What's your job about?
As a graduate, I have worked in many teams, meaning my job is constantly changing. However, there are common trends. No matter what team I have been in, it has been important to communicate well with teammates to deliver on specific project goals. You can break it down to working with teammates or stakeholders to deliver value through problem-solving. Most teams I have been in have been programming-focused, so the main tool used to deliver solutions to problems has been code.

What's your background?
I finished my Bachelor of Computer Science in mid-year 2022. Throughout, I sometimes studied part-time and other times deferred for six months to gain experience through internships. Once I finished my degree and internship, I was lucky enough to be accepted into the carsales graduate program. Throughout my time in the program, I have rotated through two teams. The first was the Digital Retailing team, which was a full-stack engineering role. I then rotated to the AI/ML team. The best thing about this rotation was seeing how different teams can operate. I am now in my final rotation in the Core team working on the backend.

Could someone with a different background do your job?

I’m a firm believer that pretty much anyone can learn anything. If you approach things with a learning-first mentality, the carsales culture and employees will be able to upskill you quickly, all you need to do is use the many resources carsales gives you to learn.

What's the coolest thing about your job?

The coolest thing about my job is the people I get to work with and learn from. Whether it be learning technical skills through direct help and feedback or learning through observations on how others contribute to team goals,. 

3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...

1. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you are at a university, you should get the most out of the university’s resources, this includes working with your peers and bouncing ideas off your tutors and lectures.
2. Seek out additional work other than university. Whether that be from internships, side projects, or open-source contributions, this is where you are likely to learn the most.
3. Don’t rush things, if you put in the time to learn something, eventually you will learn it. Don’t try to rush the process, enjoy it and try to understand the things you don’t know first before trying to rush towards an end goal (like finishing an assignment). Instead, understand as much as you can before rushing to solutions.