“This was the beginning of a brilliant journey with a mentor who helped me find full time employment with Siemens.”

Hear from Haaris who graduated from the University of Manchester in September 2019 as he explains his long journey to starting on a graduate scheme.

I graduated with a Masters in Chemical Engineering from the University of Manchester in September 2019 and had no job lined up. I started to apply for graduate level jobs as I had no industrial experience and found I was making it to the final stages but kept getting rejected. As the months went by and lockdown slowed the economy I was really starting to lose hope. Then, in December 2020, I received an email from GRB about their new platform called Graduate Mentor. This was the beginning of a brilliant journey with a mentor who helped me find full time employment with Siemens.

I visited the platform, searched and found an engineering mentor and had my first mentoring session with him over Zoom. We continued with five more sessions covering CV advice, which sectors and companies to target, how to tackle assessment centres and critiquing my presentations. He was a big help. His guidance was so helpful that I actually got two job offers with AkzoNobel and Siemens! I now can’t wait to start my career with a global firm on their engineering graduate scheme starting in April 2020. My advice to any graduates out there is you have to get used to rejection and see it as a learning experience to come back stronger. Having a mentor to give you honest feedback really helped me see where I was falling short and made be better prepared for every stage of the job application process. Thank you.”