How these Queenslanders advanced their careers early – and how you can too

Getting that first job after university can be tough. But in Brisbane, a globally renowned business school is giving its graduates all the tools they need to make the leap from classroom to career.

The QUT Business School has a reputation for excellence, having been the first business school in Australia to earn triple international accreditation. This places it among the top one per cent of business schools worldwide to have achieved this marker of quality.

It’s also got a reputation for bridging the gap between university and the real world, by providing practical experience, access to industry experts and lifelong learning opportunities. Here are two graduates who made the most of what the QUT Business School has to offer.

Stephanie Neergaard

Today, at 32, Stephanie Neergaard is enjoying a successful career: she’s an MBA graduate and a senior partner development manager at Microsoft in Brisbane. But 12 years ago, when she was in the final year of her Bachelor of Business (international business, sales and marketing) degree at QUT, she needed help taking the first step on the ladder, and was grateful to earn a spot on the university’s career mentor scheme.

Pictured: Stephanie Neergaard.Credit: Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

“The scheme was fabulous,” Neergaard says. “It partnered me with someone who’d had senior executive roles throughout their career, and they mentored me through selecting the right roles to apply for, and prepared me for interviews.

“I remember I was trying to get into the grad program for IBM. I was sitting in a hotel room in Sydney, terrified, and my mentor was on the phone to me for hours just running through different scenarios, different questions.”

Neergaard’s mentor gave her the confidence to show her personality in interviews, she says. They also helped her develop the resilience to handle countless rejections in her job hunt, and even helped her adjust to corporate life after she got her first graduate job, as a business development manager with tech solutions provider Fujifilm MicroChannel.

Four years later, when Neergaard was choosing a university at which to study an MBA, she ended up enrolling at QUT again. “I had such a great experience the first time,” she says.

She was also won over by the practical approach that the QUT MBA offered.

“When I spoke to the faculty staff, it was very much around ‘what you learn in the classroom one night, you should be able to take into your job the next morning’.”

And QUT delivered. “My salary increased significantly within 12 months of completing that degree. I had promotions. I leapfrogged other candidates and was able to be shortlisted very quickly for roles that I went for, and I directly attribute that all to the MBA.”

Harry McKeon

Pictured: Harry McKeon.

As a brand partnerships manager with TikTok in New York, 32-year-old Harry McKeon has spent the past three years working with some of the world’s largest companies to develop their social and media strategy for the platform. Before this, he worked in creative advertising agencies in Brisbane and San Francisco. It’s hard to believe that just nine years ago he was a student at QUT.

“I did a Bachelor of Business, majoring in marketing and advertising, which was great, because I was able to apply so much of what we learned at university to the real world,” he says.

“The subjects were as real-world as they possibly could be. In an advertising campaign subject, for example, we broke into groups and were each assigned the role of an agency department to work on a real client brief. We then got the opportunity to pitch our campaign ideas to the client live in a local agency. It was nerve-wracking at the time, but a really great experience.”

QUT presented some valuable networking opportunities. “There were regularly people coming in from different industry groups to speak to us.”

One of those groups was Youngbloods, a network for young people in the advertising industry. “I ended up joining the committee in my last semester of university. And then after university I was chairman for a couple of years.”

McKeon also took part in a QUT exchange program, spending an “amazing” six months at the University of Minnesota. And he got his first job at a creative agency while he was still at uni; he spent his last semester working and studying.

“My attitude at uni was to try to take up every opportunity I possibly could, and follow every single lead I got, which ultimately was helpful in finding a job.”

From there, his career has taken off. “I always wanted to live in the States,” he says, “and fortunately, there are so many great opportunities available through this career path.”

And he is far from the only QUT graduate to be enjoying success.

“QUT has produced a number of ad industry leaders. It’s always nice to see how well other people from the uni are doing.”

Explore the courses mentioned in this article or discover the full suite of QUT business courses here.