An Interview with the Careers Service

Image preview

We interviewed Sara Williams about their role as Careers Consultant for Newcastle University and learn exactly what they do, and how that can be a big help to you. 

Sum up your role in 10 words or less 

I help/facilitate students to achieve their career goals.

What are the official responsibilities of your role? 

Official responsibilities include: 

  • Carrying out appointments with students either via our drop-in system,  
  • Pre-booked online or in-person and longer 1-hour appointments for career guidance and mock interviews 
  • Delivering some of our central workshops.  

I also work closely with the academics and Employability leads in the schools of Computing and Engineering to understand student requirements and plan a calendar of events.  

Being up to date with what’s happening in the jobs market and sectors that might be relevant to our student groups as well as more broadly with recruitment trends and assessment methods is also an important part of my role. 

What are the unofficial responsibilities of your role? 

Unofficially I get involved with a wider remit of what the career service does whether it be helping out on University Open Days or at Careers Fairs and hosting employer-led events. 

“Have things on your CV beyond academics”

What are the top three mistakes you find that students make when it comes to employability? 

Not mistakes necessarily, more learning points.  

  1. I think maybe underestimating the recruitment process and how many stages you might have to go through for some companies and perhaps not being prepared for that. 
  1. It’s tricky as not everyone can commit to it but, having things on your CV beyond your academics can be really useful, not only so you can showcase a broad range of skills to employers but also as a learning process for you to figure out what you are good at and what you enjoy. 
  1. And I think number three is that students can often feel the pressure to just jump in and start applying before they have taken a step back to try and understand what they might be looking for in their next job, and more broadly, their career. 

What employability resource do you think is most helpful for students? 

I think one of the challenges is that there is SO much information out there and so many resources. I might be biased but our website is really comprehensive and covers a wide range of employability topics from planning your careers to what to expect at assessment centres and what you can do to prepare. 

Here is a link to view all those resources:  https://www.ncl.ac.uk/careers/

“Learn as much about the assessment process you will go through as you can”

Where in the process of getting employed (applying, interviews, assessment centre, etc.) do you think students struggle with the most? And how can they overcome that difficulty? 

I think each of the assessment stages can come with its own challenges and people can struggle with different things.  I think the key bit of advice I would give here is for students to try and learn as much about the assessment process they will go through either via speaking to someone at the organisation, looking at their website or looking at sites like Glassdoor. Armed with that knowledge they can then use the multitude of resources via the careers service to help them prepare. If I was pushed for something more specific, I think interviews can be really challenging as sometimes students may not have ever had a formal interview before. There’s a lot of advice and guidance out there on interviews and I’d also encourage students to use careers appointments to practice answers or talk through answers with a consultant. 

How many students make use of the employability team? 

Oooo that’s a tough one as it can be hard to define how students use the Careers Service. As an example, we conducted about 8,400 appointments last year and roughly 4,000 students came to one of our workshops. Beyond that the Careers Service also looks after processing for on-campus job opportunities, hosting employer events like our careers fairs, our curriculum team runs and manages a careers module, our placement team manages around sending 150 students out on placement and our start-up team also supports students in terms of building their own businesses or if they want to operate as a freelancer… 

“Students can make use of the careers service 3 years post-study”

If there was one piece of advice you want students to take away from this interview, what would it be? 

Make use of the careers service!  

We’re here to support you through your time at Newcastle and beyond (students can access us for 3 years post-study) and we offer impartial advice and guidance on anything to do with careers. 

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. 

Software Graduate – Whetstone

ITP Aero in Leicester is looking for an enthusiastic Software Graduate to join the software development team and to work on the development of our software product ESATAN-TMS.

Start date is ASAP

Salary is £28,000

Main Responsibilities

– Work efficiently within the development team on the maintenance of the product and on the implementation of new functionality

o Develop code to a given design and software development standards

o Perform testing of the code to agreed test plan

o Identify and implement code fixes for reported issues

– Actively contribute to ideas on the application of software technologies, ways to improve the product and its associated infrastructure

– Be flexible and adaptable within the Software team

Technical Skills Required

– Knowledge of Java, C or C++ programming languages.

– Understanding of software development lifecycle models and software engineering practices.

