DYPS: Develop Your professional Skills – Computing @ Newcastle: Employment & Enterprise

6 January, 20254 December, 2024

Employer Interview: Waterstons

What placement roles do you offer to Computer Science Undergraduates?

We offer placements to Undergraduates as Software Consultants – this means they would be writing, testing and developing solutions to solve our customers’ requirements. This might be a fully bespoke application, integrating two systems together or even extending a piece of off-the-shelf software. We typically develop solutions in .NET and in Azure.

What do students work on during their placement?

A huge variety of things – you will be client-facing from a very early stage. You might be working as a full member of a team doing agile development for a client or doing smaller pieces of work. You won’t just be coding all day – we need our consultants to understand our clients really well so there are opportunities to visit some amazing client sites and get an insight into a really wide range of sectors and organisations.

What are the key skills you’re looking for in students applying for placements?

Communication and teamwork are fundamental to how we work at Waterstons. The ability to organise your time is also a really key one. Technology skills can be learned so we’re looking for that passion for technology but not necessarily the experience yet!

What support does Waterstons offer for placement students?

You’ll have a line manager who has regular one to ones and discussions about your progress. You’ll have the opportunity to study for exams based on your interests and where you want to take your career longer term and the chance to do things like self-directed research and development as well. We have regular hackdays to give our teams the space to have fun and learn something new!.The teams are really supportive and will take good care of you as well.

Have any of our students you’ve previously taken on placement been offered a role after graduation?

Yes – a huge number of our staff today started their careers as a placement year or year in industry student – including myself!

How can students find out about the placement vacancies you have available?

Head to our website and check out the Careers pages.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

If you aren’t sure, ask! Don’t let the lack of technical skills put you off – when I joined, I could just about write some HTML and by the end of my year, I was leading software development projects on my own.

17 December, 202429 November, 2024

Placement Interview: Suryansh Singh, Andor Technology

Student name: Suryansh Singh

Company name: Andor Technology (Under Oxford Instruments)

Role: Software Engineering Placement Student

Why did you decide to do a placement?

There were two main reasons that led me to do a placement: I want to be job ready as soon as I graduate and having this placement experience will have help me significantly in that.

My parents were able to finance the fees for my first two years at university. I want to use the salary from my placement to contribute to my final year of fees.

What does your placement involve? What are your role responsibilities?

My placement involves a wide range of tasks that a software engineer does. I am working with the main software development team, and my role is no different than the other developers. As an Intern I do need guidance sometimes, but the team are always on hand to help with any issues.

I get assigned several tasks at the start of every sprint (a development run of 2 weeks) and then try to resolve all those tasks as quickly as possible. Once the development is done, I test my code on real devices in the lab – some of them are used by NASA and Nobel prize-winning scientists, etc.

Do you have any advice to students who are looking for / applying for a placement?

Start applying as soon as vacancies are open and apply to several placements to increase your chances, especially if you’re relying on the placement to finance your studies.

Develop your computing CV through activities such as answering questions on Leetcode, increasing your proficiency in version control, and creating projects you can talk about at interview.

Companies love hearing interns talk about AGILE methodologues and DevOps, so make sure to have a basic knowledge of them.

Smile during your interview!

You might get rejected during the application process, even from the online assessments but all you must do is learn from your mistakes, master these things, and move forward. I remember I got rejected from the first 20-30 applications I made but after a while I was clearing all the online assessments, had 3-4 interviews, and secured 2 offers. So, don’t let rejections demotivate you!

What support have you had from the university before and during your placement?

Newcastle University has been very helpful in terms of career support. Before the placement I completed 3 or 4 NCL Internships offered by the university and that really made my CV and profile look good. The MyCareer website lists tons of internships and tools and there is the ability to book CV counselling.

The support from the placement team through email has also been amazing. I emailed them with lots of questions and they dealt with all of them kindly.

What benefits will your placement have on your studies?

