By Darren Foster, Training Services Manager
Training Australians to improve their ability to find work is a very rewarding career, and something we’re passionate about at VERTO. Having worked for a number of years in the sector, I’ve seen so many success stories and it’s made this a very rewarding period for me personally in my career.
Core to that success is our trainers. They play such an important role in delivering our courses and, with the upheaval we’ve seen in 2020 and the need to shift so much of our face-to-face course work to online, it’s meant that both VERTO and our trainers have had to change practices.
Ensuring we resource our business
Being a trainer comes with many rewards beyond salary alone. At VERTO we work with so many students that come from a disadvantaged background, which, in itself, is an incredibly important area to focus on. 95 per cent of our students also come from regional and remote communities; being able to deliver training that can change the career prospects of a student is something that provides a unique sense of accomplishment that I know our trainers love.
During this recent period, we’ve focused heavily on ensuring that we resource our teams for success. With the increased online element to our training, we’ve had to focus on streamlining and improving our processes to ensure our trainers have the necessary time and resources to adapt practices to this new norm. That change has been a real positive one and will have a flow on effect in helping our trainers provide the necessary time to engage every one of our students.
Student centric learning
Our team takes a student-first approach to learning: By putting students at the centre of our business, it helps VERTO to achieve some incredibly positive learning outcomes. Two areas I want to highlight are actually outside the courses we run: Our pre-training and post-training focus.
VERTO has implemented a very successful pre-training review system that is geared heavily toward ensuring our students are doing the course that best fits their needs. That review takes into account the students unique circumstances and their specific career journey. We assess those parameters and then provide a recommendation to the student on whether the course is suited to their needs and if it isn’t, then we suggest alternatives to help them on their journey. This has contributed significantly to ensuring our students finish the course they have started as well as making sure it contributes to their longer-term career goals.
We also have benchmarks in work placement post training that provides our students with the best chance to find work in their chosen field. This puts a huge emphasis on finding paid work opportunities and helps connect our students with employers. It also lets our students take advantage of other services VERTO offers to help them on their employment journey.
For our trainers, this provides the right framework to ensure students can maximise their skills and knowledge and action it into real employment opportunities.
A rewarding career
Our trainers have one of the most satisfying careers, helping those in the community who face disadvantage, and it’s core to what we do at VERTO. With an average salary in the $135, 000 range, it’s also a financially rewarding one too.
To find out about trainer opportunities, visit our website www.verto.org.au or contact VERTO on 1300 483 786.
