We interviewed James Huish about their time on placement last year with General Electric Healthcare and the struggles with online application processes. Here is what they had to say:
Who did your industrial placement with?
General Electric Healthcare
As described on its website, General Electric Healthcare is a leading global medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and digital solutions innovator. They enable clinicians to make faster, more informed decisions through intelligent devices, data analytics, applications and services, supported by its Edison intelligence platform.
What was your role?
Software engineer in the Medical Imaging Team
Why did you do a placement?
I wanted experience working with programming in an actual job, both to learn and to help with getting a job after graduating
When did you start applying and how many places did you apply for?
I applied for 3 or 4 and had a few video interviews but got rejected, I had more or less given up but then a lecturer posted an advertisement on Canvas, and I applied through them.
How was the application experience?
The applications for most were frustrating with 1-way video interviews where I had to record myself and got no feedback. In the placement I got, I just had one video interview, but it was actually with the people working there, rather than the other 1-way recorded interviews.
What, if any, help did you get from the university when applying?
None, although the placement I got was advertised through a post on Canvas.
What work did you do over the course of your placement year?
It took a long time to get much work but when I did it was a variety of things, for example, porting an application from windows to Linux and adding features, helping to bug fix and improve an application in development, and managing a Blinded Image evaluation (not coding related).
How was the overall experience of doing a placement?
Good, there were times I did not have much to do and also, I was not in a software team. The people were great, and I had a great experience but would have learnt a lot more if I were in a team with more software engineers.
Would you like to go back to that company after your final year?
I would, depending on available roles and location.
Returning from a year in industry to complete their final year at Newcastle University, we interviewed Zach Smith about their time with Newcastle Strategic Solutions Limited. This is what they had to say:
Who did you do your industrial placement with?
Newcastle Strategic Solutions Limited
What was your role?
Software QA Tester
Why did you do a placement?
I did a placement in order to gain some concrete work experience in the software development industry, this is so I could hopefully gain an advantage over my competition when applying for jobs upon graduation
When did you start applying and how many places did you apply for?
I started applying around February/March time and applied for at most 20 people
How was the application experience?
Relatively straightforward, mostly just making sure my CV was up to date. I wrote a cover letter for each company I applied for and tweaked my CV in scenarios where different experiences might’ve been more useful
What, if any, help did you get from the university when applying?
The help I received from the university was mostly to do with their careers site, where companies could post placement opportunities. It was a huge help and ultimately lead me to get this placement
What work did you do over the course of your placement year?
I got the opportunity to do a range of things:
Programming automated tests for builds of NSSLs websites which introduced new features.
Testing on live servers of clients to ensure that everything was working as expected before deploying for the public to see and use.
I also had the opportunity to manually test features on the website to ensure that they met the accessibility criteria required.
I was working alongside teammates in a scrum team and would test whatever the developers would work on before giving it the seal of approval.
How was the overall experience of doing a placement?
Fantastic, I was treated really well during my time at NSSL, except for the odd stressful moment, I enjoyed it. One key value that I really appreciated working there was that my input was important and was truly taken into consideration when working on different projects even when it wasn’t about testing. I made a lot of new friends there during the early talent program that they ran too.
My experience here helped dictate what portion of computer science I would like to specialize in for my final year. Thanks to my time testing the accessibility of the website and new software developed, it has made me want to work in accessibility and hopefully work to improve how accessible software is to the general public.
Would you like to go back to that company after your final year?
Based on my experience? Yes.
With my current circumstances? No, I only say this because following graduation I’d prefer to be employed somewhere where I can live with my family whilst working for a while before I go settle in somewhere like Newcastle. To be honest though, if I was offered a high enough wage to cover the expenses of living alone easily then I probably would take something from NSSL.
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.
