Completed🏆 Top 6 Finalist

FLOURISH

ANUCBS × KPMG Case Competition• 2026.05Strategy, Problem Diagnosis & Campaign Design
Government Advisory
Talent Retention
Youth Strategy
Campaign Design
Problem Diagnosis
KPMG Case Competition
ACT Government

Talent Retention Strategy · Government Advisory · Campaign Strategy · Youth Population Challenge

Project Overview

FLOURISH — Find Local Opportunities, Upskill, and Reach Independent Success Here — is a 6-week talent retention strategy designed for the fictional ACT Talent & Liveability Authority. The project addresses a core paradox: Canberra performs strongly on safety, liveability, wages, and affordability, yet 62% of ANU and University of Canberra graduates leave the ACT within two years, creating an estimated $340M annual economic loss. Our recommendation reframes Canberra from a “study city” into a “career launchpad” by making local opportunities visible, building early employer connections, and strengthening graduates’ emotional attachment to the city.

Strategic Logic

SEE

Opportunity Visibility

Aggregate fragmented ACT jobs and programs, surface career pathways by discipline, and shift perception from “no jobs” to “hidden ecosystem”.

ENGAGE

Skills & Connection

Build skills through targeted bootcamps, create direct employer touchpoints, and form early professional networks before graduation.

STAY

Belonging & Reward

Build emotional attachment to Canberra, create peer communities, and reinforce staying as the default choice.

Key Analysis Areas

Problem Diagnosis

The challenge is not simply that graduates dislike Canberra; it is that local opportunities, networks, and identity are not visible early enough to influence their stay-or-leave decision.

Target Segment Logic

Final-year ANU and UC students sit at the highest-conversion window: they are already in the ACT, face low relocation barriers to staying, and can create a compounding talent pipeline if retained.

Opportunity Map

A centralised platform makes ACT jobs, internships, employer profiles, career pathways, and graduate stories easier to discover before students default to Sydney or Melbourne.

Career Sprint

A 6-week activation program turns awareness into action through employer showcases, skill bootcamps, micro-projects, and direct employer matching.

Belonging Strategy

The Canberra Belonging Pass addresses the emotional side of retention by creating peer communities, local experiences, and authentic stories of graduates who stayed.

Measurement Framework

The strategy tracks progress from campaign reach and platform visits to student registrations, employer participation, ACT job applications, and graduate stay intention.

6-Week Launch Roadmap

W1–2

Build

  • FLOURISH taskforce formed
  • Employer partnerships locked
  • Brand and landing page live
  • Baseline student survey

Owner: ATLA Strategy

W3

Launch

  • Campaign goes live on campus and social
  • Opportunity Map beta launched
  • Opening employer showcase event
  • Student ambassador recruitment

Owner: ATLA Comms + ANU

W4

Activate

  • 3–5 skill bootcamps run
  • Employer office hours begin
  • Industry discovery tours
  • Belonging Pass activates

Owner: ATLA + Partners

W5–6

Convert

  • Micro-project employer challenge
  • Fast-track interviews for top students
  • FLOURISH Showcase Night
  • Talent pool report to employers

Owner: Employers + ATLA

Early win: student registrations and employer confirmations by the end of Week 2.

Success Metrics

North Star Metric: increase the percentage of final-year ANU and UC students intending to stay in the ACT post-graduation.

Awareness

  • Campaign reach: 50K+ impressions in 6 weeks
  • Opportunity Map visits: 2,000+ unique student visitors
  • Brand awareness: +20pp unaided recall of FLOURISH

Engagement

  • FLOURISH registrations: 500+ students signed up
  • Event attendance: 300+ total across all activations
  • Employer participation: 15+ ACT organisations active

Conversion

  • ACT job applications: 200+ applications via platform
  • Employer-student matches: 50+ confirmed connections
  • Graduate stay intention: +15pp vs baseline

Long-term measure: reduce ACT's negative net talent migration for under-30s, assessed at 6 and 12 months post-campaign.

What I Did

  • Developed the core problem diagnosis: Canberra does not lose graduates because of a lack of opportunity, but because of gaps in visibility, early connection, and city identity.
  • Defined the primary target segment as final-year ANU and University of Canberra undergraduate and postgraduate students, the highest-impact point for intervention before graduation decisions are made.
  • Designed the overall strategy funnel: See → Engage → Stay, converting awareness into real career outcomes and long-term retention.
  • Built the FLOURISH Opportunity Map concept to aggregate ACT jobs, internships, graduate programs, employer profiles, career pathways, and graduate stories into one central platform.
  • Designed the Stay & Start Career Sprint, a 6-week accelerator connecting students to ACT employers through showcases, bootcamps, micro-internships, and live employer matching.
  • Created the Canberra Belonging Pass concept to build emotional investment in Canberra through local experiences, peer circles, and authentic graduate storytelling.
  • Structured the 6-week launch roadmap across four phases: Build, Launch, Activate, and Convert, with clear ownership and early-win milestones.
  • Defined a success measurement framework across awareness, engagement, and conversion, with a North Star metric focused on increasing graduate intention to stay in the ACT.

Reflection

This project strengthened my ability to translate a broad public-sector challenge into a focused, evidence-led strategy. The most important learning was that talent retention is not only an economic issue; it is also a visibility, timing, and identity problem. A strong strategy needed to go beyond “promoting Canberra” and instead create a practical system that helps students discover local opportunities, connect with employers, and imagine a future in the ACT. Through FLOURISH, I practised building a consulting-style narrative from problem diagnosis to target segmentation, strategic initiatives, launch roadmap, and success metrics. I also learned how to design a solution that is ambitious enough to reposition a city, but still realistic enough to launch within six weeks.