The Careers and Employability Service offer a fantastic bursary for students. The Working and Opportunities Fund is a great opportunity for students to claim back money on out-of-pocket travel expenses for undertaking unpaid work experience (for the first three weeks or 120 hours of work) or for a training event.
Joshua Green, a first year BSc Economics with Econometrics student, was another of the bursary’s recipients this year which meant he could attend the London Forex show. Joshua has written about his experience, which you can read about here:
With more and more high achieving and qualified graduates hitting the job market post University, the Finance sector is becoming a harder and harder industry to penetrate successfully. Because of this I have made it my goal at university to gather as much experience as possible, in order to increase my chances of landing a successful job at the end of my studies; so when the chance to attend the London Forex show arose, I didn’t turn it down. It was an opportunity to increase my existing knowledge and skills in trading, but more importantly a chance to network with existing firms in the industry.
The event evolved around a large auditorium with around fifteen different firms showcasing their products and services. This gave me a brilliant opportunity to chat and get to know many employees from these firms, and express my interest in gaining experience with them. From the day I came away with three different contacts from companies who were interested in talking further about internships and experience at their firm, including the London based firm Bitstocks, who specialises in Cryptocurrency trading, who otherwise would have been very difficult to get any traction with being a first year student having not met them first hand.
The day was also broken up with around twenty different talks on Forex and Crypto trading. Being able to have a competent understanding of your industry area when applying for opportunities is incredibly useful, so it was a privilege to be able to get over six hours’ worth of teaching and input from industry experts including Alpesh Patel, a very successful hedge fund manager, as well as other highly regarded traders.
Another unforeseen positive of the experience was simply the motivation it gave me towards my studies being in an environment with other successful professionals. The BKEW allowed me to realise that if I want to be in a profession like many of the people around me are, I am going to have to work my hardest to ensure I get the best grade possible if I am compete for these positions!
Overall the BKEW has gave me a brilliant opportunity to increase my industry knowledge, gain important contacts, and hopefully give me a greater chance of landing the top class internships in the future, a chance I otherwise would have found difficult to get, due to the extremely high price of London travel!