Small Business Online Skills
(SBOS) courses

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Looking for work?

Here are the top 3 job ads advertised online in Australia each month. Not only do you learn the basic skills to do these jobs, online or offline, but you also get experience doing them as part of the work placement to get the confidence to apply for a job.

You get the skills you need to do all 3 job roles online, working from anywhere, as part of our 14-week or 8-week accelerated programs.

How "employable" are you now?

You can see from a resume if someone is qualified to do a job. However, these days employers would prefer to find talent, someone who is suitable for the job.

If you want to find out what skills you have that employers are looking for, do this quiz

Flexible options

In the 2nd week of our course, we give you a list of Small Businesses that want work done and are happy for us to teach you how to do it for them so you can get experience and testimonial from Business Owners for your course work. Don’t have the confidence to do it yet? You don’t have to do it on your own. We have monthly Meetups and supportive closed social media groups for meet others on the course. You can do it at your own pace individually through weekly email and get one-on-one attention, or you can join our group learning environment anytime and get answers to your questions from mentors and other students who understand how you feel.

on-boarding modules

Everyone goes through the same 4 modules to start the course to get the required knowledge of legal and ethical practices our work placement organisation expect you have.

After that, you can choose the job role you want to do, and a business may employ you in that job role while you are still doing the SBOS course.

This process is also part of the learning on the SBOS course, teaching you how to create multiple income streams and secure contract work.

 

  • Confirm enrolment
  • Prepare to use social media
  • Knowledge quiz
  • Download the eBook for the first 2 Modules
  • Handle workplace information responsibly
  • Knowledge quiz
  • Business Model Canvas to choose a workplace
  • Identify authoring and task requirements from employers
  • Knowledge quiz
  • Organise required files to do work
  • Introduction to employers
  • Select work placement options
  • Knowledge quiz

6 week work placement can start from week 3 as part of the intensive 8-week program. to qualify for the 8-week, you must complete the first 4 course modules in 2 weeks to show you can do the equivalent of 5 hours work per week. You can start your work placement and earning income from week 3 in this program.

14-week program option designed for Full-time workers, or people that may not have done any training courses for a long time to get back into study. You may elect to start the supervised work placement in week 7, completing the related tasks in the same order outlined in the learning from weeks 3 to 7 as listed in the 8-week program above.

It's time to work it out

Select a job role below that you feel most comfortable doing to choose the work you want to do first when you start your work placement. This will determine which module you do next in your course

Online-presence-help-done-for-small-business

ICT professional

Become a specialist in using software and Apps, optimising digital media impact so businesses can take full advantage of the features and functionality to meet customer needs. Sets up systems for the other two job roles to use.

The steps to starting a business and earning extra income

Customer inquiry and reception

The most advertised job role in Australian. Requires people skills to put humanity back into the business dealing with new or existing customers. Needs online technology skills to manage automated systems used to connect people connect.

Inception-Business-owners

Sales assistant

Uses marketing content to generate leads to prospects, and prospects to customers in the sales funnel. Asks questions to find out what problems prospects are looking to solve and suggest products and services that help customers. Provides information on the benefits of products/services directly to customers.

Work placement modules

For the next 6 consecutive weeks, you’ll be doing work for real employers dealing with real customers and clients in a business. This accelerates your learning as 70% of knowledge is gained by doing the tasks.

Employers tell us what they want, we show you how to do it over the next 2 weeks. You get experience and feedback from the employers on how well you do it.

Testimonials like this can be used to gain employment or contract work after the course, and even give the confidence to start your own business.

ICT professional - 2 weeks

Learn how to use software to do the heavy lifting when looking to scale up a Small Business

  • Add content and simple navigation to web pages
  • Building and managing mail lists
  • Store and share workplace information securely
  • Test and finalise web pages

Customer inquiry and reception - 2 weeks

You don’t need to bend over backwards to please customers, and successful small business make it as easy as possible to talk to a human rather than getting a bad online review.

  • Communicate with customers online.
  • Setting appointments
  • Process online refunds and exchanges.
  • Apply information protection protocols

Sales assistant - 2 weeks

In Small Businesses, time is money. In sales, time in front of customers leads to more money. Salespeople spending their time effectively leads to profitable and sustainable business growth.

  • Use social media to enhance customer engagement
  • Respond to customer difficulties online
  • Promote products and services

What can you do?

Don't think you have skills?

Everyone has skills (see the video above), this course shows you how to apply your life skills at work.Answering that interview question - "How can you and value to our organization?". What would you rather double - $10 or $50?

Earn while you learn

This is training for the real world, not a "simulation". You will be dealing with real customers, selling real products, and keep your cut of the sales during and after the course.

If you have a business

Or, even if you do have the experience, we can get you inside a multi-million dollar online business so you see what you are competing against, and find out what customers want across a ready-made broad market. You can also pick a mentor you want us to introduce you to so you can keep learning after you graduate from the course.

Who is the course for

People looking to learn new digital skills, use technology more effectively, looking to start their own business, help out partners market and grow the family business. And as the work can be completed remotely you could even put your VA or new employees through it.

Get experience

If you don't have experience or a business to work in, you can do a supervised internship. We screen the small businesses for you, and you get to chose who you want to do work for. This may include charities or social enterprises you have a passion for helping.

See what you are missing

Maybe you don't want to do it yourself, but would like to find out how someone could help your business grow. You can flick through the self guided course, and the coaching and mentoring program is there to help you set up and do new things if you need help with that. Click the icon above to see how we do online mentoring sessions.

Your Choice...

This course is designed for you to get employability skills. You can use the testimonials from your work supervisors in this course to help gain employment in these uncertain times.

