Jun 9
This gallery contains 10 photos.
On Saturday the 9th June we went a little bit car crazy, we had cars galore from the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG with gull-wing doors to a selection of classic Morgans. Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG who’s lead designer was a Coventry Uni graduate. A classic Bentley. A host of Reliant Scimitars. A Ford model T and a […]
The Coventry University Bright Future’s Society launched itself last week after its President Simran Osaan saw the opportunity to give students a chance to be a part of the nationwide scheme and take advantage of the amazing opportunities that Bright Futures can offer everyone.
Bright Futures is a UK wide organisation with societies in over forty universities including Oxford and Cambridge; it aims to give students the chance to hear from and meet from top employers from all industry sectors. It also offers members invaluable experiences to meet and get advice from recruiters and company directors at their Nationwide networking events.
Over one hundred students attended the launch event last week with an employer presentation and networking session from IBM. It was extremely successful and gave students a chance to network with staff from different departments in IBM, including ex-Coventry Polytechnic student Christine Wyatt who is now IBM’s General Manager for Global Business Services in UK and Ireland.
Coventry University maintains a strong link with IBM, with regular employer presentations and a dedicated Level 2 module “IT-based mentoring” which sees students paired with an IBM mentor from their Warwick site to improve their CVs, presenting and interviewing skills.
Almost 25 years after her own graduation Christine returned to Coventry in the midst of this year’s graduation celebrations, she met with the Vice Chancellor of the university and was given a tour of the campus to see how life at Coventry has changed since she studied Industrial Economics here.
The talk was a great insight into life working for IBM; Christine discussed her career path which included many impressive names such as KPMG and PwC before she joined IBM in 2002, proving that students from Coventry have a real chance in high-profile organisations. She also gave students an overview of projects IBM have worked on that really showcased all the different aspects of business IBM are involved with from their Technology development or Consultancy.
Currently Bright Futures is busy organising its next event which they hope will be a collaboration between top graduate employers Delloite and ACCA.
The society costs only £5 to join, and for this members receive free attendance to future talks as well as access to exclusive Bright Futures discounts which include discounted online psychometric tests. The society is keen to recruit new members, especially first and second years who will be able to take over the society next year to given even more students these opportunities.
For more information see the society’s webpages;
www.facebook.com/groups/coventrybrightfutures or groupspaces.com/coventrybrightfutures
To join the society please visit the CUSU memberships page.
We have a new Employability and Placement Unit! The EPU has been set up to help students find placements and increase employability. The two EPU advisors Mike Grey and Harminder Kaur are available for both one-to-one and group sessions. Appointments of half an hour can be made at Armstrong Siddeley reception.
Stepping stones was organised to promote the new unit and make students available of what new services it will be providing. Over 300 hundred students filled the Alan Berry lecture theatre to see presentations from university careers advisors, volunteering and international mobility services, as well as employer presentations from Jaguar Land Rover and TATA Technologies.
The Faculty has set itself an ambitious target of getting 70% of its second year students in either an industrial placement or studying abroad before they start their final year a Coventry.
We spoke to Harminder Kaur one of the advisors in the Employability and Placements Unit after the event; “We were really pleased, there was a great turnout and students were approaching employers after the talks. TATA are actually looking at recruiting from across other faculty’s but we’re pleased that they’ve decided to pilot their scheme with EC; they’ve actually asked to come back to give a one hour presentation.”
The general feedback from students on the day was that it was “professionally organised” and they found it both “relevant and purposeful”.
For more information about the Employability and Placements Unit email placements.ec@coventry.ac.uk
CovUniEC 