Author: George Bell

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I used the University’s resources to make a CV, and this is what I learned

For those of you who haven’t used the careers service much, you might not know about the abundance of resources it has to help you build up and develop your CV. Even if you’ve never made one before, the careers service offers tons of help. I tried out their resources for this and this is what I found out. 

Before writing this blog post, I hadn’t put too much thought into my CV. Sure I had previous versions used to apply for certain roles, but nothing I was overly happy with and certainly something I wasn’t confident about showing employers. But by spending an hour or two using the university’s CV-building resources, I was able to build a professional-looking CV from scratch. And there is nothing stopping you from doing the exact same thing. 

I don’t intend to give a word-for-word recounting of what resources are available to use, the careers service already does a fantastic job of that. Instead, let’s look at what I found most helpful. 

CV and Covering Letter Pathway 

The MyCareer page is not really something I’ve spent much time using other than casually searching for job or internship opportunities, so I found myself pleasantly surprised to find that there is so much more here. There are different pathways to help develop certain skills which will massively improve your employability, and one just happens to be about CVs. Let’s navigate to it first and then talk about what it has to offer. 

Step 1 

Log into MyCareer using your student email address 

Step 2 

Select Pathways 

Step 3 

Select CV and Covering Letter Pathway 

If done correctly, you should see a series of steps to complete to get you on the road to a fantastic CV.  

I want to draw your attention specifically to step 3, Create your CV and covering letter, as it has an extremely useful resource that I find myself consistently going back to. 

I’m of the belief that the CVs and Covering Letters Workbook is the bible of the employability world. This nifty little document is packed full of tips and steps to follow when building your CVs and covering letters, giving insights and templates for key areas like work experience and education. It provides a list of action words to really make your CV pop out to employers and even a checklist to use to critique and improve your own CV. There is something here for everyone so even if you don’t use it to make your CV, I wholeheartedly recommend looking when you want to take your application to the next level. 

CareerSet 

With your university account, you get access to the fantastic tool called CareerSet. This tool gives you instant AI-generated feedback on your CV, at any time of the day.  

When you upload a PDF copy of your CV, CareerSet analyses it against key stills recruiters are looking for, specifically impact, brevity and style. You can make changes based on the feedback given and then resubmit it again straight away. 

CareerSet scores your CV based on a percentage. Try to aim for at least 70% as that should give an indication that you are on the right track.  

Initially, I was worried about what kind of feedback this AI tool would give me for my CV, and I was half expecting something generic, but I found myself pleasantly surprised. CareerSet breaks down the issues with your CV into clear sections, giving an indication of which areas need improvement, and which you are already doing well with: 

It also gives a brief summary of where you went well and what you can improve next: 

One of my favourite bits of the tool is the Line-by-Line analysis which breaks down your CV and gives suggestions on how you can improve each line. It is excellent when you are redrafting your CV and ensures the language you are using is engaging: 

If you want to go a step further, CareerSet also allows you to tailor your CV to a specific role by searching for keywords in your file to see if they are in the job description. While this isn’t guaranteed to make your application successful, it will definitely help you stand out and get through the initial screening process for CVs, something usually done with AI! 

It is important to note that CareerSet only works for chronological CVs, so more creative or skill-based CVs won’t work as well. Luckily enough though, the university provides 1 on 1 sessions with CV advisers so you can get an extra level of feedback. 

Feedback from a CV adviser 

I booked one of these sessions and was able to get a time slot only a day afterwards. And while the workbook and CareerSet were invaluable tools, this was probably the best help. The 20-minute session almost imitated how an employer would look at your CV, going through it quickly to get an idea of what works, what doesn’t and what doesn’t stand out. They took the time to explain why certain things worked and why certain things didn’t, rather than just what should be changed (like with the AI tool). Key tips like evidencing all your skills in your CV, using as many technical terms as possible and focusing on content rather than visuals were some of the most helpful things I learned. I highly recommend booking one of these appointments as while an AI tool can be helpful, there is nothing more helpful than another pair of human eyes looking through your work. 

Hopefully, by the time you finish this article and have tried each of the things recommended, you will have a CV you are happy with and confident to show employers. Be sure to tailor your CV to each of the roles you are applying for. This might sound like a tall order, but the more you do this, the easier it will be to adapt. Best of luck in all your job applications! 

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Placement Insights from Matillion

Returning from a year in industry to complete their final year at Newcastle University, we interviewed Amy Jones about their time with Matillon. This is what they had to say:

Who did your industrial placement with? 

My placement was with Matillion which is a data transformation/cloud data warehouse provider. It’s based in Manchester but has offices in a few places around the world. 

What was your role? 

Security Engineer Placement Student. 

