Helping the next generation

Like most organisations, our team are enthusiastic and committed charity supporters, raising funds through a broad spectrum of events and challenges of varying degrees of madness and endurance. It is a little known fact that Aker has one of the world’s top bog-snorkelers in our ranks...

Activities extend beyond fundraising though, and as part of Aker Systems’ commitment to corporate social responsibility one of our team - Kato Mistry -  paid a visit back to his old secondary school to talk to the year 12 Computing students about the IT industry in real life. Kato held a Q&A style discussion giving the students a chance to put questions to someone who is working in their field of interest. The topics selected were geared towards helping the students gain a better understanding of how to view and value their potential careers, and how to maximise their chances of industry success. Kato covered the myriad university courses and their pros and cons, job hunting in todays market, and industry and technology trends. After getting over their initial nervousness the students quickly gained in confidence and were soon discussing numerous topics including the benefits of industry experience vs. study; and the opportunities and challenges for the wider IT Industry presented by AI and Quantum computing. The session was very well received, and Kato has been invited back to speak again to next year’s class.

We have also being doing our best to support work experience requests, typically from friends and family. The classified nature of much of our work does present some challenges but we have been able to give broad access across the remainder of the business, and some of the wider conversations and activities that take place. And as ever, Aker being a Company of technology enthusiasts has resulted in many long and involved conversations and white board sessions on arcane and abstract technology principles – there are some young people out there who have learnt the perils of asking a senior engineer ‘…what problems are you working on today…’.