An insider’s look at joining KINNECT

KINNECT Macquarie Park’s new Medical Support Officer shares her unfiltered experience applying for and joining KINNECT.

By Natasja Rose

When a company has an entire page dedicated to their employees’ honest opinions of working there, that’s a pretty sure sign that it’s a good place to be.

From the moment I applied for a position as Medical Support Officer, KINNECT impressed me as that rare thing: a company that valued their workers and wanted a good fit, rather than any warm body that applied.

They responded to my application two days after I applied, were patient with the fact that one of my referees was in the middle of end-of-year marking and took longer than usual to get back to them and were consistently in contact through the pre-interview stages. Even when I couldn’t attend their proposed interview date due to a family event, KINNECT was willing to work around that and schedule for the day after I got back.

Having spent a good portion of the previous six months before starting at KINNECT job hunting, I can tell you that’s a lot rarer than it should be.

I received two other job offers at the same time, all roughly equal in essentials, but KINNECT stood out for its workplace culture and seemingly good management.

When applying for jobs, one question I always ask is “Can you tell me what my average workday would look like?”

A good manager or interviewer will know what the job entails and be able to answer this question easily. A disconnected manager or interviewer will always struggle.

The other two jobs I was considering had been vague and uncertain of their answers. KINNECT proved that they know what their employees do each day with a clear and concise response.

I was nervous, the first day I started, but everyone was warm and welcoming. Catherine, the Sydney Team Manager, walked me through the front desk duties and got me set up with Teams, my login details and some preliminary training. I spent most of the first day shadowing her and the Consulting Nurses and Physios, to get an idea of what was involved.

Between the applicant who brought a change of gym clothes because they thought they’d be running a boot camp obstacle course, and the ones who wanted to know what happened during the booking stage, it was helpful to be able to describe the end-to-end processes.

Aside from running the front desk and general office duties, as a Medical Support Officer my main responsibility is bookings. I started with pre-bookings, then availability, then moved on to actually booking appointments. At each stage, I had a trainer ready to answer any questions, and they waited until I was both competent and confident before moving me on to the next stage. Even now that I’m fully trained, if I want a second opinion or have a question, I can send a message in the Teams Bookings Chat and have an answer within minutes.

My other favourite part of working for KINNECT is the culture. A positive workplace culture is not a one-way street and takes effort from both managers and employees. It’s not as simple as a positive attitude or applause (I worked in Aged Care from 2020-2022), rather, everyone needs to feel valued and ensure they’re not seen as another cog in a machine.

At KINNECT, there are incentives for good work, an extra day off on your birthday, the ability to purchase extra leave, and daily ‘positives’, a mechanism for ensuring that people know when they’re doing a good job, rather than only hearing when they mess up.

I was a bit dubious about the positives at first, because they sounded like a lot of extra emotional labour, but then I got my first positive, and was surprised by how much I appreciated it. The minimum is one per week, but I try to send out two or three, because everyone likes to hear a thank you, especially when they’ve got a heavy caseload or life seems overwhelming.

I also like the informality of Teams, where I can share an amusing anecdote or ask a question in a group chat rather than sending twenty emails in the hopes that someone replies quickly. It fosters a greater sense of connectivity, where I can offer Alfi chocolate after she has to re-schedule a clinic for the third time in a day, Matt can threaten a thesis defence-level PowerPoint on replacing a toilet roll after someone left the staff bathroom empty, Chloe can let us know she got a flat tyre and is waiting for NRMA or we can flood the chat with memes and GIFs to celebrate a work anniversary.

I’ve never felt as happy and supported in a workplace as I have at KINNECT, and I hope I’m here for many years to come.

Coincidentally, KINNECT is expanding, see if there’s a position you’d be a good fit for here.