Last month, over 20 prospective UK college students visited the SpotX Belfast offices for a crash course on careers in the technology and online advertising industries.
The visit was arranged through the Pathway Opportunity Programme (POP) at Queen’s University Belfast, an initiative that encourages talented secondary school, or A-level, students from all educational and social backgrounds to enter third-level education at a college or university.
POP participants began their visit on the third floor of “The Boat” building in Belfast City Centre, where the SpotX team is refurbishing the space to accommodate growing recruitment. Office manager and recruitment coordinator Ashton Barrett walked through the range of roles typically available throughout the tech sector, as well as prerequisite skills, including current SpotX openings for C++ engineers, systems architects, project and product managers. Students were also advised about meetup groups, code clubs, and hackerspaces where they could learn more from professionals working in the field.
Students saw some of these tech projects up close, touring the eighth floor where SpotX development teams were at work on big data initiatives (via the Apache Hadoop framework), back-end API development (using Scala), and front-end UI development (including Typescript and Angular). Jonny McCullagh, a SpotX systems engineer and local STEM ambassador, described the motivation behind the event: “SpotX encourages us to engage and mentor the younger generation, and it’s always rewarding to talk to students about how exciting it is to work in the tech industry.”
There are many upsides to working in tech, including salary, travel opportunities, and more collaborative work environments. But the SpotX team also emphasized the rapid pace of change that comes with working at a technology company, a reality that attracts many personalities but may not be a fit for everyone.
Speaking about the office visit, QUB lecturer John Busch commented that “events like these make the IT industry workplace visible and accessible to talented female students, as there is high number of female staff working at SpotX. It provides the students with a new perspective on what it’s like to work in such an exciting sector and expels misconceptions they might have had before their visit to SpotX.”
If you are interested in jumpstarting your career at SpotX, please visit our careers page.