Transcript

I’m Zamanur Shah and I’m an applications support analyst. I grew up in East London. In college I studied computing, I studied business studies and I also studied maths. I’ve always been interested in IT and I’ve always had an interest in business as well, and maths just played in with them both. I didn’t want to go to university to start off with, and I told my dad who had an absolute fit, [I thought] I’d rather get the work experience, I’d learn better that way. The Citylink Brokerage came along. They explained the different schemes that they do have; they take you in, they’re incredible. They take you in and give you a CV workshop, they help you with interview skills, they will send you different roles. So when I could apply to the Citylink Brokerage, it was a no brainer.
 
Given it was my first ever career-focused job, I was incredibly nervous at first, but what I found very quickly was that everyone in Newton is incredibly friendly and so the nervousness faded away very quick; also, the added bonus of having a fully funded degree programme is a massive advantage to us, and so I think what you’ll find is Newton is an incredible place to start.
 
Everyone always says “my day’s never the same”, but mine literally isn’t because I’m never working on the same thing. It is a new issue on a daily basis. I’ve got really, really good experience that I can always fall back on no matter what; if I change my career path in the future I will always have this experience that I can fall back on. I think I’ve changed quite a bit and I think I’ve definitely matured; I’ve got a lot more business sense.

 My advice would be to look at programmes that will give you the best of both worlds. What you will find is that you come out of it with a degree, a very well respected degree, and valuable experience that you just cannot get anywhere else.