Paper Plane, a world-first project-based adult education platform, has revolutionised the way young marketers and UX designers can up-skill and gain genuine work experience to stay relevant in today’s continually changing marketplace of new technologies and consumer behaviours.
Scentre Group Westfield, BT Financial Group and Foyster Media have worked collaboratively with Paper Plane to co-craft projects that offer “work experience” as genuine on-the job-experience. The projects will each see 10-12 participants briefed on live projects to create strategies that will feed the innovation pipeline for the businesses, and for the participants provide them with all-important certified project experience that can be touted on their resumes.
Paper Plane: Real Projects. Real Brands. Real Experience. from Paper Plane on Vimeo.
Managing director of Paper Plane, Mike O’Brien, recognises today’s workforce demands people who appreciate that their career will not be linear but rather a portfolio of experiences.
“In today’s current climate to stay relevant and valued in any role, you need to identify want you know, what you don’t know, what you need to know – and then set about developing those skills you lack. We’ve given ‘work experience’ a makeover and turned it into a valued on the job experience.”
The three launch projects include:
- Scentre Group Westfield expects more than 530 million customer visits to shopping centres in 2017. The brief is to create a UX strategy and prototypes that will enhance customer experience for Westfield shoppers in the future, from trip planning to in-store activity and receiving goods at home.
- Foyster Media’s brief is to develop creative marketing strategies for The Carousel.com and its newly acquired platform womenlovetech.com, which is devoted to promoting technology and innovation to a female audience.
- BT Financial Group’s brief is to develop a UX design strategy that will help BT Financial customers navigate investing, superannuation and insurance with ease.
“Paper Plane also recognises the importance of not just developing an individual’s technical skills, but skills they need to adapt to change and drive innovation – skills employers are increasingly demanding – such as creative thinking, collaboration, empathy and leadership. We do this by providing personal coaching as part of the project journey to develop not only an individual’s knowledge base but their interpersonal skills crucial to success in today’s work environments,” added O’Brien.
Paper Plane projects are seven weeks in length and include weekly workshops conducted via video conferencing, provision of world-class curated content, support of a Project Leader and a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach plus exposure to leading Australian brand experts and leaders, and a certified industry referral upon completion.
