What’s your name? What did you study? When did you graduate?

My name is Natalie Dajkovich. I studied a Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics (Honours I) at the Australian National University (ANU). I started at the Clean Energy Regulator in early 2021 (literally a week after handing in my thesis), but I had been interning and working in the public service the two years prior.

Where did you grow up?

I moved from rural New South Wales (Parkes) to Sydney when I was quite young and completed high school in Sydney.  At the time, I knew I wanted to study a Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE), but few universities in Australia offered the degree except ANU. So, after finishing the HSC, I spent six weeks travelling, then flew back to Sydney and moved to Canberra the next day.

Can you describe a typical workday?

In your Graduate year, the work you do varies quite a lot. This can be exciting – you learn a lot of different things and meet a lot of different people – but it can also be challenging because there’s limited certainty around what you’ll be working on. 

Typically, my day starts with checking my emails, I also have a to-do list on OneNote and prioritise my tasks. During the ACT lockdown, my team has had an informal meeting every morning to check in and establish what we have on. My day is usually a combination of meetings, work I need to do for my section and the completion of any pieces of training or research relating to the Graduate Development Program.

Suppose a student was considering CER’s Graduate Program. What would you advise them to study? Are there any soft skills that would be beneficial for them to develop? Should they pursue any sort of work experience?

I’m a firm believer all work experience is good experience, including volunteering. I found my previous work in public service incredibly valuable when applying. 

At university, I took courses predominantly at the intersection of PPE and climate change – studying international environmental policy, environmental economics and the political economy of the environment. I wrote my honours thesis on the design of emissions trading schemes and how their design can be improved to maximise countries’ carbon abatement. As the schemes administered by the Clean Energy Regulator are predominantly market-based, this topic ended up being incredibly relevant to the agency.

The Clean Energy Regulator does quite technical work, so it is helpful having a technical background. For me, that was economics, but understanding renewable energy engineering, energy markets or environmental science would also be helpful. Being a regulator, there is plenty of work related to legislation, so knowing your way around legal documents is helpful. This isn’t essential though and is something I didn’t have much experience with when I started. 

What do you love most about your job? What kind of task do you enjoy doing the most?

The Clean Energy Regulator is working in an incredibly dynamic space right now and I find getting across new developments, including the Australian Carbon Exchange, the Indo-Pacific Carbon Offsets Scheme and the Guarantee of Origin for Hydrogen, incredibly interesting. I also really enjoy market analysis, research and report writing, and have found these skills valuable across the agency. I would like to get more involved in policy development.

What would your career be if you weren’t doing what you’re doing now?

I’m committed to a career in climate change mitigation. This means that even if I wasn’t at the Clean Energy Regulator, I would want to be in climate policy, climate finance or environmental consulting. 

Which three pieces of advice would you give to a current university student? 

1. Don’t try to be a recruiter and an applicant. When you are looking for jobs, it is your role to put in the best application you can. It is not your role to determine whether you are good enough for a job – that’s the job of the recruiter. Don’t do the recruiter’s job for them by self-selecting out of the application process. Just apply.
2. Your work experience is as important, if not more important than what you study, so find out what you enjoy and seek out opportunities to get involved.
3. Try to connect with people working in an area you wish to move into. Don’t be afraid to reach out to people you haven’t met before by LinkedIn or email. People love talking about what they do, so I’ve found most people are happy to help. You never know when a mentor or three will come in handy, but once you have one, you will start finding out about opportunities you never knew existed.