Author: Luke Furness
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3 Simple Interview Prep Techniques (with a Checklist)
Out for Australia is recruiting for two board directors. We’re also in clerkship and graduate recruitment season. I’ve been chatting with a lot of young people that want to know how they can maximise their chances of landing a gig, whether for a grad position or a non-profit directorship. So today, I want to cover…
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About me / my work
I’m Luke. I’m a dispute resolution lawyer (Senior Associate) at Clayton Utz and former CEO and current board director of Out for Australia, an Australian LGBTIQ+ student mentoring non-profit. I graduated from the University of Queensland in 2013 with a Bachelor of Commerce/Bachelor of Laws and from the University of Sydney in 2016 with a Master of Laws. My…
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How to work out who you really are
My talk from TEDxUQ, March 2021: The script: “Who am I?” It’s one of the most important question of our lives. We all want to know who we are because it’s a key part of living with ourselves, accepting ourselves, loving ourselves. And when we see a part of us we don’t like, it’s also…
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Thanks to our LGBT+ elders
Today I’d like to give thanks – and there is so much to be thankful for. When a good friend of mine came out to his mother, she wept. She was devastated. Not because she loved him less, but because she saw a rough road ahead of him. “Life will be so hard for you”, she explained. And…
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5 tips for better public speaking
Recently, I’ve had a stream of people messaging about my TEDx talk. Half want to talk about the content and half want to talk about the process of speaking and speech writing. The question I most commonly get is “How do I get chosen for a TEDx talk?” which I might tackle in a future…
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A piece of advice for new graduates
“Managers are people too”. That’s what someone told me in my first week. At first, it seems like a strange, unnecessary observation. Most graduates understand that their manager is indeed a person, not a canary or an antelope. Sure enough though, we understand what people are getting at: managers have their own hopes, anxieties, lapses,…
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A better way to talk about 2020
We will talk a lot of guff about 2020. In business speak, 2020 gave birth to the catchphrase “the new normal.” Despite its prevalence, this concept doesn’t seem ground breaking. Properly interrogated, it goes no further than working from home a bit more, flying a bit less, and (ominously) “leaner” business models. We all have…
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When it comes to how we work, COVID will change everything (or nothing).
Like me, you’ve probably reading a lot of articles about how this pandemic will fundamentally change the way we work. That’s a big call. It’s also becoming the consensus call. “This changes everything”, say we all. “Never in our lifetime have we seen such dramatic upheaval. Work will never look the same again.” That forecast is fascinating.…
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One rule for better self-assessment
When it comes to judging our own performance, we can be thugs. When we fail, we kick ourselves hard. We use angry, unflattering language, perhaps out loud, but more often in silent and invisible self-abuse. There are only so many times that we can uppercut our own jaw before we start to show the bleary…
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Why juniors are so damn valuable
Last week I saw a job description that caught my eye. Someone was looking for a lawyer who was “NQ”. NQ stands for Not Qualified. That means a trainee fresh out of law school who can’t quite call themselves a lawyer yet. They are an inquisitive, nervous, enthusiastic bunch who wear suits on the first…
Luke Furness 