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Congratulations to the Graduates!

We'd like to congratulate this semester's graduates of Victoria University's Workplace Communications for Skilled Migrants, and everyone involved with the course's success!

Frank Liu on graduation day.

This year's graduation speech was made by Fidela A. Ladores. She was kind enough to let us reproduce it on our blog.

Graduation Speech

Good evening everyone. I am very pleased to deliver a speech on behalf of my classmates to reflect on the skills and experiences that we have gained on our course on Workplace Communication for Skilled Migrants.

Bouncing back from redundancy

“One of the most common things people look for in their job in these current economic times is security. How secure you’re likely to be feeling often boils down to two things: the likelihood of losing your current job and how hard it might be to get a new job if that happened. The bad news is that you have no real control over the first thing; but the good news is that career planning gives you an enormous amount of control over the second.”

Excerpted from “How to keep your cool if you lose your job”, Kathryn Jackson.

EVENT: Networking for young public sector professionals.

IPANZ NPs (New Professionals) just sent me an invitation to their Social Series Launch. It's a great chance for you to meet other young people who are pursuing a career in government. Here's the invitation in full:

The IPANZ New Professionals would like to invite you to join us in celebrating the launch of our Social Series.

The Social Series is a series of relaxed events where new professionals in the public sector can join colleagues and comrades for a friendly drink and chat, straight after work.

The First 90 Days in your government job

The CE of The Department of Internal Affairs, Brendan Boyle, was a recent guest at one of The Johnson Group’s Thursday afternoon talks. Brendan spoke about his experiences as a CE, changes in government, and offered some practical advice to new (and aspiring) public sector managers.

Bill English on Public Policy Challenges Facing New Zealand

Bill English spoke to IPANZ professionals on Wednesday about the challenges to come in public policy. The government's aim, to deliver better and more effective services to the public, is one of six identified economic policy drivers.

From the press release: Improving frontline services, avoiding the debt trap

EEO Trust: The Ageing Workforce

Our workforce is getting older as our population ages. By the middle of this century, it's estimated that a quarter of New Zealanders will be aged over 65. This means that we'll rely heavily on older workers to ensure productivity rates remain high. As the New Zealand's "babyboomers" website puts it - retaining older workers will be critical.

What’s the cost of recruitment?

Kirsty has recently been reading Greg Savage’s recruitment blog, and pointed out an article that focuses on the actual cost to an organisation to recruit directly. One of Greg’s key points was that in many cases organisations aren’t aware of what it costs them to recruit internally. There are a huge number of issues, often unaddressed, that can affect an organisation that recruits this way, including both the financial cost and a drain on the organisation’s productivity.

Resume Gaps - and how to handle them.

I'm a member of a lot of different jobseeker forums, and I've noticed that one of people's biggest resume worries is what to do when their employment history has gaps. Especially if those gaps are the result of being unable to find a new position - often for months at a time.

Public sector and procurement in In Business magazine.

It might be a bit late to mention this, as many of you have probably read this month's In Business. But the August/September issue has two great articles relevant to the public sector. You can read them online at the In Business website.

Adrian Wimmers writes about Public service from outside the
public sector
, and public service businesses (PBS) - public-private sector parternerships:

What to do when government contract work dries up...

The changed labour market has had a huge impact on professional contractors at all levels of government. While we’re seeing definite signs of change now, as well as hearing a lot of positive things about the future and new public sector work programmes, we know that the past months have been decidedly tough for people working in the contracting space.

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