How one student optimised CareerTrackers to land Salesforce

How one undergraduate maximised support from a program aimed at helping Indigenous students through uni and into jobs.

Dooley Whitton, who has come through the CareerTrackers program to work for Salesforce.

By the time Dooley Whitton was more than halfway through his commerce degree at the University of Wollongong in 2019, he was well aware that he needed to graduate with at least two different internships under his belt “to look like a decent candidate for a job”.

It was a worry, right up until his sharp-eyed girlfriend spotted an online ad for CareerTrackers, the not-for-profit organisation that specialises in supporting Indigenous students through university and into careers.

The Kamilaroi man from Wagga Wagga, now 23, immediately applied, and received a call back on the same day, beginning a relationship that has yielded him two paid internships in his area of interest, marketing, and ultim­ately landed him a job.

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He will take up his entry-level position at customer relationship management service company Salesforce in May.

Whitton expects to manage the two subjects left in his degree comfortably while he embarks on working life, but university did not always come naturally to him, which is where CareerTrackers also made a difference.

On returning to study after his first internship, in the summer of 2019-20, with Sydney company PHD Media, he began working closely with his CareerTrackers adviser on lifting his grades.

“When the semester kicked off, we started having monthly catch-ups and those involved me setting goals for the semester,” Whitton says.

“I also reflected on the previous month with how I’d gone with studying and results and just that balancing of university and life. This was a massively helpful point for me because I started getting some of the best grades that I’d ever gotten after doing this.”

His adviser also prepared him to apply for the second internship, with Salesforce, also based in Sydney. The COVID-19 lockdown had been and gone by then, but many people were working remotely.

“The whole onboarding and interview process was all via webcam and via online. I’d never experienced anything like that before,” Whitton says.

“But all the monthly meetings with CareerTrackers and the switch that my uni made to online learning really helped with that.”

Whitton’s 13-week internship went from the end of November to the start of the university year, mostly working from home, but with trips into the Sydney ­office that were invaluable. “My role was utilising and looking for business opportunities through our social media channel and then for me to find the relevant contacts to pass on to the more experienced guys in the sales team for them to contact,” he says.

“So it was a bit of a support role but, because it’s like that, I have had lots of opportunities to shadow people who did the calling.

“You could always hear people on the phone making sales, checking in with customers and potential customers. It gave me some really good insight into the further progressed roles in that area. I got a lot out of it.”

Whitton is clear that ­CareerTrackers was a gamechanger for his prospects.

“CareerTrackers provided me with an opportunity to get some hands-on real industry experience that was related to my degree. Before then I had only ever worked casual jobs that helped me get by. So for once it was really nice to have a job that was going to benefit me in the long run.”

The decade-old organisation, together with another NFP, Schools Plus, recently shared in a $1m grant from Salesforce to support its work with high schoolers.

“Addressing the inequalities faced by Indigenous Australians is one of the greatest moral obligations for Australia and (for) the business community,” CareerTrackers executive director Jennifer Elliott says.

Salesforce ANZ chief executive Pip Marlow says businesses can be a powerful platform for change.

“It’s also everyone’s responsibility to open more doors, to better represent the communities we live and work,” Marlow says.