Saffron Wildbore
~ 4min read
~ 4min read
Bilal graduated university with a computer science degree and knew that getting into tech was his dream. He started out doing an internship, creating software to automate tasks for a warehouse and creating a website for a book company.
It was then that he stumbled upon mthree and successfully joined our graduate programme. Carry on reading to find out more about Bilal’s career journey.
Despite having a technical degree, Bilal still found our training worthwhile. “I did have understanding from education of the things that mthree taught, but it definitely cemented that knowledge. And the thing with education is that it mainly focuses on learning rather than the transition into the workforce, and I feel that the mthree programme showed you directly what to expect rather than this is what you might see or this is what you should focus on. The technical stuff, I knew a lot of it but the training covered different aspects. For example SQL, that’s something I hadn’t implemented in the back-end before so it did teach me things I didn’t know.
The training was really good, I was taught specifically how banks and businesses will accomplish certain things, how they handle data and so on. I found that throughout my education it was more learning things for specific projects, but on the training I was taught about things firm-wide, what other teams will be doing and what I would be working on which was really good.
The power skills training was really good. Some of the things you may already know out of intuition, but the way they were presented made sure you really understood why it was important. It was very good to get a clear view of how other people can perceive certain things or traits as an interviewer. So the soft skills training was definitely helpful.”
After completing the training, Bilal was placed on-site with one of our clients where he is excelling in his role. “It’s a mix of both code and operations support. So making sure the services and data is accessible and the code that we write is all fine.
So farI’ve mainly been doing training, as well as some application requests. The training has carried over in the sense that I’ve been able to understand what people around me are speaking about, even if it’s something that I’m not working on. I’m able to understand what people are talking about in team meetings, so I do feel I have a thorough understanding of all software and applications.
In the mornings, I’ll check through my emails and see what’s been assigned and I’ll have catch ups with my manager and team members. There’s a lot of help and support from people around me when it comes to what I’m working on. There’s also another mthree Alumni in my team, Richard, who has been here around 8 months and he’s been a great support and there are 3 other Alumni on different teams which is cool to see.”
“Really getting to know the team and figuring out how they work has been good. Seeing how helpful the people around me are too. I always worried that maybe I was asking too many questions or bothering people, but it’s not the case. Everyone is happy to help and to clarify and support me.
I also enjoy seeing the impact. I had one task where I needed to ask some host names to the back-end to check if it could be seen on the front-end. I had to look through all the ones that were currently there and filter out which ones weren’t. I then had to specify what type of format was needed and then put them on.
As well as that, it’s been totalling requests. That’s direct contact with the client. And the client is able to read and write data from my data. I think that impact is great, because that's forward facing and directly with the client, making the application for them.”
“I think my goals for the immediate future are getting acquainted with all the different services and programs that are on offer internally and being able to fully understand them.
For the long term, I’d like to be like Richard. He’s been able to help me out as another mthree Alumni when I have a question. I’d like to be someone like that for others as well. I’d like to be able to help them out when they join, to make sure that they see that they can actually succeed in their role and be confident in their work.”
“I would say work on your personal projects. It helps a lot to learn the code. From my experience, companies aren’t looking for you to get the answer 100% correct, they’re looking for your problem solving skills. They’re looking for you to actually be able to figure things out.
Work on solving problems. Even if it’s an easy question, show your thought process when you answer, show them this is how I would approach this. Even if you don’t give a correct answer, they’ll see that this is someone who can think and approach a problem, rather than just sitting back and saying "I don't know this.”
Looking to follow in Bilal’s footsteps? Discover our current opportunities today.
Saffron is the Marketing Manager at mthree, with over five years of experience creating content that connects. She works across both B2B and B2C marketing, focusing on everything from career tips for graduates to real stories from our alumni. Saffron’s articles are all about sharing practical advice, industry insights, and inspiration to help readers take the next step with confidence.
