Students march to career success in the School of Science & Technology

Throughout the month of March, City students from the School of Science & Technology (SST) attended careers-focused and networking events to boost their employability.

City’s Careers Team and the School’s Corporate Relations & Employability Unit worked together to create ‘March to Success’, organising a full calendar of events.

Activities during ‘March to Success’ ranged from skills-based sessions on practical skills led by the Careers Team on topics like doing video interviews, as well as industry insight and networking events organised by the Corporate Relations Unit with professionals in industries including engineering and data science.

March to Success boosts student employability

Dr Chris Child is the Associate Dean for Employability & Corporate Relations within the School and is passionate about helping students build their careers after graduating.

“We want to establish a professional experience for every single one of our students,” he said. “We want students to walk straight into the role they want to do after graduating.”

Chris noted that students that have been on work placements and have work experience have statistically higher employability rates after graduating.

‘March to Success’ is therefore a way of helping students source professional experiences and meet their potential future employers.

“We began ‘March to Success’ to inspire and engage students, as well as motivating them in their search for a professional career,” said Mohson Khan, Head of the Corporate Relations & Employability Unit (CREU) in SST.

Students networking at the placements, internships and projects fair

In particular, Mohson's team helped organised a placements, internships and projects fair to give the opportunity for students to meet employers and gain professional experience.

300 students in computer science, mathematics and engineering attended the fair in the penultimate week of the series, meeting a mix of 15 SMEs and multinational companies  working in STEM industries. The event itself was organised by Thanos Papageorgiou, MSc Electrical and Electronics Engineering student at City, who is currently working on placement in the CREU team.

For companies, the fair was an opportunity to meet with students who are potential future recruits.

One of the employers present at the fair was Ebunoluwa Akinyele, Associate Emerging Talent Manager at Skanska, a multinational company with specialisms in civil and digital engineering offering summer internships, year-long placements and graduate schemes.

“The benefit of attending fairs such as this one is that we get our name out as a company to make sure we get top-quality applications from the best of the best,” she said.

Fellow employer Rajen Vishram, a University Placement Scheme Manager, attended from the product data management consultancy company Quick Release.

“The students were super engaged, curious and enthusiastic,” he said. “There were some questions that even stumped us! Overall, the students are a credit to City and we left with an (even better) view of the University.”

The students were able to speak to a variety of employers. Also present at the fair was Peter Magnani, Founder and Managing Director of web analytics company Beam Analytics. He said: “It was inspiring to meet such an informed, curious and ambitious group of students. Beam have provided placements to six City students in the past two years and the technical qualities and strong work ethic they display is consistently high.”

Student Rayyan Zerrouk, who is in the final year of his bachelor’s degree at City, was also in attendance at the fair as an employer. He is studying towards a BSc in Computer Science and is on the Professional Pathway scheme, which means he spends four days working and one day studying.

The scheme is unique to City’s Department of Computer Science, where students gain three years’ work experience before graduation, with the option to work for multiple employers.

“I chose to study at City because of the Professional Pathway scheme and because it had higher employment outcomes than some of the other universities I was looking at,” Rayyan said.

This year, he is work at the children’s mental health charity Place2Be as an IT engineer. His work ranges from helping customers online, working on hardware, and managing projects.

“I like the job security this role gives me, as it means I’ll graduate from university with years’ worth of work experience.”