Kim Chetty: Inside the Melbourne Business Practicum
By Seth Robinson
The Melbourne Business School is an unparalleled opportunity to connect and network with peers who may in turn become your future colleagues. The Melbourne Business Practicum (MBP) takes this potential a step further, offering MBS students a chance to go beyond the walls of their school and make real world connections in their city.
Master of Management (Marketing) student Kim Chetty found herself working with the National Heart Foundation (NHF), an organisation that had previously taken on two cohorts of MBP students. Kim’s group was assigned to work on proposing a viable mentorship model for the new Researcher Alumni program, a project that has allowed Kim to put the skills she’d learned at MBS into practice. Since then, she’s been offered a part-time role with the NHF, which has allowed her to continue the work she started as part of the MBP.
“Initially I did a lot of general management, modelling, and worked on the mentorship part of the alumni project,’ she says. ‘Now I’m working on marketing material for the alumni project, which I love. It was the same with the MBP, you just want to keep going with it. It’s a lot of dedication, but I really enjoy it.”
Kim will be going to Shanghai in July for the Global Business Practicum as well, but for her there was a major desire to do the MBP first.
“I chose to do the Melbourne Business Practicum so I could make local connections, and get experience in the city that I want to pursue a graduate role in. I think going overseas is important; it’s great to travel and experience new things and markets, but I was really looking to meet people in my city first. I wanted to understand what it’s like to work here, and the opportunities that have come out of it so far have been incredible.”
For the team at the National Heart Foundation, the MBP has been equally rewarding. It’s provided them with a new resource to direct towards projects, and an opportunity to reflect on the way they structure their work.
“The work they get through in a couple of weeks is just phenomenal. They are just so focused. It forces us to define what the questions are, what the process is, and what the outcome we want is. It helps us with planning the rest of our in-house tasks; it’s really helped the business,” says Sarah from the NHF. “We would absolutely encourage any organisation that’s thinking about taking on one of these groups to go for it. It’s really enriching, not just professionally, but personally as well, as we’re able to see all this new talent make a difference to the team.”
Find out more about the University of Melbourne Business Practicum.
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