Case studies: Application developer: Laura Harvey

Laura Harvey attended the University of Plymouth and completed a BA in Multimedia Production and Technology in 2007. She is currently working as a prospects application developer for IBM.

I originally joined IBM as an industrial trainee in my sandwich year of university. I was prompted after the company visited my university and gave a presentation regarding possible careers in IT.

I attended both a day long assessment centre, as well as a final stage interview - both of which culminated in the offer of a 12-month placement working as a web content manager for the sales department.

This placement helped me to decide that I was well suited to the corporate lifestyle, and I enjoyed the challenge of meeting high standards. After completion of my degree I re-applied to the graduate scheme.

I attended a one day assessment centre, which included interviews, logical thinking testing and group work to monitor an individual's team skills. I was fortunate to pass this and be accepted onto the scheme a few weeks after my graduation.

My first role on the IBM graduate scheme was extremely technical; I supported the test and live customer servers, networking, application functionality and deployed changes to the environments which were managed for the customer. I became technically proficient in third party software, provided 24/7 support to the client team and extensive support to the development team.

I also provided consultancy to internal and external teams in support of the application and dealt with database updates, as well as training new staff and managing offshore colleagues in support of the application.

This was a great opportunity for a new graduate and afforded me a great deal of autonomy and responsibility. No two days were the same, and the steep learning curve increased my confidence in my ability to perform for the client to an enormous degree.