It feels very rewarding working at Jaguar Land Rover. I feel like they truly care about my career and that they want me to succeed and learn and continue developing. I’m working with Jaguar Land Rover on The Graduate Programme. It’s a 2-year scheme designed to introduce new employees fresh out of university to the company. So my home team is Next Generation Entertainment so my job is almost entirely programming, so looking at music, looking at maps, looking at various metrics the car gathers.

Within the graduate scheme you’re expected to do two technical placements and one non-technical. So I have completed my first technical [placement] already – that’s in engineering strategy and transformation. This takes a very broad look at engineering within a company, in particular trying to look at what future technologies we should be looking at. The second placement that I’m currently involved in is based at the University of Warwick. It is in the research department. It leads on from some work I did at the University of York looking at graphene. The graduate scheme is fascinating. I really really love it here. There’s always something new to do, there’s always something new to see. It’s a very big company but it’s strange, it’s still very easy to feel quite unique and like your work is very meaningful.

Jaguar Land Rover came to the University of York when I was in my first year and did a talk about how the industry is changing and what’s going to be needed in order for car companies to survive in the coming years and to me that seemed fascinating and so I became completely passionate about wanting to join the company in my first year of university. So when I came to my final year I applied for the job. It was a very vigorous process, very challenging to get in, they clearly liked me and I like them so it was a match.

I member at the end of first year we had a large talk at one of the main lecture theatres about how it’s not going to be enough to just get a degree. So many people come out with degrees, so many universities are producing so many students, you really need to work on your extracurricular skills. It’s networking, it’s being able to communicate effectively. I feel these are actually very undervalued skills and it’s something a lot of undergraduates should probably invest a lot more time in.

In the modern climate there are so many people who have similar skills, especially in software, but what they can’t do is communicate effectively. A lot of people struggle to make lasting relationships. It’s important to be able to relate to people and see why they think the way they do. I think it’s important to get that kind of exposure to people from different backgrounds in order to develop your interpersonal skills with other people.

In my first year I did a 2 week placement in the York Plasma Institute. I was the social secretary for physics in my second year and then in my final year I joined a society called the york community consultants and it was their role to try and get people consulting experience by working with local community and local organisations. All these experiences massively helped my CV, really helped my confidence and really helped me to remain easy in that kind of situation.

I had a lot of contact with WRIPA for my university degree. The careers fairs they started phishing out were fantastic. Normally university only has one tech fair a year, whereas you just get so much more opportunity when working with the White Rose [Industrial Physics] Academy. The University of York also had a careers service which was incredibly helpful. You can walk in and say “I have no clue what I want to do with my life please help me think of a career” and they would sit down with you and work through everything you like, all your skills, everything you could do, and try and direct you on a path and they can take you from that point, from knowing nothing, to a specific application where you bring in what are companies looking for in an employee and try and tailor your CV to match the company to try and get you into the company you want.

This is a time of massive change for the company. I spoke to so many managers who have said they’re jealous about me being able to join at this time. There’s always new things going on. News comes out every day of how the industry is changing and it’s just fascinating. Some of the things which we are working on, it just blows your mind. Before it was mentioned you didn’t even think it was possible but now what was impossible seems to be happening every day and you’re part of the team which is making it happen.