The EP team recently caught-up with Asier Hernandez Blanco, an International Business and Management MSc student, Tung Linh Pham, a Financial Economics MSc student, and Adil Jawad, a Computing student.
After earning 265 Employability Points, through completing the Global Skills Award, partaking in StudyPlus sessions and benefiting through the ASPIRE programme, Asier was rewarded with a 4-week internship at HR GO, focused on reviewing their global digital strategy.
During his internship, Asier worked closely with the Chief Information Officer, and was tasked with reviewing the marketing plan for three new products. This provided Asier with the opportunity to apply his knowledge in strategy, project management and strategic marketing.
When asked what advice he would give to future students, Asier said:
“I would say to them to ask as many questions as they could, because it is the best way to find out what you want to learn and achieve throughout the internship. Above all, do not be afraid as managers are there to help and support you with everything you need, and remember that there is not a silly question. If you have a concern, ask your manager or your mentor, otherwise you will keep the doubt in your mind. Finally, I would tell them to be curious and think ahead, do not stop in your daily task, think big and dream even bigger as you will be working with senior staff from whom you could learn a lot to become a great professional.”
Similarly, Tung earned 300 EP’s by attending a variety of Careers and Employability Service Skills Workshops, being very involved in EmpFest20 events and investing in some of the ASPIRE programme; Tung’s 8 week internship took place within HR Go’s IT and Business Systems Department.
Having a keen interest in Data and Analytics, Tung’s role involved working under the Group IT Director learning how Business Intelligence is used in a commercial business; how the company’s infrastructure reports that BI and learning how to handle data ethically. Tung was able to use his Excel programming skills to automate complex weekly tasks the company undertake, additionally improving his business requirement knowledge and applying that to deliver programming solutions.
Tung stated:
“As a foreign student, getting the first job in the UK is really challenging. To overcome this problem, I sought out every opportunity to land a position, and EP is one of them. During my internship I had a chance to really know about the UK working environment, how to adapt, how to collaborate with my colleagues. I think that the students should leverage the opportunities available at the University of Kent and make the most of the support in terms of employability.”
Adil earned 375 points from a variety of virtual internships, the ASPIRE programme and skills workshops. He undertook a 12-week internship with the HR GO Labs team.
“I have learnt so much and it has really given me valuable experience which will help me in the future. The learning curve has been high but the team at HR GO have been so welcoming and helpful in teaching me and giving me support.”
Working under the Group Digital Product Manager and alongside the senior engineer, Adil undertook a variety of roles during his internship, including having his own project to work on:
“I have been given my own project which consists of creating Psychometric tests for candidates in the HR GO candidate portal. It has given me experience in Front-end and Back-end Web Development which is great. Being assigned to my own project pushed me even more to work harder and learn as much as I can to deliver the project at a good standard. I have had the ability to learn and use technologies like React and Redux along with improving my skills in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This experience will definitely help me in the future as I am a much better developer than I was before. Also learning about agile workflow and the tools and methodology that are used to apply it has been great too.”
For 2020-21, HR GO kindly offered three exclusive EP internships, for more information on the company, please see here.
Extra support for these internships was generously provided by funding from Santander Universities.