Kamal Thapa

Kickstart Your Career in Australia

Indian born Kamal Thapa, now a resident in Australia, and ICMS Master of Management alumnus has advice for students wanting to kickstart their career in Australia.

Not only has he done it himself, but in the past two years, he has coached over 20 people, getting them closer to their professional goals, and guided many others who did not know what their career goals should be.

“The best part,” he said, “is that I have grown with them.”

Kamal has achieved all this in both his full-time current role as Customer Service & Sales Manager at Scene to Believe, a leading Event Photography business in Australia, and in his studies at the International College of Management, Sydney (ICMS).

He completed a Master of Management (Management & Organisations) last year.

“While I truly love delivering world-class experiences to the clients and customers I deal with at Scene to Believe, the most enjoyable and exciting part of my career is helping others develop and grow in their career,” he said.

“My work experience during my undergrad study taught me a tremendous amount on how businesses are run and managing people. I understood that managing people and organisations is what I want to do in the long-term.”

Kamal’s journey to management at an Australian photography company started when he arrived in Australia to undertake his postgraduate studies at ICMS.

“More than anything else, I was excited about that mandatory Industry Training (600 hours) that formed part of the degree. But soon after I came here and started living on campus, I realised ICMS has much more to offer with a breath-taking location, fantastic faculty, and long-lasting friendships,” he said.

“Straight after Senior Secondary School (12th grade in India), I started working. I never went to Uni or college. I started distance learning and completed my undergraduate degree in English Literature. My ICMS journey has given me the college experience that I missed in my undergrad, and my work experience, alongside excellent education at ICMS, has allowed me to push myself closer to my long-term goals.”

Kamal’s own initiative and hard work allowed him to fully pursue opportunities made available by the ICMS Industry Training Internships (Work Integrated Learning) program, which is exemplary in the Australian tertiary sector and which is a hallmark of the higher education institution’s career-focused education’. Master’s degrees at ICMS offer two trimesters of professional placement / work integrated learning which are organised by the ICMS WIL team.

Having started his ICMS industry training at FedEx, where Kamal was managing a key account of the business, mid-way through his industry training he pursued a more senior role at Scene to Believe.

“As a Customer Service Manager at Scene to Believe, I led a team of 12-15 Customer Service Officers and both these workplaces gave me the opportunity to apply into practice what I learned at ICMS,” Kamal said.

“These roles during my industry training allowed me to hone my reasoning, analytical, and decision-making skills which will play an important role in overcoming any professional and personal challenges that lie ahead.”

Kamal’s Top Tips to Kickstart Your Career in Australia:

If you are still deciding what to study:

Understand yourself, your potential, and your inborn skills to see where you belong and what you would be best at. Then look for related courses and go about it. It is very important to choose what you love and not just what career choices are doing well in the market.

If you are searching for a job:

• NETWORK and be confident in your abilities! Speak to an alumni or your career coach at ICMS. They will be able to guide you in the right direction, set goals (for the kind of roles you are looking for/ for the companies you want to work at), prepare a strong resume and LinkedIn profile etc.
• Have some great examples ready for when you worked in a team, solved a problem. Examples of when you failed, learnt from the experience, and succeeded.
• Finally, accept FEEDBACK positively. You may not land the job you want in the first interview, but you should always be thankful for the opportunity to interview.

If you have started your career already, Congratulations! To stay ahead of your colleagues, you must:

• Learn: Now that you have finished your degree, this is your chance of applying the theory you learnt in class, into practice. You will find tremendous opportunities to learn new things from your own experience as well as your colleagues.
• Be respectful – To your colleagues, your boss, or anyone else you are dealing with at work.
• Honesty and Integrity – Be honest, with everyone around you. You may find people who are being dishonest to achieve outcomes they want. They will fail in the long run.

For more information on ICMS, click here: https://www.icms.edu.au/

For more information on Scene to Believe, click here: https://www.scenetobelieve.com.au/