I worked in the IT and Security department across the Application Security and Cloud Security sub-functions.  

Why did you do a placement? 

I felt that getting some work experience under my belt would stand me in good stead when it came to applying for graduate positions because I would already know what to expect and I would be able to talk about what I’d done during interviews which hopefully would give me an advantage. Also, I felt that it would be easier for me to go into a graduate role if I had some time to get used to the work environment and already had a go at a security position while it was known to the company that I was still learning. 

When did you start applying and how many places did you apply for? 

I started applying at the start of the academic year and probably applied to 10 to 15 places. If I hadn’t heard back from Matillion in December, then I would have probably applied to more. 

How was the application experience? 

The application experience for Matillion was quite pain-free, you uploaded your CV and answered a couple of short essay questions and then after one interview with the CISO and GRC team lead, I was offered the position.  

However, a couple of others I applied for were a bit of a longer, more complicated process. I did a lot of assessments during the early stages of application processes that were meant to gauge your soft skills and how your brain works, I did some coding tests, and some had video interviews before real interviews. Each company will be different. 

What, if any, help did you get from the university when applying? 

I applied during a year we were fully online, so I didn’t have as much exposure to the help as in normal years, however, I did read up on the placement advice on the website. 

What work did you do over the course of your placement year? 

Since Matillion’s security team is still fairly small, I had the chance to do a lot of varied work and get dug in straight away. Most of my time was spent on application security looking at things like threat modelling, ASVS, and DAST solutions. I got to know Burp Suite and OWASP ZAP really well as I explored vulnerability scanning and exploits with them. I was responsible for daily and monthly cloud security checks which gave me exposure to AWS. Throughout my placement I was able to become Matillion certified, set up and run a CTF for our team of security champions, be a Women in Tech champion, run a charity bake sale that raised over 500 pounds across Denver and Altrincham and set up and organise our security guild. I even presented a guild session on TLS and PKI.  

How was the overall experience of doing a placement? 

I absolutely loved my placement, if you are considering doing a placement year, I would highly recommend it. It helped that I had an amazing company to work for and awesome co-workers and line manager, but wherever you end up I think a year in the industry actually trying your hand at what you’ll experience once your degree is done is a fantastic way to boost your skills and stand out amongst graduate applicants. It lessened my worries about going into employment after university and it has set me up with fantastic connections for when I finish. 

Would you like to go back to that company after your final year? 

I would definitely love to go back to Matillion at some point in my career, whether that’s when I graduate or later down the line after a few years in a graduate cyber security role, I’m not quite sure yet. I would strongly recommend Matillion to anyone looking for a tech role though, they’re an incredible company that cares about every staff member and they offer remote or in-person work. Hopefully, I will get to return to Matillion eventually. 

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How to set up your portfolio

Whether you are a stage one student hoping for a summer placement, a stage two student thinking about a year in industry or someone in stage three applying for roles after university, your portfolio is an essential part of your career as a computer scientist. But how do you make a good one? 

Your portfolio is the best impression employers can get an idea of not just what you’ve done, but what you can do. Showing your different projects, the coding practices and how you have applied your knowledge will be much more beneficial than your CV when it comes to applying, hence why showing your work in the best way possible is so important. 

Here are some recommendations on how to best show off your work in a portfolio as well as some tips to make the projects you show really stand out for employers. 

GitHub 

Chances are you have heard of GitHub, certainly so if you are in your second year or above. The version control titan is the bread and butter for every programmer, allowing you to make use of git to store multiple versions of your projects and access them wherever you may be. But if used correctly, GitHub can be an excellent place to host your portfolio. 

On your GitHub profile you can see all your projects in something like this: 

It likely won’t be too exciting and certainly will not stand out against a slew of other GitHub profiles. But it is a suitable place to start from, you can show off some of your best projects and talk a little bit about yourself in a personalised ReadMe. And it turns out that going that extra step is a lot easier than you would think, all thanks to something called GitHub Pages. 

Making your own website has its advantages (something we will get into later) but some aspects like hosting can be difficult, expensive and time consuming. GitHub Pages solves those issues by letting you use GitHub to host your own portfolio website. And it only takes a few steps! 

GitHub Pages allows you to transform your existing repositories into websites to show off things like your portfolio, projects, or documentation. This is a great next step as it allows you to add your own unique spin to your projects that will make your applications stand out.  

You don’t need to worry about databases or servers; however, you will need a bit of HTML knowledge. But even if you aren’t confident with web development, this is a fantastic way to get some experience and really show off to employers. GitHub pages can be used with Jekyll to ease this process and make use of templates (look here for more details). 

