ISE is committed to maximizing the effectiveness of the student labour market. A key part of the student labour market are short-term internships and placements. Because we are keen to practice what we preach, we hosted an intern from City, University of London in the first part of this year. In this post, Aisha Shafi explains what it is like to intern with ISE.

Over the past couple of months, I had the pleasure of doing my internship at the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) as part of the Q-Step programme offered at City, University of London where I am currently an undergraduate studying Criminology (BSc).

Q-Step allows students studying social science degrees to develop their data analysis skills for employment. I was eager to participate in the programme because I knew it would give me more job opportunities when I graduate as I’d have analytical skills that many other graduates lack. As part of the programme I was expected to apply my knowledge and skill in quantitative methods in the workplace.

During my placement I worked closely with Tristram Hooley, who is the ISE’s Chief Research Officer. We worked together to analyse responses from the Pulse Survey and the Student Development Survey. In particular I worked with the tool Tableau to create interactive public data visualisations.

Other examples of my work can be found on the ISE data and resources page.

The team I was working with were very focused, which encouraged me to work hard and ensure that the work I produce for the ISE would have to be of a high standard. Working at the ISE was challenging as well as interesting as I was given responsibility to work with important data, but this also allowed me to get more involved with the organisation.

I have developed more confidence about learning new things during my internship and now have more confidence in my ability to perform tasks to a high standard. Overall, I learnt a lot from my internship experience at the ISE, such as how to analyse data in a correctly so that others are able to understand what your work is showing as well. Most importantly, I obtained a sense of professionalism and understood what it meant to be working in the professional world.

I would like to thank everyone part of the ISE team for allowing me to do my internship with them as I learnt a lot from them as well and I’m extremely grateful for the experience.