As the old saying goes, ‘experience is what you get just after you need it’. While that idiom works for life in general, it need not be the case for students looking to enter the world of work.
Because as our efforts to support those concerned about a future development skills shortfall is proving, any organization who wants to succeed in the future must capture the interest of the next generation of talent today.
Train to gain
Micro Focus understands the importance training and personal development to future success and is simultaneously supporting our customers’ and our own growth strategies.
We are helping to fill the COBOL development pipeline through our Academic Program and our work experience program has been encouraging at least two work experience students through the doors of our HQ in Newbury, Berkshire, every year since 2010.
Our visitors are usually Year 15 students from schools all over the county. While some are drawn from through the school using Education Business Partnerships, other students have parents already working at Micro Focus. Clearly, we must be doing something right!
The recruitment process is straightforward enough – we email every department confirming the opportunity to offer a willing student a working insight into the world of work in general and technology in particular.
The where and the what…
Every student visits Micro Focus for a preliminary chat and a look around the offices as a ‘taster’ session. It’s a great opportunity to see what other members of staff wear – a major consideration for students, naturally – to make them feel at home and meet Kiruba. It is also a great chance for us to ask them a few questions:
- What interests do they have outside school?
- What GCSEs are they taking in school?
- What do you want to do in the future?
- Which departments would they prefer to experience?
We will then prepare a schedule and a list of contact names for the week and send it with a welcome email to the student. Once they have completed the week we use feedback from managers to complete their ‘record of achievement’.
The popularity of social media, blogging and other contemporary platforms means that the marketing department is always a popular choice. It’s not every job that actively encourages people to sit on Twitter all day!
While others choose a different path – everyone benefits from the experience. As Patrick Nield, our most recent guest explains, “It was a fantastic week – much more fun than school!”
Doing it for the kids
To Micro Focus, work experience is a chance to put a human face on our corporate social responsibility work and wonderful opportunity for local students to get some insight and understanding of our work by doing ‘real’ tasks and duties.
After all, our company ethos is all about ‘bridging the old with the new’ – and that applies to us, too!
