IT Work Experience with a Difference at EACS - The Importance of Being Earnest

When I was originally asked to write something it was tough to choose a subject. I considered topics such as the impact of robotics on our future workforce, as well as the employee life cycle and the wonderful, inspirational things we do here at EACS to support our people. But then it dawned on me… let’s start at the beginning - the importance of being earnest when attracting future talent to the company. The EACS IT Work Experience programme is more than filing and making cups of tea!

Where to begin?

With the challenge of attracting new EACS team members, where do you begin to communicate the message that working in IT can be such a fun and rewarding career? To attract the right people with diverse backgrounds and genders, we begin in the classroom with our specialist work experience programme…and we offer a lot more than two weeks of filing and making tea!

What do the students learn?

When our IT work experience pupils join us, they enjoy a two-week programme that helps prepare them for a future career in IT. On Monday morning, they start by attending our communications meeting and learning for themselves how the business is doing. They then spend time with our CEO - Kevin Timms and COO - Stuart Dickinson, who explain the company story and the journey of EACS. In addition, the students complete compliance and health and safety training… similar to any new starter to the business. Following this, they sit with our Sales team and Client Managers to learn the importance of understanding clients, their requirements and offering support.

Over their first week, students rotate within each area of the business and carry out exercises with the aim of understanding the business end to end. By the completion of their first week they should have a flavour and general understanding of EACS as a business and how we work.

Practical IT Work Experience for a future IT career

As well as listening to the various team members, the students will benefit from some practical experience. They enjoy undertaking sandbox work on laptops and desktops with our internal IT support staff, and our Technical team demonstrate to them how to create a website or suitable personal IT project.

At the beginning of the second week, we’ve armed them with enough knowledge to complete an example sale brief – with the help of an experienced Project Manager – to present to the Head of Delivery. By the end of the week they’ll be ready to receive a job description for an entry level role within the business. Furthermore, we’ll guide them through how to create their CV, specifically tailored to the role in question.

The last day - what will the students take away?

On their final day, students will role play a telephone and face-to-face interview with an experienced hiring manager for a theoretical role they’ve applied for. The feedback they receive from us following the ‘interview’ will hopefully be invaluable to them in their future. When they leave us they should have a really good overview of EACS as a company as well as how to prepare for a future role in IT – the key importance of being earnest with our work experience programme.

Please email information@eacs.com for further details on the EACS work experience programme.

Stephanie Hamilton, Head of HR, EACS