National agenda – tuscon reveals new initiative and pilot program

As tuscon celebrates the second birthday of iexchange, Founder and CEO Justin Robinson reflects on the success of the program and talks about the company’s next great adventure.

Q: How do you rate the iexchange program?

A: iexchange reaffirmed our belief that there is great value in creating meaningful links between talented university students and resource-starved employers. Close to three quarters of the students who successfully entered the iexchange program have found permanent jobs and the remainder have gained paid work experience in the Australian workforce.

Q: When will iexchange be expanded to other universities around Australia?

A: iexchange was designed to test the waters in the Queensland market and prove concept. While the program has been successful on many measures, it highlighted the need to ensure it could expand rapidly to service all of Australia's universities simultaneously. Our focus is now on delivering a scalable solution.

Q: Why focus on university students?

A: Universities are home to the next generation of highly-skilled workers in Australia and the stomping grounds of our future leaders. I believe there is enormous potential for our nation to benefit by forging better links between the university and corporate sector. Beyond that, I feel we have an opportunity to develop a model for making connections that can be replicated around the world - delivering the same benefits using Australian ingenuity.

Q: Where will tuscon go from here?

A: University talent is the key to servicing Australia's ongoing resource drought. Our first product - iexchange - focussed on a select segment of the university talent pool, targeting post-graduate students. Our focus now is to address all segments of the university talent pool and provide employers with unrivaled access to potential employees currently studying at university. Our second product is currently in the research and development phase.

Q: When will tuscon’s next product be unveiled?

A: There is no rest for the team at tuscon. We are working hard to develop our second product and in the coming months, we’ll be giving the product a thorough road test with a pilot program. We expect to launch the new product in late 2008.

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