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If you ask TIV instructor David Lando what advice he’d give to a student on how to get the most out of their training with Trade Institute of Victoria, he’ll keep it pretty simple.
“Decide what you want and stick to it.”
Trade Institute of Victoria’s highly practical and non-standardised approach to training has been a key part to delivering on our key focus on producing employment outcomes for students.
Our training programs are tailored to match each student’s goals to the industry skills that are being sought after in today’s workplace. To help understand more, we talked to David about his best tips and advice on how to get the most out of a TIV certificate or diploma.
Prior to his work at Trade Institute of Victoria, David Lando worked as a professional accountant specialising in the property sector bringing over 25 years of practical knowledge to his role as a trainer. His training with the institute focuses mainly in the areas of management, finance, legal, contracts and relevant IT systems for programs such as the Certificate IV in Building and Construction (Building) and Diploma of Building and Construction.
David sees that the impact of the training at TIV comes from the versatility of how the knowledge can be applied. That’s why he believes having a clear goal at the start of your training is essential because it will shape the way you process the content.
“The information always comes from different angles. It’s not standardised.”
“You get more specialised hands on training. Trainers’ backgrounds represent the content of the units so you get a specialised feel for what’s happening in the real world of small, medium or large building enterprises and what they expect out of their employees whether that’s on the trade side or building management side of things.”
And because of this David says the best way to get the most out of a course at TIV is to turn up prepared.
“I do expect the students to do research. They have to do research. We’ll provide them with a lot of information and tell them where to go for the information. So practice researching in order develop the skills to find the relevant information to help you solve practical problems when you need it.”
A common complaint of the secondary education sector is that study doesn’t truly prepare students for the workplace. While education can often be strong on theory, it can lack real-world context especially in keeping pace with the constant developments that occur in the industry. David emphasises that the students who put in the extra work with the research are able to hit the ground running with an understanding of the field they are preparing to enter and what will be required of them and what skills they need to work on.
“With the knowledge they bring to the course, it can’t be just, ‘Oh, I think I heard about something from a year ago and maybe that applies’. There is a lot of material that is taught, a lot of workshop discussions about the topics and questions. But then you’re still expected to do your own research. In the workplace businesses want people that are well informed and with plenty of hands-on experience.”
And David adds this is something that tends to play out in results students see in the workplace. He says that students that do the best are those that are looking to extend themselves in their career as quickly and effectively as possible.
“Education, from my end, has always added value for money because it allows you to get progress and move up the food chain and students will see that.”
“If they want to move away from labouring and move into management or supervisory roles or structured roles where you’re running parts of a business or their own business, these are the steps you’ll find that you need to take that actually work.”
In the end, David’s advice stems back to his first point of ‘decide what you want and stick to it’. He has seen firsthand that if students are clear with their vision of what they want to achieve and stay on top of the work the results will be real.
“We find from the surveys they undertake once they finish the courses that a lot of them have already started applying some of the techniques to their work programs. A lot of them then move into their own business programs. They might see the benefits two or three years down the track, and I know many students that are already running their own businesses and doing development projects. That wouldn’t have been possible without that diploma level of training.”
In the end, David says, it comes back to results. Preparation allows you to extract the most value out of your time with TIV.
“The education program really does stack up. It adds more value to your workflow programs. If it’s a certificate course or a diploma course, put 100% into and you will get as much out of it as possible.”
If you’re interested in upskilling and getting more qualified in the building and construction industry call us and we’d love to have a chat.
