How A LEGO Fanatic Is Building His Way To A Dream Career

This post is presented in collaboration with the Australian Government’s jobactive website.

Robert Thomas says he’s used “stepping stones” on the way to his dream career, but building blocks would be a more appropriate pun.

The 23-year-old graduated from the University of Technology Sydney at the end of 2015 with a Bachelor of Design in Integrated Product Design.

Those outside of the industry might read that and wonder what possible career one could expect from such a degree.

But re-read those six words, and you realise one profession in particular is tailor-made for Robert: working at LEGO.

He told Student Edge that a career with the Danish toy company is indeed the dream. In the meantime, playing with their products is the reality.

“Yes [I’m the] 23-year-old still playing in the loungeroom with LEGO,” he confessed.

“Yes, I still do that.”

Photo: Robert Thomas. Supplied.

Of course, it’s rare for anyone to be plucked from obscurity and dropped directly into their dream career, unless you’re, say, a supermodel spotted at a supermarket, or the boys from One Direction.

Robert, very thoughtfully, went from high school, to TAFE, to uni, to interning, to securing a full-time job at 3D Printing Studios – all with the aim (“fingers crossed”) of one day making it to LEGO.

Though his final goal might differ from that of other grads, his process is one worth emulating.

At high school, a love for woodwork evolved into a passion for design. “I wanted to explore that design field and the different technologies behind it,” he said.

Instead of heading straight to university, he took a detour, spending a year at TAFE studying I.T.

“I had my heart set on [doing a design] degree at uni,” he explained.

“It was more of a stepping stone: TAFE, then to uni, to do that design degree. It turned out that the I.T. degree I did had key elements that I then used at uni as well, so they sort of backed up each other.”

He eventually got to UTS and graduated at the end of 2015. That’s when the fear set in.

“Getting out of uni I thought, ‘Am I gonna get something? Are there enough jobs in my field to get somewhere?’ There’s always that doubt going through your mind of, ‘Well, I’ll have to go back to uni and specialise in something to get a job somewhere.’”

Rob spent some time after uni working in customer service and retail, “floating between jobs” and “tinkering at home.”

“[I was] just keeping my skills up to date, because it’s important not to lose those skills,” he said.

“If you start to go without them, and don’t use them for a year, they become redundant and you almost forget how to do it. You like to keep that edge in there.”

After spending some months looking for suitable gigs on Seek, Gumtree and Facebook (“even the newspaper!”), a trip to a job convention at Sydney’s Olympic Park led him to the stand for 3D Printing Studios, an uncanny fit for his talents, passions and future goals. (If only he’d found the jobactive website, which aggregates job searches from across Australia.)

“It was during the second to third year of uni that I really discovered [3D printing],” he said.

“It was one assignment; one thing led to another and I had to go down the path of 3D printing something. Having never done anything like this before I didn’t know what to expect.

“I got back this three-dimensional thing and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool, as things go.’”

It was only a tape dispenser, he later revealed to us. That must have been one hell of a printer.

“It was just coincidence that I stumbled across [3D Printing Studio] at a convention with my mates," he said. "You could call it destiny in a way.”

He greeted the initial internship with nerves: “I was sort of beside myself and excited at the same time."

Eventually, he was offered a full-time job at the studio following the completion of his internship. Robert says, “it has really been a great adventure so far.”

Yet LEGO remains the goal.

“At the moment I build a couple of cars and occasionally I submit models of buildings to LEGO. I create these buildings in a program on a computer. From there, I then translate those into models and put them up on the internet to see if it gets enough fans.”

He’s adamant, however, that his current job is helping bring that dream to life.

“I think without a doubt I’ve gotten that step closer and maybe in the future, who knows what’ll happen? You can always keep your fingers crossed for that gold job; keep that dream alive.”

Australian Government’s jobactive website lists thousands of jobs every day and connects job seekers with employers. So if you're looking for work, get started right away with the job search tool. Begin your job search here. jobactive is available on Apple and Android.

Photo: Warner Bros.