Australian real estate agent relates business experiences to Curtin Sarawak students

Miri – 15 September 2014 – 215 first-year students from the Department of Marketing and Management of the School of Business, Curtin University, Sarawak Malaysia (Curtin Sarawak), learned at a recent industry talk by Kerry Day of Raine & Horne in New South Wales, Australia.

Day is a real estate agent with Raine & Horne, a leading global real estate agency with branches in Australia and a number of other countries. He has over 30 years of building and construction experience, having been involved in more than 12,000 projects and building and renovating many houses.

He recalls working during that time with his father and others who believed in doing the job correctly the first time. He forged an enviable reputation built on honesty, reliability, compassion, commitment and dedication, and armed with a strong work ethic, a desire to help people reach their goals.

Raine & Horne branches provide a comprehensive and integrated range of property services, highly professional property management services, and have access to the full range of Raine & Horne corporate network of commercial and industrial sales and leasing, business sales, insurance and financial services.

Day’s talk entitled ‘Challenges of Stakeholders’ Management’ was delivered as part of the students’ Communication in Business 100 unit. In addition to relating his experiences in the real estate business and highlighting business issues faced by Raine & Horne, he highlighted the importance of partner and stakeholder management.

According to Day, it was a good to hear some of the solutions proffered by the students and he was impressed by the level of understanding they displayed. He concluded by saying that the Australian real estate business is booming and its impact on the environment, communities and the world at large cannot be overlooked.

Curtin Sarawak’s lecturer of marketing and management Margaret Ekisowei said large corporations are often under fire for their actions or inactions and that this is slowly affecting all kinds of businesses, both large and small.

“Case studies in the unit are based on big corporations like Google, Nike and Telstra. It was a good opportunity for students to hear from a franchisee with over 40,000 partners around the world,” said Ekisowei.

Senior lecturer of marketing Dr. Ahmed Rageh, meanwhile, remarked that the unit challenges students to think critically about the role of businesses in society and their impact on the wider environment. It also teaches them the challenges of business communication and interactions with society given the expectations and power of different stakeholder groups, rate of transfer of knowledge and the changing values of society.

Student Wong Jian Sheng said such industry talks expose students to situations they could face as entrepreneurs running their own businesses or in their future workplaces.

International student Carmen Patrrickoh said she was glad for the opportunity to learn about developing strategies to meet a changing business environment.

The students posing with Kerry Day (back row) at the end of the talk.