The official documentation for GitHub Pages has a great video breaking down how it works and there is an abundance of content to help support you as you build up your very own portfolio. 

https://youtu.be/2MsN8gpT6jY

It is worth noting that while GitHub Pages does allow you to host your own website, this is limited to one per GitHub account. But you can have unlimited project sites. 

Making your projects “Portfolio Ready” 

Making your portfolio look nice is great, but you want to make sure it isn’t all style and no substance. Here are some tips on making the content of your portfolio really stand out. 

Tidy up your existing projects 

Good, readable code is an essential part of programming, and even more important for employers. When looking at your portfolio, employers won’t spend much time trying to understand your code, so making it as clear and efficient as possible is a great way to start things on the right foot. It will show employers your coding style and make it easier for you to understand your own work when you come back to it down the line!  

There are lots of different ways you can add subtle improvements to your code either as you do it, or in retrospect when working on your portfolio. Making sure your code is consistent with things like sensible names for variables, methods and files is a great place to start. 

One mistake many people make is to comment every single line of code to explain what is happening. This can almost double the size of your files and make them a lot messier than they need to be. If you think you need to explain each line, then you may need to go back and refactor your code with better variable names and simplify it as it is likely too complicated.  

But that doesn’t mean removing all comments in your files. Giving brief descriptions of methods and their return types is a fantastic way of reducing the amount of time you read, as it gives a quick understanding of what something does without having to go line by line to understand it. Just make sure to use comments only when you feel they are needed. 

Here is a simple example below for calculating a factorial: 

Bad factorial function
Good factorial function

Both functions work in the same way, but one is clearly more understandable than the other. The first only uses generic variable and function names whereas the second uses sensible names for both. This makes it a lot clearer even without the excessive commenting that the first method. 

Now that your code looks good, there are some things you can do portfolio side to make your projects stand out before employers even start looking at them. 

Give a brief description of what your project is, indicating the key features that you want to show off, what your contribution is (especially if it’s a team project) and what languages are used. This tells people looking at your portfolio what you can do straight away and make them more likely to look at your work more closely. Here is a good example: 

Work on projects outside of your degree 

One of the great things about your degree is that you get the opportunity to work on several different projects that can help you build up the solid foundations of a portfolio. The only issue is that every other student in your year, ~300, will have similar projects, hence why it is important to work on projects outside of your degree. 

This allows you to explore your interests and fine-tune your skills for the field you want to go into, and it also looks great for employers as you are showing them how you work independently and what your interests are. Also, having more projects is always beneficial as it allows you to be more flexible with what you want to show to different companies. 

When building new projects, it can be quite daunting to figure out exactly what to work on, especially with other commitments, including your degree. But don’t worry, you don’t need to be making some cutting-edge development with every project you have. Practicing new features and developing your programming skills is a great way of showing your personality through your portfolio.  

A great type of project to work on to help build up your portfolio is to recreate existing projects. Be it something as simple as the Instagram home page, it is great practice to try to build something from the ground up and try to understand how it works. It helps give insight into how companies develop software and there is always the opportunity to iterate and improve, something especially good when you end up applying for the same company! 

Tailor the projects you are showing off to the companies you are applying for 

Now that you have tons of professional-looking projects on your portfolio, you need to choose what to spotlight, so be sure to tailor it to the company you are applying for.  

You may have projects covering a wide range of things, but chances are you will be more confident in some than others and each will highlight different skills. Aim to show the breadth of skills you feel are most beneficial for your employability, but make sure not to focus on only one or two. Highlighting six projects that are all the same only gives no real indication of everything you can do.  

Be sure to show a mix of work that highlights your strengths and weaknesses. Team projects and solo projects, different languages and different topics show not just your range of abilities to employers, but who you are as a person – something which should be a focus of every portfolio. 

Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your portfolio. Take your time and do it in iterations. Be sure to make use of University resources both in and out of the School of Computing to help you as you develop your portfolio and always ask people to check it over.  

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Placement Insights from Microsoft

Returning from a year in industry to complete their final year at Newcastle University, we interviewed Sofia Trevino, this year’s NUCATS president, about their time with Microsoft down in London. This is what they had to say:

Who did your industrial placement with? 

Microsoft  

What was your role? 

Cloud Solution Architect Intern.  

For context, a Cloud Solution Architect is “a customer-facing role, owning the overall technical relationship and strategy between the customer and Microsoft. They lead architectural design sessions, develop proof of concepts/pilots, implement projects, and deliver ongoing refinement and enhancement”.  

Why did you do a placement? 

