Things I learnt from QUT Business Advantage

It has been almost a year since I started at QUT. Though I heard about Business Advantage during the orientation in my very first day, I didn’t take part in it until my second semester. For those who haven’t heard about this program, Business Advantage is an extra-curricular program aiming to help business students develop comprehensive skills through interaction, group discussion, presentation and even debating.

Usually each workshop lasts for half a day or a whole day and is hosted in the first several weeks of the semester (it books out very fast!) by facilitators from the industry.

After attending four workshops (Public Speaking, Employment Preparation, Professional Facilitation and Business Design Thinking), I’d like to share with you what I learnt so far from this program.

• We all like those who encourage others to talk

As each Business Advantage workshop involves group discussion, I’ve noticed there are always extroverted people mixed with introverted people in the group. On one hand, there are people who always keep talking and don’t give those more reserved ones the chance to talk. On the other hand, you’ll also quickly fell in love with those who lead the flow of the discussion and ask everyone ‘what do you think?’.

• Make friends with people you meet in Business Advantage

In Business Advantage, unlike lectures where you don’t really have huge amounts of time to talk with other students, you get the chance to spend the whole day with students from the Business School. I made quite a few friends simply by asking them about their experience of this program and talking about our major during lunch break.

Trust me, you’ll definitely bump into those friends again on various occasions such as careers fair, networking events and club activities.Your confidence will build up when meeting friends in networking events because you know you’re not alone; you are with someone who shares the same goals like you!

• Try to apply what you learnt in the workshop to real life

The Business Design Thinking workshop facilitated by Kevin Finn, Founder of TheSumof, was extremely useful and practical where I learnt how to use business canvas model to present business ideas. When last week I saw a sponsorship opportunity to Hong Kong and mainland China where a business plan is part of the application, this business canvas model I learnt came into handy and helped me a lot in sorting my ideas out.

There are still quite a few workshops I want to attend next semester, I’m sure I’ll learn more and hope to see you there as well!