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University: Bournemouth University
Degree subject: Business Information Technology
Insider Tip: Be willing to learn

• Why IBM?

  I applied to join IBM because I came here as a placement student and I really enjoyed the experience. My team were so supportive, they gave me loads of opportunities and it was just a lovely place to work.

• What is your current role?

  My current role is as an IT Specialist. That means in essence you specialise in a specific technology. For me, at the moment, it is all about moving around and learning lots of different technologies. I started off as a database administrator, working across sectors on a number of different projects. Since then I’ve moved into one of those particular projects, working for a single customer. I talk to them on a daily basis about what sort of things they want from IBM.

• How has your degree linked to your current role?

  My degree subject is really quite strongly linked to my current role. I’m using a lot of things I learned in theory at university, in practice in my current role. Things like database technology and networks, application developments and Java. One of the skills we touched on at university but never really developed fully was teamwork, so that’s obviously come into light a lot in my current role.

• What training and development have you had?

  In terms of training and development I’ve been offered a lot of different things, courses in both personal skills and technical skills. I’ve been offered quite a few invite only courses which is quite exciting for a graduate to get on those sorts of things. There’s a course called ‘Unleashing your Potential’, which was really exciting, where we got to learn lots about your image and how you should interact with other people. IBM has also funded me to take some of the DB2 exams. There’s an education road map, so you can follow a particular profession. This was database administration and I’ve taken 2 out of the 4 exams. I am thinking of doing that for my current role aswell.

• How do you see your career developing?

  I want to move around a lot in the IT Specialist profession, so rather than specialising in one particular technology, I want to move into lots of different roles, move around and get lots of different experience. I would quite like to move into IT Architecture, looking at performance architecture in particular, making sure systems are running effectively and fixing performance problems and just helping projects out when they have problems really.

• What 'giveback' activities have you been involved with?

  Outside my day to day activities with IBM, there are lots of opportunities to get involved in ‘Giveback,’ which is where IBM employees give back to the community. One of the things we run here in Hursley is the ‘Excite’ Camp and Mentorplace scheme. This is a scheme where we get 36 school age girls into IBM and run different activities with them throughout the year. It starts off with a big ‘Excite’ camp in the summer. All the girls come in and do lots of activities, such as building egg towers and learning algorithms. It’s to get them excited about science and technology really. For me it’s picking a give back activity that I’m really excited about, and is going to enthuse me to get on with my current day job.

• How has your perception of IBM changed?

  My perception of IBM has changed since I started working for IBM. I started as a placement student a couple of years ago and have since come back as a graduate. I really enjoyed it as a placement student and that’s why I wanted to come back. Since coming back I have learned more about how we use technology for real client situations, which I didn’t get particularly involved in as a placement student. I have also learnt that it’s not just developing technology just for technologies sake. We are using it to solve real business problems.

• Why stay with IBM?

  You can just tell you are a really valued employee, there’s so much support, they help you with your career development and they give you lots of education.