I got the job! Working at Starlight Children’s Foundation

Remem­ber that job inter­view I sat in Decem­ber in Wodon­ga? No? Well, I did, and I got the gig! I’ve start­ed work­ing at the Starlight Chil­dren’s Foun­da­tion as a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing producer.

I’m delight­ed to be head­ing back to full-time employ­ment — it’s been a good few years of free­lanc­ing, not-for-prof­it work, some surgery thrown in for vari­ety’s sake and, of course, plen­ty of fish­ing and cycling. How­ev­er, as no Insta­gram influ­encer efflu­encer will ever tell you, some lifestyles and hob­bies are pret­ty darned expen­sive and unsus­tain­able, and occa­sion­al­ly we have to trade in the flan­nelette and lycra for a busi­ness shirt to pay for it all.

In that regard I feel like I’ve hit the jack­pot: earn­ing a liv­ing with­out sell­ing the soul. The team here is won­der­ful­ly friend­ly and accept­ing. It’s a great cause — help­ing put some hap­pi­ness in the lives of seri­ous­ly sick kids — and wel­com­ing? Well! Let me tell you… Starlight nails the wel­come. My role is fill­ing in for a peri­od of mater­ni­ty leave, and the woman going on leave (Vanes­sa) was such a won­der­ful help! She col­lat­ed pages upon pages of han­dover doc­u­ments going into com­pre­hen­sive detail on every aspect of the job she could think of. She’s been with Starlight for a long time and this was a mas­sive help as I feel like I’ve some big shoes to fill.

With COVID-19 Omi­cron ram­pag­ing through Aus­tralia, a face-to-face first day was­n’t pos­si­ble. So my lap­top was couri­ered to me, in a big bright pur­ple and yel­low box with “Wel­come Ryan” print­ed all over it. Inside was my lap­top (of course) as well as some Starlight col­lat­er­al, a mag­ic wand and plen­ty of glit­ter. BUT: the love­ly col­league who pre­pared this spark­ly wel­come put the glit­ter inside the lap­top, all over the key­board! It was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly the nicest wel­come I’ve received, and the mean­est! (As a tech geek I can already fore­see all the skipped char­ac­ters and prob­lems get­ting it out of the keys!)

But the wel­come did­n’t stop there: the entire Mar­ket­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tions team made up Wel­come Ryan back­grounds on Microsoft Teams, and every­body sched­uled in one-on-one meet­ings to prop­er­ly intro­duce them­selves and make sure I felt right at home. It was awe­some, and I can tell this is going to be a nice place to work…