One of the great things about our degree programmes is the option to study with a year in industry. We spoke to Hannah, one of our Computer Science students, who is currently on a placement year, to see what she had to say about the experience:
Hannah Ruddy - My Year In Industry
My name is Hannah Ruddy and I study Computer Science at the University of Liverpool. I am currently on my placement year, and I am working as a Software Engineer at a software solutions company called Ivanti in Daresbury.
I was interested in technology since a young age and I always loved the feeling of solving a problem. Therefore, I picked computer science at GCSE, A-Level and University as this was the field where my dream job lay.
Liverpool was close to my home in Manchester, and the culture and beautiful docks drew me to do my degree here. Although my placement year was not compulsory I felt it would give me a good insight into my dream job, and what it would be like to program every day. While doing my placement I quickly realised that people skills are just as important as programming skills, especially when working in teams. The preconceptions I had about software engineering were quickly demolished when I realised that designing, testing, research and customer relations were all part of being a software engineer, not just writing code.
Since day one, my internship has given me the opportunity to work on tasks like a normal engineer would. One of my biggest achievements is that my code was made live in the products of hundreds of thousands of endpoints by my second month.
During my placement I have been given the opportunity to present in front of Engineers and other students, as well as work on both on-premise products and cloud-based products.
Photo: Hannah presenting to students during her placement
My knowledge and skills have been accelerated whilst I have been on my placmement, and I always feel like a valued member of my team, in the sense that I can pick up work that a full-time engineer does.
My placement has given me confidence to write higher quality code, voice my opinions and furthermore it has given me the confidence to present in front of over a hundred people, which is something I would never have dreamed of doing. My mentor guides me to write scalable testable and adaptable code which is something I did not learn in university.
Even though I love coming to work, and I am always doing something different every day, I am looking forward to coming back to university and completing my final year project. I know I will be able to use my skills from my placement to create something of much higher quality than if I hadn’t taken a placement year. I also feel confident that I will be more motivated when preparing for exams, as I now know exactly what I want to do with my future and what I need to do to achieve it.
What do I want to do when I finish my degree? Well, I hope to get the grades to be offered a full-time job at my current placement as a Software Engineer.
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- Study Computer Science at the University of Liverpool