We can provide you with a business to do your work placement, and and also provide you with products you can sell to real online customers to earn real money on this course. There is even an option to start your own business to earn extra income if that’s what you want to do.

$449

8-week accelerator program

$699

14-week growth program

Training Quality?

Unfortunately, no one can be “told” what the matrix is… but in this course, we show you. Reality is what you make it.

Research shows that only 10% of knowledge is gained through training.  As part of our 8 or 14-week programs, we’ll introduce you to coaches and mentors to help you gain the next 20% of knowledge. But the really accelerated learning happens when you go out and start doing it and gain 70% of your knowledge through experience.

In our program, you could be out there learning from Small Business employers and getting the experience and testimonials you need to get a job after only 2 weeks.

If you are looking for more benefits of doing a course that includes work placement, you can check out this recent National Centre for Vocational Education Research Report.

Any questions?

  •  If this is the only question you have, scroll up and check it out on the course program.
  • Yes. We have a list for you to choose from with more years of experience than they care for me to mention. Everything from Retailers, Franchisors, HR, Marketing, Business operations, sales, web-developers, you name it.
  • Plus Small Business owners who want to network with others and happy to tell you what doesn’t work to save you the trial and error. All our mentors are looking for people to collaborate with and want to talk to others that have a passion for what they do. True mentors want to share their success and try new things.
  • You will meet the Mentors in the closed groups accessed through the 8 and 14 week programs, so you can connect with them and other students
  • This is not a government-funded course. It is funded by customers and businesses. The prices above are not in addition to your taxpayer dollars given to the government.
  • If you wish to undertake competency-based training leading to a qualification, which may include funded training, we suggest contacting the RTOs on this list who are currently approved to issue the ICTSS00108 Digital Skills for Small Business Skill Set.
  • Short answer is Yes. But, of course, the regulator of the Formal training system makes things more complicated than that.  “compliance” does not equal “Quality”, or value for money for you, but many RTOs believe this to be the case. We are not doing training FOR an RTO in this course, and employers have told us they don’t even want us to associate with RTOs to provide lower quality training (in their view). We are doing to for students, and employers. Our course focuses on proficiency and getting experience, not just competency to do any old job.
  • You can apply to get RPL for skill sets or individual units with an RTO using evidence of real-world work done on this course. But why would you bother? What is getting a qualification going to do for you, particularly when it comes to getting a job? We don’t see any extra benefits in that for you, but you are welcome to Google it.
  • You don’t have to, but there are many advantages for you if you do to it and make it a lot easier to complete your course. Learn more about what you have to do to survive in a competitive market (more so since COVID-19).
  • We have just found a manufacturer who is willing to let you use they sales and distribution network already set up, has over 200 exclusive products in different categories, will give you all the marketing material you will even need including research to back up marketing claims, all for no signup fee and no purchase requirements to hold stock (you only buy the stock as you sell it to customers).
  • Selling ice to eskimos in not what we are going to teach you to do. What is an eskimo going to use ice for? that doesn’t sound ethical to us. We want you to show you have real skills.
  • Part of this course is to teach you how to set up an online business, including using affiliate marketing and drop-shipping models to create revenue streams. This is how we do it.
  • As you have to promote products and services, and the true measure of if you can sell successfully is if you get sales from real customers. There are plenty of other courses out there you can choose that teach you how to sell, but we don’t believe “face it til you make it” works in the real world anymore.  And others don’t pay you for the sales you make as part of your skills assessment, but that is not what we do.
  • As skills gained in a simulated or training environment are not automatically transferable to the real-world work, in addition to competency-based training, students can receive an assessment of proficiency as part of a work placement program.
  • If you sign up to our selected manufacturer, your trainer may also be able to act as a workplace supervisor and list you trainer as referee in a job interview. This is handy for long-term unemployed, self-employed, or people looking to change careers.
  • You can choose another business, but to protect vulnerable people from abuse being used as slave labour with the promise of a job, all business (including product suppliers) must be approved and comply with fair Work act voluntary unpaid work conditions to be part of our program.
  • If you wish to use a manufacturer or supplier’s products that requires you to create content above the requirements of the course, or a business using the work placement intern to replace work done by employees, this is likely to be considered an “employment agreement” by the Fair Work Commission. We have a long list of condition suppliers have to meet if they want us to teach you how to sell their products as part of this course, so if you have friends and family pushing you to sell their stuff, tell them to talk to us. maybe they should do the course too?
  • Employers may take on a paid intern in this case, including current employees, however must pay the minimum wage for the hours the intern works. To be fair and get better student outcomes, all out students will get an assessment of proficiency comparable to industry benchmarks, not just an “opinion” from an employer.
  • That doesn’t surprise me, and that may be because you haven’t ask any questions yet. The questions above are basically general questions we have to supply information about so people can make an informed decision. But you still have to make your own decision, and research if it is right for you.
  • We don’t know what you don’t know, nor what you do know, so the most effective way we find out what you want to know is to ask you. But everyone has different questions, so if you scroll down to the bottom of the page there are a few ways you can speak to us. What we do know is that this course is not for everyone.
  • If it is right for you, we’ll most likely find out by the questions you ask. If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. You alway have options. Whatever you are doing, it is always good enough. We are only looking to give you more options to choose, just incase things are not working for you. 

business experts say...

I didn't need college. Well, that's true. Some people don't need it, but there's more to college than simply the subjects that we learn.
College is more than the classes we take. It's a massive opportunity for personal growth
Research investigating the advantages of workplace-based education found that training providers who offer work-based education programs can also benefit from a positive reputation, better relationships with employers, and students who feel more motivated to complete their training.
Simon Walker
Managing Director, NCVER
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Quintin Angus
Stock Image
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