Tag: Careers Interview

Paths to Success – Digital Forensic Investigator & Author

Posted on by Holly Billinghurst
In the sixth in the series of my Paths To Success blog series, I’ve been talking to Scar de Courcier, a research psychologist (psychology of religion) who also writes about digital forensics and consult on child protection & international security issues. Scar also runs a writing & translation agency, Bohemiacademia.com
For those of you who haven’t been following the blog series so far, this year I’ve been particularly interested in the paths that people take after education, especially following the increase across the UK in encouraging schools and colleges to embed employability into their lessons. The first time I tried this with students, I was met almost audible rolling of eyes – kids have genuine skills in detecting something that’s been “embedded”, much like a careers version of hiding vegetables in their spaghetti. They know.
So instead, with exam results now out for the year and choices being made about next steps, I decided to buck the trend of the many posts telling students that “results don’t matter” (they do, you worked hard), or “I didn’t need GCSEs” (no, but you had something else) and create a positive set of real careers stories to help motivate both my students and other teachers. I’ve been talking to an array of interesting people about how education shaped their own employability skills and their often irregular paths to success.
Screen Shot 2018-08-13 at 15.17.25.pngHi Scar, could you tell me a little bit about your experience at school.
I adored school. I had a terrible home life and school felt like my ticket out (and it was)
With it being the end of the school year, I have to ask: do you have a particular teacher that you remember?
Most of my teachers at Steyning Grammar School were fantastic and inspirational; I was very lucky! They refused to let me stop believing in myself and helped in practical ways as well as providing emotional support. A few years ago I wrote a poem about them: https://jeviscachee.com/2018/05/09/sgs-a-poem
Could you tell me a little bit about your experience at college / university?
I was a very academic student and assumed I’d love uni. I didn’t. I found the other students on my course weren’t as interested in the subject matter and it made for a frustrating and difficult environment. After a year I was offered a position on a research team, so I ended up skipping the normal route through uni and going straight to academic research.
Is there any other advice you would want to give to students who received exam results and are making their choices for the next step?
Anyone studying GCSEs, if you’re worried about your exams or coursework and it’s getting you down, try not to be. As long as you try your best, that’s all that matters and there are ways to get back on track if the worst happens with your results. It doesn’t all rely on your GCSE results.
Thank you so much to Scar for giving up her time to tell us about her varied career and the path she took to arrive where she is now.

Scar can be found at http://www.jeviscachee.com and www.Bohemiacademia.com where you can see her work as an author and read about some of the amazing experiences that she has in digital forensics, or you can see her latest book, Windows Forensics Cookbook on Amazon.

Paths to Success – Programmer & Teacher

Posted on by Holly Billinghurst
In the fifth of my Paths To Success blog series, I’ve been talking to Darren Barnett who, in a similar turn of events to me adjusted his career in software development into teaching. He’s now teaching A Level Computer Science at Sussex Downs College, but in his previous career he worked in video games development as a producer and programmer.
For those of you who have not been following the series so far, this year I’ve been particularly interested in the paths that people take after education, especially following the increase across the UK in encouraging schools and colleges to embed employability into their lessons. The first time I tried this with students, I was met almost audible rolling of eyes – kids have genuine skills in detecting something that’s been “embedded”, much like a careers version of hiding vegetables in their spaghetti. They know.
So instead, with exam results fast approaching I decided to buck the trend of the many posts telling students that “results don’t matter” (they do, you worked hard), or “I didn’t need GCSEs” (no, but you had something else) and create a positive set of real careers stories to help motivate both my students and other teachers.
To start this Paths To Success series I had to accept that as a teacher my previous employment and growing businesses likely means very little to my students (and rightly so, I am just one person in an industry that they know). Instead, I’ve been talking to an array of interesting people about how education shaped their own employability skills and their often irregular paths to success.
Screen Shot 2018-08-13 at 15.07.43.pngHi Darren, You’ve had quite a varied career. Could you tell me a little bit more about it?
I’ve worked all over the world with the video games job, America (often), Australia, Japan, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, France & Italy. It was really interesting to work with people from other cultures, some seem very like home (Australia) and some are excitingly different (Japan). It’s been really interesting to go from programming with fairly small teams initially to working on huge video game projects with many people.
When I started programming we mainly programmed in MS-DOS and Windows was seen as a bit of a novelty. Most games programmers programmed in assembler at the time!
In my second job as a programmer I worked in the PC team which was two people alongside a CD-i team which was far bigger and now hardly anyone remembers CD-i (it was a kind of interactive video format from Philips that came on huge laser discs).
Working in education now is really interesting – I very much like teaching A Level & BTEC and I like the creativity of working in Computer Science. It’s also really cool when you get questions that stretch your own brain from students as well as when you help someone to make progress when they were really struggling.
Being a teacher gives us a new perspective on education, but could you tell me a little bit about your experience at school.
I failed my 11 plus which was a bit of a shock at the time as I assumed I would pass (my whole primary school failed the 11 plus!!!) and went to what we called a High school. This was still at the time when kids could leave at 14 and also if you went to the High school they assumed that lots of kids would leave without any exam passes at all!
I did OK at school – especially as the expectations were pretty low across the board and I had some very good teachers – especially for Maths & English which stuck with me. I had a lot of dreadful ones too – my Sociology teacher refused to teach me as I insisted on doing O level and he only wanted to teach CSE (as the exams were split then) – but contrary to my expectations I managed to get a U! I had assumed that Sociology was mostly about ranting about how unfair the world is / was!
I ended up with 9 O levels eventually (despite the Sociology blip) – partly helped by the fact that you could do Maths & Additional Maths then! After that I went on to the 6th form which I really liked – you make great friends in the 6th form and the atmosphere which much better. I even ended up as a senior prefect despite being a punk rocker with green or blue hair – as that was fairly new then you could have nose piercings etc as there were no rules about things like that…
With it coming up to the start of the school year, I have to ask: do you have a particular teacher that you remember?
It’s so long ago that I can’t remember the names well – I think Mrs Millington was my Maths teacher and she was very good – otherwise I just remember the nicknames of the teachers.
There was still corporal punishment then too, so teachers hitting kids sticks in the mind unfortunately – I never got caned but you were in danger of a board rubber being thrown at you – I assume they tried not to aim for your head!
Lots of our students are or will be in the process of applying to college or university right now. Could you tell me a little bit about your experience at college / university?
I really liked college and Uni a lot – when I left the 6th form I took a year out and worked for 6th months and also went to college in the evening – I don’t know how it was possible in those days but I did A level sociology in the evenings after work for about 6 months and got a C which is a decent step up from the U…
My first degree was a BA in Religion and Philosophy which I loved – also I liked Brighton so much I decided to live here – it was a great degree and very interesting.
Ironically all the way through school to the end of my degree I had hardly touched a computer apart from to play Space Invaders at the swimming pool! My IT skills were so poor I had to get my friend in the business studies department to help me to use a word processor for my dissertation (although to be fair word processors then were on a main frame and were pretty complex)!
Is there any advice you would want to give to students who recently received exam results?
Your life is probably going to change in a major way more than once in terms of your career – I would say make sure you take any opportunities you can and throw yourself into them. It’s amazing what you can succeed in and just because you can’t do something now doesn’t mean you won’t necessarily be amazing at it in the future!
Thank you so much to Darren for giving up his time to show my students that the path to success doesn’t always start from the easiest of foundations (and that our teachers are much nicer now!)
Darren can be found on LinkdIn where you can see more about his teaching career.