Before starting the placement, I was considering what my final year project would be. I was a bit concerned about what I would be able to create as I didn’t feel confident in my coding skills. But after completing the first 4 months of my placement, I now feel so much more confident in my skills.

I’m feeling really motivated about going forward into my last year at university as I’ll be able to use everything I’ve learnt during my placement in my final year project and other assignments.

25 November, 202425 November, 2024

Interview with a Study Abroad student

Student name: Luke Williamson

Current course: Computer Science

Study abroad university: National University of Singapore

Study abroad country: Singapore

Why did you choose to do a year abroad? Why Singapore?

Doing a year abroad gives you a chance to experience a different environment to your own. That’s different culture, different pacing, and different people. I personally think it’s important to try to experience this whenever you’re given the opportunity, especially in your twenties when you have the freedom for it, as I think putting yourself in new environments like this is how you grow and develop as a person. Going to university was a big adjustment for me, as it is for anyone, but I really felt that I thrived from meeting new people and trying new things, and doing a year abroad was a chance to experience that again. I think it can seem quite scary, especially if you don’t know anyone in your destination country, but it’s a leap of faith I wanted to take, and as anyone else who did a year abroad will tell you, it will work out fine and be really fun!

I grew up in a quiet, rural area, so going to Newcastle gave me a chance to experience life in a city – but with my year abroad I wanted to take it a step further. I chose Singapore because it’s unlike anywhere I’ve ever lived before. It’s massive, modern, and has insane infrastructure unlike anything I’ve seen in England. It was an opportunity to see if I would want to live somewhere like this later in life. At the same time, it’s honestly not that big of an adjustment. Although the culture is for the most part completely different, the national language is English and the country surprisingly shares a lot of its customs and culture with England. Plus, It’s nearly always sunny, and the food is absolutely incredible!

What support did you receive from the university before your year abroad started?

The uni were hugely helpful. You were free to email or ask questions in person whenever you wanted to, and they had loads of resources available to help out, plus they had presentations to help make sure you were prepared and knew everything you needed to know beforehand.

What support have you had while in Singapore?

The uni do a monthly check in, and although I’ve ran into no personal or academic issues, you always know that the support is there when you need it.

What’s been your favourite thing about study abroad so far?

My favourite thing honestly could be the food… Don’t get me wrong, I really miss beans on toast! But the food here is absolutely unreal. I’m always pestering people for recipes because I don’t wanna lose all this stuff when I come back. Drinks too – nothing beats getting an ice-cold drink when its 35 degrees, and they’re really cheap here too.

What advice would you give to a student who is considering study abroad?

While I don’t think a year abroad would suit everybody, if you’re already considering it, then you’re probably the type of person who would love it. Just remember everyone else feels just as scared – I definitely did – but there’s a reason it’s so hard to find a student who regrets their year abroad, and so easy to find one who regrets not doing it!

What skills do you expect to gain from study abroad?

I think pretty much all of my social skills have massively improved since coming here. You meet so many people from different backgrounds and cultures and it’s really eye-opening. I already feel so much more confident when meeting people now and worry so much less what others may think of me. I also think my ability to adapt has massively improved, and that’s invaluable not just for jobs or uni, but life in general.

How are you finding life in Singapore? (e.g. daily life, culture, people, travel opportunities)

Getting used to the new routine took some adjustment but after a while it all fell into place, and it feels like the new normal. Singapore is incredibly culturally diverse, with people from Malaysian, Chinese, Indian, and Japanese backgrounds just to name a few. You’d honestly need a lot longer than a year to experience it all!

And that’s not even starting on the travel opportunities either. Changi airport is one of the biggest in the world, and you can get to almost any neighbouring countries super easily. I’ve been to Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Java, and I have plans to go to China soon, so it’s a great gateway to see all of Asia, not just Singapore.

