This Place and Train Programme is hosted by Regional Corridor Development Authority (RECODA), Curtin University Malaysia and Horizn Digital had the honors to train the participants that were involved in it. This programme intends to provide industry-driven job development and creates employment opportunities for Sarawakians to tackle unemployment. This programme also assists industries to identify right-fit candidates to be equipped with relevant skills based on industry needs. This program actually lasted from 29th November 2022 up until 5th December 2022 which is 6 days long but we were trainers for the first few days and the remaining were Curtin University Malaysia lecturers.
Throwback to Day 1 of the program, Owen Choo was the the first speaker of the day where he focuses on speaking about social media and marketing content strategies, for both B2B and B2C small businesses in Miri. He greatly shows his passion about sharing his social media strategies and expert insights with the trainees who can benefit from them. He also shared examples of Horizn Digital’s social media insights and his digital marketing experience with others as he has been in this industry for more than five years.
On day 2, we moved on to the next session that we specialize in, which is visual arts and videography. The speaker of the day was Herbert Ho assisted by Allan Chai. Herbert had shared his experiences as a filmmaker, his hobby of using film cameras and also some of the production shot by him. That day’s activities were mostly hands-on and practical, Herbert had assigned tasks to each group divided earlier on to take the most creative photo of an object they desired and edit themselves. Same goes to producing a video where the groups assigned themselves who should be the director, actor and editor. It was a fun yet impactful activity, so that they can test where their basic skills are at. Additionally, he recommended some application tools he used to do simple video editing which is Capcut for simple short videos or reels. Whereas for photo editing was Adobe Lightroom where he teaches the trainees how to do simple photo corrections and lighting.
Whereas on the third day of the session, Basil Tiong and Liew Kah Mun shared about website development, branding and graphic design. Basil first began his sharings on branding which includes thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and reactions to everything from direct marketing efforts to large-scale ad campaigns and specific product launches. He shares that by thinking of it as a holistic approach that combines elements of user experience, customer experience, and brand identity all in one to encompass a broader perception of the brand at large. He had fully shared his experience from pursuing his Engineer degree to becoming a graphic designer the past year together with his ups and downs along the journey. Wrapping up the session with some hands-on sessions by guiding trainees how to design a A4 size poster in Canva.
On the last day, Jarone Choo, our Chief Marketing officer shared some basic theory on marketing. He divided the trainees to a group of five, and let them do some practical 6-month Marketing plan to write down strategies in an organized manner according to the industry they are specialized in. Afterwards, letting them do a short presentation about their marketing plan. He interacted with the trainees and discussed them on what could be further improved based on their presentation. Also, guiding them what they can perform in the near future so that they will gain some tips or two from him!
To end the whole program, on behalf of RECODA, Curtin University Malaysia had presented a certification of completion to the participants. In addition to that for the next six months, if the participants face any problems or confusion they can communicate with the trainers about their problems they faced in the real life working industry.
We wish all the participants best of luck in everything they do!