My name is Monica, I'm studying IT and Strategic Innovations from Kingston University and I'm
a masters student and I have a placement along with my masters and I'm an international student.
I choose this course in Strategic Innovation because I already had experience
in IT industry like for five years I worked as a software developer, and as a software
developer I just used to get the requirement documents and you're supposed to develop the
software or the module from the particular requirement, but we don't understand the whole
business and how our software is going to fit into this business. So, by doing this
course I get to understand how do we analyse a business, like SWOT analysis and other things
that I had never heard of before. So, and also, I learn how to write business plan and do
budgeting analysis that will actually help me understand the whole process
from the business end as well as the technology end.
For the first thing, my brother also studied
in Kingston university so I already kind of knew how the professors are and how the location is,
and basically I am an international student, so it's good to have someone you already know,
and when I came to Kingston the university is very nice and the location by the riverside
and everything is very near to it.
I chose to do a placement along with my masters because,
after completing all my lectures now I get about twelve months to think about my project
and the place where I'm doing my placement will also give me various new ideas on what
exactly I can put in my project dissertation.
I actually applied to many of the companies
and uploaded my resume in most of the job sites that are available and that particular
one that I'm currently working is something I got from LinkedIn. I got a message, I got
a message from a recruiter that's actually because I have previous work experience as
a developer and there was an opening for it, so I got it that way.
In the very first week, we have an induction programme for the placement students
They give us some of the test to understand our mindset
and then they ask us to start applying for the jobs.
We have like some of the guest lecturers coming in who actually work in a company or they
do represent the company so they tell us if they have any openings for the students or
if some of these skills, because there are most of the students, they have some of the
work experience prior to joining the course, so, they fit into the companies that way
In the very first week when we joined the
university we have an induction programme and then they tell us about how we can apply in
various job sites. And we have a dedicated website called jobcentral for Kington university
and there we can see a number of jobs listed and we can start applying. For my placement
I have started applying from the very beginning, from November 2018, but I got the
placement in around March because you're supposed to start in May and the university helps us
like in various workshops, like they tell us how to update the LinkedIn profile, and
there are CV workshops, they tell you what things you have to put in your CV
and what things you can remove from the CV.
So, I have started my placement at iLUKA CSM
that specialises in sports marketing and we basically deal with the hospitality management
during the events, events like Olympics and rugby world cup and I am currently working
as a software developer so I will be developing the mobile applications and websites that
will help in transport management system.
So, the benefits of doing a placement is like
I get to work in a real environment where I'm learning new skills like mobile application
development, which I haven't done before and I'll be able to get new ideas for my project.
So once I graduate, I expect to be able to become a software architect in which I will
be able to design the whole software and then will be able to develop it as well.