James's Story
We met James (aged 25, from Bristol) when he joined the NatWest Find Your Path programme that Ablaze delivered in partnerhsip with NatWest from Ocotber to Decemeber 2023.
After graduating from Kingston University with a Bachelor’s in computer games programming, he was keen to find a job within the gaming industry and was seeking support to develop his employability skills. From the beginning, it was clear that James had a lot of potential and skills, as well as a strong career pathway in mind, however, his lack of work experience was hindering his entry into the job market.
James showed great enthusiasm and commitment during the workshops, frequently contributing to discussions and working hard to progress his transferable skills. Specifically, he found learning interview techniques and completing a mock interview a valuable experience, as it gave him an opportunity to demonstrate the professional persona and confidence that he’d developed over the sessions in a real-life situation.
James was then placed in the Bristol & Bath Commercial Mid-Market team at NatWest for a 4-week work placement where he experienced a working office environment for the first time. During this time, he was grateful for the chance to interact with new people throughout his working week, and he excelled in all his assigned tasks.
By putting his newly developed networking skills to the test with NatWest employees, James connected with a Senior Games Producer at Aardman Animations. This connection led to a 2-week paid internship as a Game Engineer, which was later extended to 2 months and continues to this day.
James is thoroughly enjoying his time at Aardman, applying what he learned from the NatWest programme to maintain the internship, remarking that it is the job he has always wanted.
We asked James, how the programme helped him. He commented, “just getting that one connection was the most valuable aspect of it, just having the job where I had to go in everyday and interact with people and be in an office environment, that was directly relevant to this. I really valued that.”
“The key takeaway [of the programme] was to really actively network with people because that’s the thing that gets you jobs more than anything. People aren’t going to hire you if you’re not willing to talk to them directly”
Looking to the future, James is confident his experience at NatWest and Aardman will allow him to progress in a career in game development and secure another contract once his time at internship is over.