Chelsea is about to go into her second year studying BSc (Hons) Forensic Computing and Security. During her first year, she took part in a competition as part of the Computing in Business event for all first year Computing & Informatics students and her team won. Their prize was a chance to spend the day at JPMorgan to find out more about their student and graduate opportunities. Here’s what she got up to during the visit.

Starting our day

Due to winning the Computing in Business week, my team was given the opportunity to visit the JPMorgan Hub in Bournemouth. We arrived at 10:30am and started our day learning CV tips to create a strong impression on employers. From there, we were shown the variety of internships that we can apply for during the summer whilst studying and once we graduate.

We were able to speak to a graduate panel of five individuals who were currently doing their graduate internships. We also spoke to two individuals doing their summer internships, they allowed us to ask a variety of questions which we all found helpful not just for applying to JPMorgan or jobs but was also beneficial for university life such as extracurricular activities to partake in to help us within the field.

Touring the JP Morgan offices

We received a tour of the building that had many eco-friendly adaptations including solar panels, beehives, hedgehog dens and flowerbeds to protect rarer species of flowers.

There are many facilities on site such as tennis courts, a local coffee company within the building and a park area. The office spaces were incredible, the “mission control room” as it was called, was designed by NASA.

Our computing workshops

We took part in two workshops during our stay. One was based around building LEGO that recreated how a SCRUM meeting would work when completing a product owners’ requirements for a task.

The other was about how code looks like within a real scenario; we were repeatedly asked how a piece of code could be improved till eventually we got to the final example which was the ideal code style.

During my stay at the JPMorgan Bournemouth hub, I learnt a lot alongside my other team members. The work hours at JPMorgan are very relaxed and understanding, for example if you work overtime, you would be allowed to take the overtime off from the next day.

Internships at JPMorgan

Anyone can apply for the internships at JPMorgan as training can be given to you if you can prove you have the right mindset for the job, the training comes as an extension to the internship.

When applying for the Software Engineering internship, the applicant, once far enough into the interview, will be asked to partake in a coding challenge. This is to demonstrate that they have the correct mindset and understanding for the job and to test the applicant’s skill level. When talking to the graduate panel, they clarified that the coding challenge was less about coding skill and more for the employer to understand your thought process behind your solution, so future applicants should take this into consideration.

JPMorgan is a brilliant company due to being in the financial industry. This means there is a job position for anyone as there are so many opportunities in the field. Once employed by JPMorgan, it is possible to swap areas within the company or be transferred to another hub elsewhere in the world. I really enjoyed my visit and I’m strongly considering applying to undertake my placement year there.

Find out more

BSc (Hons) Forensic Computing and Security