👋 Hello!

Welcome to the fifth edition of The Early Impact, the newsletter that provides you with news, updates and resources on how to build your career as an emerging professional.

It’s the end of the financial year, which is always a time for reflection. On my LinkedIn, I wrote about what it had been like posting twice a week for a year and the lessons learned from that. As I write the fifth edition of this newsletter and think about the data/feedback I’ve recieved, I’m slowly making some improvements to ensure I’m delivering the best content I can moving forward.

Let’s get into it!

📰 News & Updates

The monthly roundup of emerging professional news and updates

• Weak productivity halts minimum wage rise: The Fair Work Commission has warned that stalled productivity and falling profits in the retail and hospitality industries remain barriers to reversing the fall in real wages since the pandemic. The wage panel on Monday increased rates in 121 awards by 3.75 per cent from July 1 to assist 2.6 million minimum award workers with cost-of-living pressures. (AFR)

• Gen Z and millennials are changing careers and job hopping more than older generations: Gen Z and millennials are job hopping much more frequently than their boomer bosses in the pursuit of happiness — and it's putting pressure on employers (ABC).

• Women in media report grim three-year-high for career dissatisfaction: A majority of women in the Australian media industry are dissatisfied with their career progression, and more than one-third are thinking about leaving their jobs, new research shows. But why? And how? (ABC)

📑 Publications

Useful references, documents, and sources

• Coursera Global Skills Report 2024: Drawing on data and insights from over 148 million learners and 7,000 institutional customers—and content from 325 of the world’s leading university and industry partners, understand the rapidly changing skills landscape and the availability of skilled talent worldwide (Coursera).

• Hays Salary Guide FY24/25: Australia and New Zealand’s most comprehensive guide to salary and recruitment trends. You’ll find salary trends to check you’re earning what you’re worth, the benefits top employers are offering to secure the best talent, and the skills employers are looking for when hiring (Hays).  

📢 Opportunities

Professional growth opportunities that can help shape your future

• Devpost: Join the world's best online and in-person hackathons. Multiple hackathons are listed here.

• Tech Council: Virtual Work Experiences for young learners to explore technology careers and jobs for free.

• Kaggle: Grow your data science skills by competing in exciting competitions. Multiple competitions are listed here.

• Google: Build incredible apps with the Gemini API! It's your chance to make a real difference - or just have some serious fun in the Gemini API Developer Competition.

• Career Diary: Find your passion. Join a community. Explore new hobbies. Multiple different opportunities are listed here.

• Hackathons.com.au: a curated list of upcoming hackathons and STEM challenges in Australia, New Zealand, and around the globe. Multiple hackathons and STEM challenges are listed here.

🗓️ Events

Online and In-Person events for progressing your career

• Build Club: A community of AI Engineers, researchers and builders pushing the frontier of AI forward. Join us and build your startup with a community who cares about AI. Multiple events are listed here.

• QPay: Discover university clubs, events, and merch. Multiple events are listed here.

• Sydney AI, Data and Tech Events: The hottest technology and AI events in Sydney! Multiple events are listed here.

• Melbourne AI, Data and Tech Events: The hottest technology and AI events in Melbourne! Multiple events are listed here.

🧠 Thought Leadership

Expertise, insight, opinions and experience in careers

• Eleven top career tips from Australia’s female business leaders: Lead with compassion, don’t assume you know all the answers, and play to your strengths: finalists in the Women in Leadership Awards share advice that has helped them (AFR).

• ‘Productivity theatre’: The false promise of a clear inbox and other ‘busy work’: Workers are undermining their output by focusing on “short-term wins” such as responding to emails and ticking off menial tasks on their to-do list instead of prioritising high-value work (AFR).

• Young people hate making phone calls – could it be hurting their careers?: A 2023 survey of more than 1,000 Gen Z Australians aged between 18 and 26 found that almost 60% dread making or accepting a phone call. Another from the United States found that 81% of millennials get anxious before making a call. So what’s going on, and how might it impact young people’s careers? (The Conversation)

• Negotiating a new salary or a pay rise? Here’s what you need to know to succeed: Know what you want and why, step into the other person’s shoes, and have a solid backup plan (The Conversation).

• Humour can make you a better workplace leader, if you use it properly – here’s how: Humour – whether it manifests as a funny anecdote, joke, performance or witty remark – is a crucial tool for good leadership (The Conversation).

• Learning to Delegate as a First-Time Manager: First-time managers must delegate to succeed. This transition requires a mindset shift from "doing" everything to effectively "managing" a team (HBR).

• Identify - and Develop - Your Natural Strengths: Forget about your weaknesses for a while; work to identify and develop your innate strengths, and then use them with intention (HBR).

🛠️ Featured Tool

One great career tool you need

Skillsroad is an Australian platform specifically aimed at young professionals looking to take their first steps in the working world. As outlined by what they do, they help you:

• Secure your skills: use their resources to dip into the world of work and get a clearer picture of what life after Year 12 is really like. You have many options: they help you discover them.​​

• Secure your strengths: explore your natural skills, passions and which industries, careers and education pathways are best for YOU, using tools such as the Skillsroad Career Quiz, Job Fit Test and 360 VR workplace.

• Secure your space: be empowered to take the next step into the world of work and start forging your own path.

🃏Quick Extra

A bonus from me

“How great leaders inspire action” by Simon Sinek, a talk nearly a decade and a half old, is one of the most viewed TED Talks in the world with over 19 million views.

Simon Sinek presents a simple but powerful model for how leaders inspire action, starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers.

A standout quote to me, “People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it”.

…and that’s all for this month’s edition of The Early Impact. Feel free to hit 'reply' and let me know how I did!

Cheers,

Noah

P.S. I post on LinkedIn too if you want to see more frequent content from me!