Alisha Mahajan (BSc Computing, 2019)
I was initially studying Economics at UCL. However, the course didn’t resonate with me so I decided to change my degree after the first term. I got a chance to do an internship at the Customer Experience Department at Salesforce and decided that I wanted to make a career in User Experience and User Interface Design.
In search to join a new degree, The University of Buckingham stood out for me due to its two-year programme with a start date in January and a very high student satisfaction score. Despite applying to the course a bit late and it being a holiday season, I was very impressed to receive a call from Dr Harin, Dean of Computing on boxing day who explained the process and asked me to meet him once the University reopened. The entire Computing staff were very welcoming.
I did my degree in Computing. The University experience was excellent and we were given a lot of development opportunities such as participating in various hackathons including starting up a company, designing logos and posters, speaking at the Women in Data Science Conference, leading the Computer Society and many more events. These extracurricular activities helped to hone my organisation and leadership skills.
I graduated in March 2019 and won the G-Volution Prize for Academic Distinction and the School of Computing’s British Computing Society Prize. This was a huge accomplishment for me as Computing wasn’t my strong area but with the right guidance, hard work and determination I was able to achieve this.
After graduating from Buckingham, I joined Cloudshift, a Salesforce Platinum Partner as a Graduate Consultant. My role mainly focused on UX/UI design, front end development and configuration using the Salesforce Platform. After nine months of working at Cloudshift, I left to pursue a full-time career in UX/UI design. I did online design courses and part-time assignments to hone my design skills.
After a few months, I started applying for jobs. However, it was a very challenging period as Covid-19 had started spreading at the time. A few of the interviews I had lined up got cancelled due to the pandemic. I was also struggling to get a job as I did not have sufficient professional work experience. Every rejection for me was a learning opportunity of how I could become better. After a lot of hard work and perseverance, applying to almost 300 job applications I finally got a job at Civica as a Graduate Customer Experience Designer. I am very excited to start my role in October 2020 in the field I am very passionate about.
I am very grateful to The University of Buckingham for an enjoyable and great learning experience.