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 type of roles and what to expect in a day-to-day context. We speak with Cameron Bestwick – Manager, Student Accommodation at University of Melbourne.

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!

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 is that I started as a resident, rather than coming laterally from another industry. In the very beginning I was an eager first year, then I volunteered to organise an event, then took a volunteer role, then a part-time paid 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. After a few subsequent jobs, 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, they were putting a lot of trust in me. I don’t think I nailed it, but I learned a lot anyway. Later, 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.

Other APSAA Learning initiatives such as GHTI, webinars, book club, Industry Guidelines workshops, and other PD offerings collectively cover so many different learning styles and formats that a satisfying PD opportunity is available for anybody who is looking for one.

What are the challenges of the role? My current role is responsible for the overall success of the UniMelb’s accommodation service. I certainly 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. For this type of 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 operation that benefits everybody in that web.

What qualifications do you have? I have a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration and a Graduate Diploma in Strategic Communications, as well as a few smaller qualifications like a 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. This is because I’ve come to realise that in student accommodation, we often must bring together disparate sources of knowledge and use them in very practical ways. For that reason, having a patchwork of previous education and training helps. 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. Each of these areas will have its own problems and opportunities, and an effective accommodation manager must 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 that skill of integrating these things, but we can always get better at it.

Most of us begin in a functional silo, such as Residential Life or Facilities Management, which is perfectly fine and normal. And whilst it is really important to master skills required in that 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 in your area, 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. Let’s say you are from Res Life, then you should volunteer to help Facilities the next time they need something. You will be helping out your team, but crucially, you will learn more about other aspects of student accommodation.

The APSAA Qualifications through NSW TAFE can give you a baseline understanding of key functional areas straight away.

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 used 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 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 workshops, 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.

For more information visit https://www. apsaa.org.au/apsaa-learning/cpd-program/

Much of my progress seems to have stemmed from trying to engage equally with the business and educational sides of student accommodation.

Did you know? You are automatically included in the CPD program just by being an APSAA member. Check your points balance, upload certifications and gain CPD points by attending webinars, events, the APSAA conference, study tour and more!