Paths to Success – Product Marketing

Posted on by Holly Billinghurst

In the fourth of my Paths To Success blog series, I’ve been talking to Louise Scanlon who recently started her own business, helping other people make their businesses successful and bring their product ideas to life. Whilst formal education wasn’t the best fit, she described how she made it work for her.

For those of you who haven’t been following the blog series so far, this year I’ve been particularly interested in the paths that people take after education, especially following the increase across the UK in encouraging schools and colleges to embed employability into their lessons. The first time I tried this with students, I was met almost audible rolling of eyes – kids have genuine skills in detecting something that’s been “embedded”, much like a careers version of hiding vegetables in their spaghetti. They know.

So instead, with exam results fast approaching I decided to buck the trend of the many posts telling students that “results don’t matter” (they do, you worked hard), or “I didn’t need GCSEs” (no, but you had something else) and create a positive set of real careers stories to help motivate both my students and other teachers. I’ve been talking to an array of interesting people about how education shaped their own employability skills and their often irregular paths to success.

Screen Shot 2018-08-12 at 22.04.06Louise Scanlon is an entrepreneur who owns the Product Academy which specialises in mentoring & teaching businesses how to successfully market their physical products.

Hi Louise, could you tell me a little bit about your experience at school.

I loved learning at Primary school but really struggled at Senior school. I found it restrictive, couldn’t really get on with the teachers, and didn’t really fit in with my class. But the subjects I enjoyed – IT and Psychology at GCSE and Business Studies and Economics at A Level have been the foundation of everything else.

I attempted uni but had similar problems to school and instead taught myself the things I needed to learn by reading, experimenting or attending short courses. I don’t think how you learn is as important as continuing to learn. Just find what way works for you and keep doing it.

I’m a massive fan of lifelong learning too. It’s good to hear that even though traditional education didn’t fit well you found your own way of learning. With it being the end of the school year, I have to ask: do you have a particular teacher that you remember?

I remember all my teachers and there are lots of lessons that I refer back to. My business studies and economics tutor has sadly passed on but some of those lessons definitely helped shape what I do today.

It’s interesting to hear that you went onto university even though you weren’t a fan of traditional education. Could you tell me a little bit about your experience at college / university?

I didn’t do my research and I didn’t have a clue what to expect or how to make the decision so overall, it wasn’t a great experience! Definitely research!!

However, despite that, I spent a year studying International Law at the University of Copenhagen. It blew my mind and I finally felt like I was where I was supposed to be. I was having important conversations about whether the US invading Iraq was legal, with a tutor who happened to be advising the Danish govt on the invasion that afternoon.

