Skills Bootcamps at the University of Birmingham

Sumaya

(Bootcamp student). My name is Sumaya Hassan, and I studied at the University of Birmingham Training Coding Boot camp. Before the boot camp, I worked as a part time care assistant, and I also did freelance graphic design work. And after the boot camp, I now work as a junior front-end engineer.

Nina

(Bootcamp student). My name is Nina Avitabile and I studied the data skills for Creative Industries at the University of Birmingham. I've always been interested in data wanting to get into that kind of field a little bit more, but I thought it was quite difficult to access and to know where to start.

Kerry

(Recruiter at Cognizant) The impact of boot camps has allowed us to be a lot more agile in terms of how we provide recruitment services to our clients. It allows us to target specific skills as well, and it allows us to target a bigger breadth of the type of people that are coming into Cognizant.

Sumaya

So at Gymshark, I work on building user interfaces for the Gymshark websites and to ensure that the user has
a satisfactory experience with no issues.

Nina

I've just secured a role as a data analyst. And a lot of the skills that I learned as part of the boot camp I'll be taking forward, especially looking at R programming and using GG Plot.
The boot camp set me up to secure this role in numerous different ways. I think having the confidence to apply for a role like this, also as part of the boot camp and doing it through the University of Birmingham, there are certain services that we have access to, so library services, but also career services. So I was able to do a mock interview with a careers advisor, which sort of helped a few days before doing my actual interview.

Kerry

We've got people coming through who perhaps have had career breaks and are looking to re-skill and get back into work. We've got those who have got six months relevant experience but just want to up their game and and reskill and or perhaps move into a slightly different area.

Sumaya

The way the boot camp is structured is to prepare you for the world of work, the projects in particular help you work with a team. So in the real day-to-day tech work, you are going to work in a team.
We built a wellness and journaling app. I really enjoyed working with my team. We worked well together. We've supported each other, we trusted each other and we focus on what we work it out and we ended up getting top marks, which is even better at the end.

Kerry

So the main benefits from boot camps as an employer,it allows us to react a lot quicker for what the business and client need. It also allows us to attract a larger talent pool in terms of diversity, inclusion,and especially social mobility as well.
The advice that I can give to other employers about boot camps just be brave, be bold, and go against the grain.

Nina

My advice for anyone considering doing this boot camp at the University of Birmingham is definitely apply. And if you get onto it, throw everything into this opportunity because it'sma really rare and valuable opportunity
and it might not come around again.