Initially, it was because of an Instagram DM. At the end of my first year in 2020, I remember sitting alone in an empty student accommodation building, not knowing when or if life would ever return to normal. I have always been one for planning, but a global pandemic was not something I had prepared for. Because of this, I had to sit down and re-think how I planned to prepare myself for the real world (whatever that may look like) after university. I decided to DM a few female engineers who were offering advice to people just getting started in the tech industry. One of the engineers was @herhelloworld, a woman who was also from the US and had also decided to do her computer science degree in the UK. Her biggest piece of advice to me was to find ways to get work experience. Other engineers I wrote to gave the same advice. They said to get involved, get my name out there, and get experience. Paired with the fact that I felt as though I had lost at least a year’s worth of university experience due to COVID-19, I knew the best thing would be to try and extend my program.  

When did you start applying and how many places did you apply for? 

I started scoping out my options as early as August 2020. I knew if I wanted to get a placement at one of the companies I wanted, I needed to start preparing early. And it paid off, because I got the first and only placement I applied to. I know this isn’t the case for most people, and I feel extremely lucky to have been offered the role.  

How was the application experience? 

The application process for me began the second I decided I was going to try for a placement. I knew how competitive it would be to get a job during a pandemic, especially without any technical work experience so far, so my first focus was to learn the best techniques for applying to jobs. I attended webinars, read articles, did virtual workshops, basically anything free I could sign up for, some even in the middle of the night due to time differences.  

Then I heavily researched the first company I planned to apply to, which was Microsoft. I attended a handful of their free live events to get a better idea of what they were looking for in a candidate. Through this I got even more excited about applying because I felt the company aligned with my passions. Once I did, I didn’t expect to hear back at all. It was my first placement application, and I knew that I could have improved on some parts.  

Sure enough, however, I got an email back saying I was invited to an interview. Similarly, to when I first applied, I did lots of research and practiced. The first interview was just about me, my passions, and being able to articulate my reasons for wanting to work in tech and at Microsoft. A few weeks later I was invited to the assessment centre, where I was interviewed alongside about 4 other candidates. We had to do a presentation on how a particular Microsoft product could help improve the lives of a chosen business/customer, then another “personality” interview, and then a group interview, where we had to put together a presentation on where Microsoft could use their budget to innovate a field of our choice, and which technologies we’d use to do that.  

Less than a week later, I received a call saying I was being offered the role by two different departments. 

Overall, the application experience was long and tiresome, but not without value. Although I only went through one interview process, the skills I learned prior to and throughout have been useful to me ever since.  

What, if any, help did you get from Newcastle University when applying? 

I got help from the university while writing my CV. I first went through the careers service, where I sent in my CV and got back a long list of things I could change. This helped get the ball rolling for me majorly. I also got help from my personal tutor, Laura Heels, who set up a virtual CV workshop. Finally, I attended virtual events put on by the university during employability week, where I made note of what actual companies were saying they were looking for in CVs. 

What work did you do over the course of your placement year? 

My placement year was a unique mix of learning and doing. The role I went into was not necessarily one that you can just jump into. As a Cloud Solution Architect (CSA), you’re having to learn parts of Azure inside and out, as well as understand Microsoft’s best practices. This takes more than a year to do and gain credibility if you’re starting from scratch like me. I’m very grateful that Microsoft knew that and embraced it.  

I did a lot of shadowing across the year, in many different types of teams and industries. I had the freedom to explore the work that was being done in technologies that interested me. One of my most significant experiences was getting to help deliver presentations and a hackathon to start-ups specifically centred around environmental sustainability through AI.  

Another was getting to do an internal hackathon based on Azure’s serverless capabilities! I got to work with a team across the globe who were all well into their careers but were able to learn from me and I from them.  

This year was full of amazing learning experiences in the technical sense. In terms of the things I delivered, those were also just as valuable, but not necessarily centred around learning a specific technology. Here are just a few of the things I got to do: 

  • I led philanthropic initiatives to raise money for Children in Need and Red Nose Day which built up my leadership skills 
  • I produced and managed three virtual events for Women in Tech which improved my organisational skills 
  • I worked with the education team to deliver presentations on smart city technology, and the magic of engineering and data in primary schools across London and near Reading which helped me gain better public speaking skills 

How was the overall experience of doing a placement? 

Overall, I feel like I had such a well-rounded experience. Not only did I get to experience the technical side of a large tech company, but also marketing, sales, leadership, and project management.  

I made amazing friends, found inspirational mentors and role models, discovered more about my strengths and weaknesses, and realised where my true passions for technology are.  

Sure, I may be biased but I think everyone should do a placement. With work experience being integral to securing a graduate scheme nowadays, I definitely feel like no matter where you do your placement, you will learn and grow so much in such a way that will propel you to so many amazing opportunities.  

Would you like to go back to that company after your final year? 

I would go back to Microsoft, yes. I resonate deeply with their core values, and I have the opportunity to do work that would really light up my soul for years to come.