2025 Network Awards – International Engagement
What the judges said
The team has developed an award-winning employability program that supports international students to build their employability skills. There is strong collaboration with industry and government in implementing the program. The panel was impressed with the use of technology in the program for desirable, scalable outcomes, shown by improved graduate employment for Job Smart students and positive feedback from students that have completed the program.
The initiative
The University of Sydney Business School’s Job Smart Program is an award-winning employability program, having won the AFR Employability award in 2019 and 2025. It is designed exclusively for international students to overcome challenges in finding employment and enable them to build community in a new country.
Job Smart allows international students a flexible and supportive pathway to enhance their career competence, access real-life industry experiences, build their community connections, and ultimately improve their employability outcomes and student experience. International students don’t just want a world class education, they also want to be provided with experiential opportunities, community engagement and industry engagement.
Job Smart is undertaken in 2 phases alongside a student’s curriculum: Job Smart Edge and Job Smart Ultra. In Job Smart Edge, students work on a digital industry project for an Australian organisation in collaboration with their peers, and partake in interactive workshops to equip them with the skills to succeed in the job market. Top performing students are invited to join NSW JobsConnect, a three-week virtual consulting project with an Australian firm under the guidance of a professional industry mentor.
In Job Smart Ultra, students go through a exclusive, interactive recruitment boot camp that simulates the entire graduate recruitment process. Top performing students are awarded with 6 week consulting experiences in Australian companies. Ultra utilises an AI Career Preparation Tool to upskill students in the use and understanding of AI, but also allows the team to scale career support by using AI enabled, instant feedback. We’d like to equip students with the skills to utilise AI to aid their careers, rather than consume them.
Measurable outcomes
Job Smart supports international students to develop and demonstrate employability skills that lead to participants feeling more confident in their career path and more likely to receive a graduate placement or employment. Based on the Survey of Completing Students, 41% of Job Smart completers had a graduate placement or full-time job, vs. only 14% of non-Job Smart students. The program is innovative as it uses an edtech platform to scale participation, and engages students in a gamified program. It is still the only such program in Australia.
The value for investment is high as the costs are absorbed by the providers themselves, and the initiative is embedded within an established, gamified employability program managed internally by the University. To the individual student this initiative helps to create a sense of belonging in a new country, enhances their personal development and well-being by fostering civic values and friendships, enables social and professional connections via a common purpose, and builds valuable real-life employability skills relevant to future careers such as communication skills, critical thinking and problem solving, customer service and interpersonal skills.
The positive feedback from participants is captured via a survey which allows for continuous improvement and has informed the decision to continue this initiative into the future. 90% of participants surveyed would recommend the program to their friends, and 99% say that it has positively contributed to the development of their employability skills. 30% of participants have stated that Job Smart was the reason they chose to study overseas at The University of Sydney Business School.