Many thanks to Luke for supporting with this article. If you’d like more information on the Study Abroad opportunities for School of Computing students, please visit: Experience the World – Global Opportunities – Newcastle University

22 February, 202319 February, 2023

START UP-Supported Businesses

A tech start-up company called Haystack has recently raised £1 million to help scale up and expand the reach of their smart talent-matching technology for engineering, data and design recruitment. Founded in 2019, Haystack is a careers and insights marketplace that allows businesses to more efficiently hire for their tech teams by eliminating the need for tech recruiters and saving on internal resources.

But the relevance of Haystack to this article is not for the reasons you might think…

From Left to Right: Haystack CTO Rob Simmons, CEO Chris Bone, COO Mike Davies

Haystack is a START UP-supported business. Co-founder and COO, Mike Davies, graduated from Newcastle University in 2017 with a BSc in Computer Science and received business coaching from the university’s START UP Advisers.

So, what exactly is START UP?

START UP provides clear, practical direction on starting or growing a business, social enterprise or freelance career, regardless of the stage you are at.

They work with students and graduates (up to 3 years after graduation) who want to work for themselves, be it full- or part-time. The START UP team’s support includes one-to-one coaching and tailored business advice, skills development, equity-free grant funding, co-working space and other valuable opportunities to help you advance your self-employed career.

Currently, there are 203 START UP-supported businesses, with a combined annual turnover of £88 million. Between them, they have raised £44 million in external investments, won numerous national and global accolades and created 947 full-time jobs.

If you have been considering alternative means after university and are thinking of setting up something for yourself, be sure to check out the timeline below!

This article only serves to introduce START UP for those who might not know about it. There are tons more resources about it available on the careers service page that I highly recommend checking out.

20 February, 202318 February, 2023

How to learn independently

Staying up to date with industry is no easy task but it is a huge plus for you in the eyes of employers as it shows engagement, understanding and interest from the get-go. University can be quite limiting in this regard with a focus on teaching the theory. Independent research shows initiative and helps you gain additional skills to make you stand out.

Here are a few different resources that might help you become a great independent learner!

Forage

This is something I have talked about on the blog before (click here for the link) but it is so good that I just have to bring it up again. Forage is an online virtual work experience platform that hosts several online programs built and endorsed by a slew of big companies.

Each of the courses contains tasks engineered to simulate the real-world experience of the industry and each only takes a few hours to complete.

As part of your degree, you get access to all the courses for free and you can do as many as you want. Try a range of them out and see which you think are most useful to you. They are always adding more courses so be sure to check in every now and then to see what is new!

GitHub Portfolios

GitHub Guide for Beginners | Analytics Vidhya

Another great way to see what might be happening in industry is through the projects people have on GitHub. Be it personal projects worked on the side by industry experts or fully designed resources to help you learn about new topics, there are tons of exciting code to get stuck into. You might not understand a lot of what you come across, but it will give insight into different topics and show your interest in your chosen field!

Here is a GitHub portfolio that contains links to even more GitHub portfolios!

Podcasts

A great many companies have podcasts now, so not taking the time to listen and learn from them is a wasted opportunity for gaining insight into industry! You can search for either certain topics that interest you, or specific companies to learn what they are talking about at the time. You can listen to well-made interviews, debates, and discussions from industry veterans all while continuing your day-to-day life. Podcasts are a powerful tool that you should take as much advantage of as you possibly can. To learn more about podcasts and see some great ones to start with, look at this article.

Twitter

This social media platform may seem out of place here with the other resources discussed, but it is in fact a prime example of one of the best resources available for independent learning: people.

A great way to find out what is happening in industry is to see what people are saying! Platforms like Twitter let you search by company or topic and can lead you down an interesting rabbit hole of first impressions, detailed threads, and everything in-between. Following those who create content or make comments on a certain topic will let you start building a network and learn more about the industry. And of course, you can directly message those with industry experience, and you may just get a response back with more interesting insights.

You do have to be careful though as there is a lot of content on platforms like Twitter and it might be difficult to decipher what is relevant and what is not.

These are just a handful of useful tools to continue your education journey beyond university. They are by no means a comprehensive list so be sure to explore and find some of your own!