– Knowledge of object oriented software design.

– Ideally knowledge of graphic libraries, such as OpenGL, JavaFX or Ardor3D.

– Ideally some experience of MS Visual Studio, Eclipse, Jetbrains, design tool Visual Paradigm and experience with source code configuration control.

– Good technical problem solving skills.

Qualifications

– Bachelor degree in Software Engineering or Computer Science

– Master’s degree in Software Engineering or Computer Science, preferably 2:1

Person Spec

The ideal person will have a positive attitude, be flexible and adaptable and willing and eager to learn. Must have excellent communication skills and be able to work well as part of a team.

To apply for this position: please apply on the company website: www.itpaero.com Sometimes we get a lot of applications for our roles. On those occasions we might close the job early. If you don’t want to miss out we recommend submitting your application as early as possible.

Software Graduate Vacancy

ESATAN-TMS is a software product developed and maintained by ITP Engines UK Ltd. The product is used through-out Europe by most Aerospace companies involved in the thermal design of spacecrafts and launch vehicles. The software provides a complete graphical environment for building a 3D geometric model and the definition of all modelling parameters such as orbital missions and thermal boundary conditions. Radiative and thermal analysis is performed by the software.

As a software graduate, you’ll be working with a Senior Software Engineer in the area of developing the 3D graphical environment as well as introducing new user features to support our user’s needs. You will be working in both Java and C++ on Windows platform, and you will be using Visual Studio and Jetbrains as IDEs.

E-Commerce Executive

Job title:
E-Commerce Executive

Reports to:
Head of Online Trading

Main Purpose of Job:
The role of the E-Commerce Executive will be to manage and grow our portfolio of online marketplaces. This includes the day-to-day scope of online marketplace management; merchandise, optimise listings and implement seasonal marketing campaigns. This role is key in optimising sales and profitability through clear commercial planning and strategy, at pace, with meticulous attention to detail. The role encompasses all aspects of merchandising, implementing marketing activities, sales reporting and analysis to maximise sales profit.

Key tasks:
• Manage, expand and optimise on a day-to-day basis dedicated market places to increase
sales & profit across multi product categories
• Optimise product listings to the highest standard ensuring content is relevant and effectively drive incremental sales
• Constantly review gaps in our product range & new opportunities
• Work closely with the digital team to implement sales plan, pricing and product information
• Maximise utilisation of all marketing tools (e.g Amazon PPC advertising)
• Ensure customer service, feedback and product rankings are optimised
• Analyse product sales and channel performance to deliver optimum profitability with the
commercial & digital team
• Identify, analyse and propose innovations, promotions, efficiencies and new product
opportunities to grow sales.
• Build, manage and evolve relationships with key online trading accounts.
• Monitor and track competitor activity and pricing.

The above is not an exhaustive list of duties and you will be expected to perform different tasks as necessitated by your changing role within the organisation and the overall business objectives of the organisation.

Education and Qualifications:
• Ideally, a digital marketing or business related degree, or qualified through relevant level and type of experience
• Good general level of education in core numeracy, literacy, and ICT subjects

Relevant Experience:
• Ideally, relevant work experience in digital sales environment or an account management role
• Experience in building and driving sales in market places platforms (such as Amazon, eBay, etc)
• Mix of broad marketing skills and preferably (but not essential) specific knowledge of online marketing in an online retail environment
• Experience establishing and maintaining good working relationships with key retail accounts
• A sound and technical knowledge of tools and systems used across marketplaces,
• Understanding of digital marketing (but not essential)
Special Attributes/Individual Performance Characteristics:
• Excellent communicator and able to work in a confident manner
• Highly organised with excellent attention to detail

• Good understanding of how to trade, merchandise and market retail websites and how to manage relationships with key retail accounts
• A passion for internet retail and a solid understanding of the online marketplace and retail trends.
• Experienced in IT software package Excel, Word, Powerpoint
• Highly confident in using ecommerce platform or equivalent
• Happy to work alone or as part of a team
• Able to take constructive criticism
• Reliable and consistent
• Enthusiastic
• Conscientious & self-motivated

To apply, contact the HR Adviser Caitlin Hamilton (caitlin.hamilton@bazaar-group.uk).