University is a different world to college and if there is any part of you that wants to go, don’t let school be the reason you do or don’t go. Choose your next step based on what interests and excited you and find a way to learn it that fits with who you are.

 

That definitely sounds like the advice I’ve been giving. Is there any other advice you would want to give to students receiving exam results this year?

Take a deep breath, accept whatever they are is a snapshot in time. If you have done well, be proud of yourself. If you haven’t done as well as you hoped, it doesn’t define your future. Figure out what you want and go for it!

 

Thank you so much to Louise for giving up her time to tell us about her journey into an exciting career and how she uses her own experiences to help other people create success.

Louise can be found at www.theproductacademy.co.uk where you can find out more about marketing products as a business.

Paths To Success – Film Maker & Producer

Posted on by Holly Billinghurst

In the third of my Paths To Success blog series, I’ve been talking to film maker & Producer, Jay Shurey who describes himself as a rather eccentric creature from Sussex.

Paths To Success – Electrician & Entrepreneur

Posted on by Holly Billinghurst

In the second of my Paths To Success blog series, I’ve been talking to Donna Lister who showed me that it wasn’t just me who took a right angle career turn!

This year, I’ve been particularly interested in the paths that people take after education, especially following the increase across the UK in encouraging schools and colleges to embed employability into their lessons. The first time I tried this with students, I was met almost audible rolling of eyes – kids have genuine skills in detecting something that’s been “embedded”, much like a careers version of hiding vegetables in their spaghetti. They know.

So instead, with exam results fast approaching I decided to buck the trend of the many posts telling students that “results don’t matter” (they do, you worked hard), or “I didn’t need GCSEs” (no, but you had something else) and create a positive set of real careers stories to help motivate both my students and other teachers. I’ve been talking to an array of interesting people about how education shaped their own employability skills and their often irregular paths to success.

 

Screen Shot 2018-07-29 at 13.08.20.png

Donna Lister fully qualified female electrician. I have been running my own electrical business in London for over 12 years, but she hasn’t always been an electrician. Often we talk about STEM jobs being the areas where women are under-represented, so it was great to chat to a female electrician and entrepreneur.

 

Hi Donna, could you tell me a little bit about your experience at school.

I found school rules really annoying and always tried to break them! However, I did quite well at school academically.

 

Now that sounds familiar! In fact I think my rebellious streak has stayed with me into adulthood. Have you found the same?

Oh, I hope so! A few people told me I’d never make it as an electrician, so of course that made me more determined than ever! When I was younger and broke, I changed parts on my car despite being told by the ‘man’ at the garage that there was no way I’d figure it out. I  remember driving past the garage in my car after I fixed it and tooting my horn at him!!

 

With it being the end of the school year, I have to ask: do you have a particular teacher that you remember?

I guess my maths teacher, Mr Lewis inspired me. He taught me A level applied maths at St Cyres Comprehensive in Penarth, South Wales. I remember him being quite funny but also strict – he would sometimes throw the board rubber (essentially a wooden block!) at you if you weren’t paying attention. This was in the days when it was OK to do this, of course!

 

Lots of my students are in the process of applying to college or university right now. Could you tell me a little bit about your experience at college / university

After leaving Uni I realized the career I had chosen wasn’t for me, so I took another post grad course. I think I must get bored really easily as I have swapped careers lots! However, all my past experience make me what I am, so I never view it as ‘wasted’.

I had a mid life crisis and gave up my job as a charity director to retain as an electrician – most people thought I was bonkers, but that just spurred me on! Best thing I ever did – being self employed has given me the freedom to do other things – travel, learn new skills outside of work and now I’m setting up another business (completely non related to electrics)

 

Wow! So what made you choose electrician as your new career? Has it been different going into that field as a woman?

I’d always been interested in DIY and enjoyed maths too. I didn’t fancy plumbing because of the ‘yuck’ element, so electrics seemed to be the logical choice – it can be quite lucrative if you are prepared to work hard. Some years, I certainly earned more than I made at the charity. I honestly think that being a women has helped me, I know that some of my customers choose me because they prefer to have a female working in thier home. However, you still need to be good at your job and super organised.

 

After being a successful electrician for 12 years, you’re setting up a new business – can we have a sneak peek at what it is?

I’m at an age now where I need reading glasses. But while wearing them I can’t put my makeup on as they get in the way! GRRR! So a friend (who has the same problem) and I decided to develop a solution – after 2 years of product design, protoyping and testing – FlipZees magnifying makeup glasses were born! Of course we’re now having to learn a whole new set of skills around beauty marketing, website development, social media and sales. You can take a look here www.flipzeesglasses.com

 

Is there any advice you would want to give to students receiving exam results this year?

When I look back to where I started to where I am now, I am quite amazed at how on earth I got here! There was no plan! So don’t worry too much about making the ‘right’ choices now – you are on the start of a long journey and you can always take a different path! In fact, that’s the fun bit!

 

Thank you so much to Donna for giving up her time to show my students that the path to success isn’t always as we planned and that twists and turns in life really are just part of the journey!

Donna can be found at www.atb-electrical.co.uk where you can find out more about the qualifications needed to become an electrician. Or you can watch her interview with Two-Fifty Volts here:

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