mock job interview was my favourite. It threw me into the deep end and got me to practice what I was most fearful of - selling myself in a way that emphasized my strengths and how I overcome my weaknesses as an employee. The preparation I did for the mock interview and feedback I received from it have been important in shaping the way I currently prepare for interviews that use the STAR method and gave me the foundations to respond to behavioural questions in a succinct and personal manner.
What’s a skill you learnt during the Job Ready program that you can’t imagine living without?
Interviewing skills and specifically answering behavioural questions. Prior to the course I found it difficult to pick and discuss the experiences I have had that were relevant for particular jobs. Job Ready has provided me with the skills and knowledge to sort through my experiences and choose the appropriate ones that accentuate my achievements and emphasize why I would be an appropriate candidate.
Is there anything you wish you’d known before you started the Job Ready course? Or if you took the Job Ready course again, is there something you would have done differently?
I'd practice more and put my hand up more, or simply talk through my experiences more during the classes. Practice makes perfect and its better to trial and error in a low-risk scenario rather than in the job interview itself.
What advice would you give to someone interested in taking the Job Ready program, or an employability course in general?
Job Ready and similar employability short-courses provide an essential crash-course into employability skills that is necessary for today's competitive job market. If you have the opportunity to do a course like these, I'd wholeheartedly recommend it - even if it gets you to simply think about the experiences you've had in a way that attracts employers, it is infinitely beneficial.
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