Robert Collcott

 

BSc (hons) Computing

Graduated 2017

I am Robert Collcott a BSC Hons Computing graduate from 2017, I was a student at BNU from September 2014 to June 2017.

I currently work for Jisc, a not-for-profit business in the FE and HE sectors, as a 2nd Line IT Engineer, with a side interest in the user experience and customer experiences of IT support I started my career in IT systems support as a graduate intern at Zebra Technologies Europe Limited by getting knowledge about the following computing areas

  • Imaging PC’s
  • Mobile devices
  • IT audits and IT stock taking
  • M365 admin 
  • Courier shipping
  • Working with customers in all different time zones 

In between my starting job and my current job, I have held many different IT contractor positions in the healthcare and education sectors, one of them was working for a actual university rolling out new hardware prior to the academic year starting and various other tasks such as solving tickets for general end customer issues such as M365 application issues.

The healthcare sector contractor roles gave me experience and extra confidence, to work within teams of people to upgrade software and most notably bringing IT back in house from an external 3rd party managed service provider.

 

What are your memories of being a student at BNU?

There are too many to mention, of course I really enjoyed my course, however I was involved in many student roles of the following.

  • Student Ambassador all 3 years – open days, HE fairs. School visits and school visits workshops
  • Microsoft University ambassador partner for 2 years – years 2 and 3 of my degree programme, enhancing student awareness of Microsoft products and initiatives – was even lucky enough to be invited down to UK HQ for an event and get to know the people I was representing. In this exciting role I was also awarded a special students union award in my graduation year, for my dedication to the role, as a side thing in this role I also ran the Hour of coding scheme at my former primary school in south west London, during which when I completed my degree they awarded me an invitation back to present their IT award and give me my own educational testimonial in recognition of my education achievements.
  • Microsoft ambassador post continued, organized my own students union freshers fair campus stall stand to get extra engagement.
  • Microsoft week work experience placement – end of second year – I was lucky enough to land a UX UI design placement at Microsoft’s design studios in London where I got to design sample interfaces for the new Paint 3D program application, also this week I got to demo virtual reality systems for the first time.
  • Activities week champion – met my closet uni friend on this post who I still speak to today.
  • Students’ union involvement, fundraising, buddy and charity events photographer, shortlisted twice for fundraiser of the year. As well as joining with all major fundraisers I also raised for two of my own personal charities close to my heart which were the following
    • Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity 
    • Shooting Star Chase Hospices

What advice could you give to recent graduates who want to get ahead?

Start looking for jobs early on and most importantly network build connections with your industry and also make it far and wide so you can get different prospectives on life. 

How did your degree at BNU impact on your career?

The course gave me not just technical skills but also soft skills teaching, this made me an all rounded person to be a well valued team member of any IT support department and team as a whole.

Why did you join the course?

At the time the BSC Hons Computing course had a good variety of modules of all computing themes such as

  • Computer System architectures
  • Networking
  • Programming 
  • Core web development principles.
  • UX ‘User Experience’ 
  • Business modelling techniques and general business concepts.
  • Mobile computing
  • Cloud technologies and AI ‘Artificial Intelligence’

What aspects of your studies did you enjoy the most and why?

This is a hard question to answer, but I enjoyed everything about it, I suspect the main reason is It has helped me gain a cracking role in a top notch company which is Jisc, I had very experienced lecturers who bought their industry knowledge bank into the lecturers which made it really engaging to complete the assignments for the modules

Which parts of your student experience were the best preparation for your job?

I have to say all my BNU student experiences, as they gave me the confidence to broaden my networking skills with industry professionals and gain in confidence with many soft skills such as communication, public speaking and most importantly planning and organizational skills.

What are your major careers milestones since completing your studies?

  • Achieving my ITIL v4 Foundation certification, 3/7 exam sections marked at 100%.
  • Achieving my InTune Fundamentals short course certification
  • Completing a course on Mobile device management and desktop management with Microsoft Intune via a 3rd party training provider
  • Co-authoring T Level qualifications frameworks and making talking head videos for use for schools and colleges, via a consultancy. 
  • Rolling out hundreds of new computers for Jisc to achieve its Cyber Essentials accreditation
  • Rolling out a new Oracle client software package to make sure Jisc still maintained its Cyber Essentials accreditation. 
  • Upgrading printers in all the Jisc major site offices and the mini-Cheltenham hub 
  • Creating application packages so end customers can self-serve themselves to install at their leisure in a safe and secure environment and way of working.
  • Being shortlisted for the Jisc employee of the month award 4 times
  • Presenting at my department away day December 2025 – on CX ‘Customer experience’ and Pluralsight training courses website experiences 
  • Being included in and involved on the Jisc CX ‘Customer experience’ champions community’.
  • Being on Jisc’s employee of the month committee lead Technology area of the business representative. 
  • Representing my Jisc department at the first ever Internal careers fair, during which I made quizzes and bought my own computer components in and created a spotlight session on what Workplace IT in a second line support sense actually does.

What are your future ambitions?

To progress further at Jisc, into a security-based role, either in information security or internal security, or even an infrastructure-based role in the digital workplace engineer projects team, to roll out more exciting technologies and systems.

What advice would you give to a student considering the course or looking to get into a career in your sector?

Develop your skills constantly, have a variety of skills to bring to an interview, not just technical but also soft skills.

As for considering a course, think very carefully about the content on offer, it’s all very well a good focusing on a passion, such as networking but that does not cut it in todays computing industry world, employers of all sizes expect you to have a broad computing areas knowledge bank and understanding of many different streams, such as mobile but more so these days Cloud technologies as Cloud is being used pretty much everywhere now.