This is a repost of an article profiling my career in the trade journal for the student accommodation industry in this region, which is published by the Asia Pacific Student Accommodation Association (APSAA). The journal is simply called Student Accommodation. The piece (pictured below) was first published in March 2020 and is available here.
Career in Profile: Cameron Bestwick
In this series, we focus on professional development strategies and spotlight the role of Accommodation Manager. What is it? How can you chart your career towards these types of roles? And what can you expect in a day-to-day context? We speak with Cameron Bestwick – Manager, Student Accommodation at the University of Melbourne
How did you come to work in student accommodation?
Like nearly everybody else I never had a plan to work in student accommodation – I fell into it. What might be a little different about my journey compared to most others is that I started as a resident, rather than coming in laterally from another industry. In the very beginning I was an eager first year, then I volunteered to organise an event, then I took a volunteer role, before taking a paid part-time role, a bigger role, and so on!
When I finished my studies I entered a graduate program in another profession, but I came back to working in student accommodation the first time I was asked. A few jobs later, I’m now the Manager of Student Accommodation for The University of Melbourne.
Where did you start? How did you progress?
My first paid role was as a Community Coordinator for Kinloch Lodge at The Australian National University. The role was similar to what we think of as a Sub-Dean or an Assistant Residential Life Manager in the college and PBSA settings respectively. I worked half-time to oversee a team of other student leaders and manage a small suite of student life programs for 2,000 residents.
When my boss left a year later, I was asked to take over! This was a fantastic opportunity for me, but perhaps more importantly, my employer was putting a lot of trust in me. I don’t think I nailed it but I learned a lot in any case.
Later on, I learned about the business side of things while doing a project management role at The University of Sydney and while I was outside the industry as a management consultant.
I think how people progress in this profession is somewhat unpredictable, but much of my progress so far seems to have stemmed from trying to engage equally with both the business and educational sides of student accommodation.
What are the challenges of the role?
My current role is responsible for the overall success of the University of Melbourne's accommodation portfolio. I face the ever-present challenges of general management, but I am finding there are two specific challenges in my current role: accommodation being new at the university; and having lots of stakeholders to serve.
The second challenge is, in fact, what I find to be the enduring (and also satisfying) source of stimulation in my work. A university’s internal accommodation office is usually trying to join up the needs of many different stakeholders. And for a University-led operation there is usually no single overarching objective like ‘profit’. Instead there is a whole web of stakeholders who have distinct and, let’s face it, sometimes competing needs. If the accommodation team can bring enough energy and inventiveness to our work, we can create an accommodation system that benefits everybody in that web.
What qualifications/tertiary etc do you have?
I have a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a graduate diploma in strategic communications, as well as a few smaller qualifications like a quality auditing diploma and various practical certifications. In hindsight, I think I was particularly lucky throughout my university studies to be able to choose my subjects widely. I've only come to appreciate that breadth in hindsight because I’ve come to realise that, in student accommodation at least, we often have to bring together disparate sources of knowledge and bring them to bear on very practical problems. For that reason having a patchwork of previous types of education and and training is extraordinarily helpful.
If you were starting out in student accommodation today-what would you do differently?
I think it’s really important in student accommodation to be able to work across different disciplines. For instance, I could have back-to-back meetings in the same day about totally different aspects of accommodation, such as finance, marketing, student conduct, service operations, education, staff and culture, ICT, and facilities management. Each of these areas will have its own problems and opportunities, and an effective accommodation manager has to be able to make them fit together to deliver a great environment for students. It’s all interconnected. I don’t think any of us can really master the skill of integrating all these things, but we can always get better at it.
But the big challenge is: most of us begin in a functional silo, such Residential Life or Facilities Management. This is perfectly fine and normal, and whilst it is really important to master the skills required of your 'home' area, at some point, you will need to learn about the other functions of student accommodation if you want to do the best work you can (or if you want to work on bigger problems than yesterday).
So my advice is to take every opportunity you can to get involved in the other aspects of student accommodation that don’t seem to be related to your day job.
For instance, let’s say you are from Res Life. Then you should volunteer to help Facilities the next time they need something. In doing so, you will be helping out your team, but crucially, you will also learn more about other aspects of student accommodation.
How can APSAA Learning-as a CPD program and the Tertiary Vocational Qualifications help progress a student accommodation career?
Learning about other functional areas used to be really hard – you had to rely on good people being around you to coach you, and for opportunities to simply emerge in your day job – but I think it has become a lot easier since the launch of APSAA Learning. There are now so many opportunities to get that kind of exposure. The APSAA Qualifications through NSW TAFE for example can give you a baseline understanding of key functional areas straight away. And you can start extending that knowledge on the job, giving you the best of both worlds. The other initiatives such as GHTI, webinars, book club, industry guidelines, and other PD offerings collectively cover so many different learning styles and formats that a satisfying PD opportunity already exists for nearly anybody who is looking for one.
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