As a track rider, Dana Carmont spends her days riding race horses at Awapuni Track in Palmerston North. Working with between 12 and 20 professional race horses every year, Dana has been putting horses through their paces since she left school 20 years ago.
Dana also works at Statistics New Zealand as a survey interviewer and spends a couple of days a month working for the Racing Integrity Board swabbing greyhounds and trots. A busy woman, with not a lot of spare time, Dana has also managed to fit studying online with eCampus NZ into her full schedule.
“I completed a First Line Management qualification online with eCampus NZ. I chose to study online because it’s flexible, fits around my life, was easy to navigate and it was easy to understand. The team at eCampus NZ were also really supportive and responsive and made it easy for me to study in my own time. This was really important to me,” says Dana.
First Line Management is perfect for anyone who is looking to gain confidence in managing a team. It provides learners with the systems and tools to lead in a capable and confident manner and the motivation to take their career in management to the next level.
“In 2017, I took a role as an Operations Manager for a catering kitchen in Melbourne. This was going to be a big step for me and I soon realised I would need to upskill in some areas. Studying First Line Management gave me the skills to communicate better with people, it gave me the toolset to handle conflict and difficult personalities and it also provided me with a better understanding of how businesses run. It has given me skills I can now use in my current role as a track rider and in my role as a survey interviewer. It has so many benefits,” says Dana.
Dana says some of the tips she learned for dealing with difficult personalities has been useful both at work and outside of the office.
“Learning to stay calm and having the knowledge to deescalate a tense situation has been great. Part of this is also having the ability to explain things more clearly and stay steady. All really valuable skills,” says Dana.
Dana would like to do further study and will be choosing online education again.
“It really worked for me. I have never been a study kind of person and sometimes found it too hard. But I enjoyed it and reached my goal.”
Be sure to check out our full range of Student Success Stories and if you would like to learn more about the qualification that Dana achieved, take a look at the New Zealand Certificate in Business (First Line Management) (Level 4)