As part of Trayport’s ‘Education & Mentoring‘ Community stream, we run a work experience programme in our London office for local students. We partner with our local charity, Education Business Partnership, that aims to bridge the gap between education and the world of work for young people in Tower Hamlets.
For 2 weeks across June & July, Adam Grimes, an Exploratory Tester in our Technology team, worked with two work experience students who joined us for a placement. Below, Adam talks us through his experience of being a mentor.
Q: What did the students get up to during the programme?
At the beginning of the week, I set both students a project to do during their downtime that played to each of their strengths: building a rock-paper-scissors game in Python and C#, as well as multiple coding challenges. Alongside working on these projects, both students:
- shadowed Developers, Testers and Product Owners
- attended inductions on Trayport and Joule
- presented about their project work
- and conducted mock interviews to give them an idea of what to expect when applying for jobs in Technology.
Q: What have you learnt from this experience?
It was a brilliant opportunity to improve my coaching skills and also the ability to plan out someone’s personal development. One day I would love to be a team lead and these skills are vital as you try to get the best out of others and also help them achieve their career goals. I was able to improve my interviewing skills which again is a hugely vital skill if you are ever involved in building teams and the hiring process.
Q: How did you find the planning process for the programme?
I would say it is a little bit of work initially to put together a fun and engaging timetable as you need to ask people to do various pairing slots or inductions, but I am really grateful that almost everyone I spoke to was willing to help out. Once the plan has been put together, I would advise sending it to the candidate and they then manage their own calendars as a good introduction to working life. Coming up with a project was really easy as there are lots of great resources online for ideas and challenges.
Q: What did you enjoy about the programme?
Within the programme you are given a lot of freedom to design the programme around the student’s interests, which meant I was able to mould the experience to what skills they wanted to gain and experiences they both wanted to have. I was also well supported by the People Team and given a good idea of what to expect and how to plan an enjoyable work experience.
I really enjoyed the opportunity to develop others and to see them have a great time while taking the first steps to pursuing their passions.
We look forward to hosting our next work experience programme. Great work, Adam!
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