From UNSW Medical Science Grad To Sales Career At An Aussie Startup
How Dylan Chau found his dream career immediately after graduation.
University Graduation?
2023
Prior Sales Experience?
Yes
Professional Background
Health
I think when you look at other industries, whether that be corporate sales or real estate, software sales just provides a lot more opportunity and room to progress in your career.
The Challenge
Throughout high school, Dylan played representative football and enjoyed PDHPE as a subject.
After experiencing some work experience in the physiotherapy field, Dylan graduated high school in 2020 set on a career in the health field.
The following year, Dylan started a Medical Science degree at UNSW.
To gain exposure to more roles in health, Dylan began working in roles that required no prior experience such as customer service and sales based roles at dental centres and gyms.
It was during this time at dental centres and gyms where he began to discover he was more passionate about enabling others to experience the health service, rather than delivering the health service himself.
However, when he took action to make the move towards a formal sales role, he found the roles he had success applying for didn’t align with his values or long-term ambition.
There wasn’t a personal approach to the sales process, and there weren’t very attractive pathways for his personal career progression.
He thought there must have been a better industry and kept researching.
Check out Dylan’s thoughts below👇
As a new university graduate looking to start a career in sales, Dylan felt lost trying to pick an industry amongst the sea of options.
The Solution
After attending a free live info session on software sales careers, Dylan knew that software sales was for him.
As someone who wanted to build a long term career for himself, the clearly stepped out career progression stood out to him.
Here’s more context.
In Australia, entry level software sales roles earn an average of $95k per year*.
Within 4-5 years of starting in software sales, you could be selling to 1000+ employee companies and have a total package north of $250k+ per year.
After 12 months at each level, you can achieve a promotion (see clip from our live info session below).
But why are packages in software sales so high & promotion so fast?
It all comes down to what you’re selling - business-to-business software tools (ie: UberEats).
The increased adoption of software in recent years has seen employee count in the software industry grow twice as much as any other industry in Australia during the last decade (Tech Council of Australia, 2023).
Sales is the second most in-demand role for software companies (behind engineers) as reps are responsible for finding new business customers to adopt their tools.
Yet, there’s a distinct skill shortage as many job seekers think they require a technical background or previous sales experience to get started - which simply isn’t true.
Here’s a clip from one of our free live workshops explaining career progression in software sales👇
Being in my software sales role now. I definitely live a lifestyle that's that I actually enjoy compared to, say, other industries like corporate sales or even real estate.
Being in my software sales role now. I definitely live a lifestyle that's that I actually enjoy compared to, say, other industries like corporate sales or even real estate.
The Results
Dylan joined us as a fellow in our March 2024 cohort of Earlywork Academy.
He progressed through the three weeks of live workshops and decided that he wanted to proceed with software sales roles.
To conclude his job search, Dylan was tossing up between multiple offers and decided to join local Aussie mental health startup, Foremind.
Where to from here?
Unsure if software sales is for you?
Continue your learning journey with Earlywork by attending one of our free live workshops run for 30 minutes and we’ll help you learn if software sales is the right career for you.
Fellow Admissions Manager, Ben Horwitz, will take you through all things job security, career progression and compensation.
Hosted every Monday from 5:30pm - 6pm (AEST).
NOTE: Also check out our Wall of Love to see 100+ other graduate stories from our school, such as Dylan.
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