Former country kid and founder of Sydney-based media and public relations company HM Communications Virginia Hyland said the Country Kids Connect group is about giving kids in regional areas a running start at their prospective careers.

“It is something I have been planning for quite some time,” she said.

“What I wanted to do was give kids the opportunity in the country to connect with people in different career paths that they might be interested in pursuing.”

After growing up in Gilgai, Virginia left at the age of 17.

After years in print media sales in Sydney, she launched Hyland Media and Get Social Media.

Her new project - Country Kids Connect - is run on the LinkedIn social media platform popular with businesses and corporations and has already amassed a following of hundreds of professionals from a wide range of industry disciplines willing to offer career advice to kids in regional areas.

“At last count it has hit 360 people who are actually on there willing to support country kids and who are open to giving advice and willing to talk to about job opportunities,” Virginia said on Friday, October 3.

“My goal is to have in the end 1000 people on the LinkedIn profile supporting country kids by June next year.”

She said the early success of the fledgling group could prompt further expansion to other social media and online platforms.

“At the moment I’ve decided that LinkedIn is a great platform to run the Country Kids Connect site,” Virginia said. 

“There are so many professionals who are already on the LinkedIn platform so all they have to do is join my group.”

“LinkedIn have a lot of policies in place in terms of a protection point of view for young kids. They have opened it up and made it quite a protected space.”

“I’m connecting country kids with people who are in business already and who are successful and open to talking to them, open to giving them advice about how they got into their field,” Virginia said.