Opportunity knocks transcript

Frances: Everybody's an individual. There's no two people alike that comes through our front doors. And if we remember, most importantly, that everybody leaves their own footprint and everybody has a personal life before they walk through our front door.

Telia: Opportunity Knocks is an event expo where we have invited our clients from APM, our employers, our referral partners, so lots of training organisations as well and really an event for people to be, you know, interviewed on the spot or, the resumes to be handed over, having someone introduce themselves, and allows the clients to be engaging and have their story told.

Rebecca:  APM do amazing work, and we love working with them, so I would highly recommend others just getting in contact, whether it's to come to the Opportunity Knocks expo, or whether it’s to partner with them to help support their clients in some way -  coming to an event like this, I actually get to speak to participants, get to hear about their journey and see where we can help support them on their journey. We do a lot of things, but our core services is supporting women that are returning to the workforce, starting work for the first time, or it can be a crucial life event. We have two services, which is styling services to build confidence and empower them to take that next step in their career journey or life events. We also have an amazing career program that helps support our women that come through for styling, or if they come separately, they're able to do so as well.

Rebecca and Crystal: Well Opportunity Knocks gives us a great opportunity to make sure that we're out there with the community, brand awareness, and give people notice of what's available up in the northern suburbs. Opportunity Knocks is a great way to bring people together so that we can actually show people who we are and what we do. We come from humble beginnings. It's a family owned business. 31 years strong. And I guess the most important part is that we make cakes. All the all the yummy stuff. A grab and go, a sweet treat. We started working with APM earlier in the year and it has been a fantastic way for us to reach out to the local community as well. They have been able to provide resumes, provide candidates. We've already attended a session with job seekers, you know, for our role, and then we took them up to our factory for a tour and made some job offers from there. So they've been really proactive and really supported us and they've taken a lot of the hard work out of out of this process.

Tayla: Hi, I’m Tayla. I’m 29 years old. I found out about Opportunity Knocks through my APM provider, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to extend my horizons on job ideas. I have ADHD and PTSD, so my self-confidence at the start wasn't very much there. And I had to learn how to build that confidence up again which APM was a big impact of that. Meeting employers was the big one for me, because I was so nervous doing interviews because I wasn't confident. But they just said “you can do this” and just bit of practise beforehand and I basically aced it. So I want to show people, doesn't matter what age you are, you don't have to be old or young, you can do anything.

Paul: Duke is a learning platform, so we produce and build online training. So anywhere from certificate training to non-accredited training, I see great value in in these sorts of events. I think it's great to get participants out in front of the different organisations that partner up with APM. And for them to know and feel safe that they're got the opportunity to work with a number of organisations who work together in the participants best interests. And the beauty about the team at APM  is I've got a number of different people that I can call upon and ask advice around different aspects of learning for different types of people and different types of disabilities. And what I love is how engaging and how friendly the staff are at APM to be able to support what we're trying to do, in turn, give people with disabilities the best opportunity to the best they can be.

Sandra: My partnership with APM started because we work in the same sort of building. We are an NDIS service provider, but not only providing services for people on NDIS, who are not on NDIS, and we do volunteering, we do in-kind supports. It's very rewarding working with people with disabilities and especially when they want to do something and don't know where to go, who to ask, and who can help. Talia, Fran and Ricardo have been amazing. They take their time, they understand disability very, very well.

Basil: This would be an opportunity where we as employers, to find the chance to talk to people who are willing to work. We can, because you know, with the time and experience, we can tell whether this person can fit that criteria or not. The problem here is to find the right person. And the other challenge is to keep them. Because usually we do invest in people and we do appreciate APM’s role in that. They never stop. They continue to send us people, they continue to follow up their people, which is very important.

Crystal and Rebecca: One thing is with these events, even if we make one success story, it's helping one person and you make their life a lot easier because we know people need work, mentally and financially.

Paul: The biggest piece of advice is that you need both parties to work well together to achieve the ultimate goal, which is changing a participants life and putting them into education or employment.

Telia: I'm very proud to work for APM. I think that we're, not just with our clients, but with our staff as well, we're very inclusive. If the company can say what they're doing, we can obviously have our employment consultants and managers lead the way to make sure that we are, you know, a business that helps people in the community.

Fran: Yeah, I love my job. Thank you, darling.