By CASEY NEILL
DANDENONG apprentice Mitchell Dowling has trumped more than 35,000 others for a top honour.
The 25-year-old won the Best Victorian Apprentice Award for last year from the Group Training Association of Victoria (GTAV).
“I felt very surprised. I knew I was going quite well, I didn’t know I was going the best,” he said.
Mr Dowling works at Laser 3D in Dandenong, employed by Link Employment and Training.
“Originally I used to do university. I studied for a few years – I did IT and then I did science,” he said.
“Both of them I was like ‘yeah I’m doing it, no I don’t really find it too interesting’.”
So he quit and took on a management position at Coles, where he still works part time.
“I got to about 23 or 24 and went ‘oh God, I’m doing nothing. I better decide on something’,” he said.
He completed a pre-apprenticeship at the end of 2013 and came across fitting and turning.
“And here I am,” he said.
The large laser-cutting company works on car parts, garden screens, installation art and much more.
Mr Dowling said he wanted to move into management, learn about servicing lasers and find out more about emerging technologies like 3D printing and rapid computer numerical control (CNC) machining.
“Things that could be really cool but are on the edge,” he said.
He was among 19 apprentices selected for Group Training Australia’s annual Today’s Skills, Tomorrow’s Leaders program last August.
The seven-day event took place at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in Canberra and was designed to develop leadership and career management skills.
“You can’t really aim for prizes, you just have to aim for doing a really good job,” Mr Dowling said.
He is officially in the second year of his apprenticeship, but it is competency based and he is blitzing his TAFE work.
“I should have my four-year apprenticeship finished in two years,” he said.
He said it helped that he’d started older than most apprentices because he knew what he wanted to do.
“I’m treating it very differently to how I treated university,” he said.
“Also the fact that I get paid to learn is a huge thing.
“I’ve got a 15-grand HECS debt for something that I didn’t even finish.”
