Mark Oliver's World

Speaking At A Careers Day

27/06/2024

I was recently asked by my sons school to come and talk to the children about my career as a Software Engineer.

I always try to do these when asked, as I think it is a great honour to be able to impart knowledge and enthuse young people, especially in my chosen career.

This time, I was talking to about 200 6-10 year olds so a real diverse lot.

The school was doing an excellent job of inviting a diverse set of speakers to talk to the whole school encompassing the idea that your child is exposed to more careers than they see at home, on TV or read about.

This certainly turned out to be the case, as the list of speakers were:

  • Bomb Disposal Expert
  • Deep Sea Diver
  • Nurse
  • Software Engineer
  • Police Officer
  • Yoga Instructor
  • Carer

The other thing the school did, was ask the kids to dress up as they would for the career they wanted. There were so many costumes to see:

  • Police Officer
  • Gamer
  • YouTuber
  • Dancer
  • Chef
  • Astronaut
  • Singer
  • Nurse
  • Teacher
  • and so many more.

A big list of career day costumers

My first hurdle was to try and think of content that would work with the age groups. Children have a very diverse set of interests, but tying them into being a Software Engineer is hard ( I am ignoring Minecraft Red Stone programming here! ), primarily because coding and design and tests are not interesting to talk about, but are (IMHO) very interesting to do.

These are the topics I decided on (and the school suggested too)

  • What is a Software Engineer
  • Why is Software important
  • What Software can do
  • Why I like it
  • How I got into it
  • What can you earn

I also wanted to make it very engaging with the children, they are still young, and with a potentially dry topic, asking them questions and keeping them focussed is very important. So I used these questions to make it as interactive as possible:

  • What is a Software Engineer?

  • What has a Computer Inside of it?

  • Examples of Software they use?

  • Who makes Software?

  • What do they think I do all day?

  • Why is Beyoncé wrong? ( Girls don't run the world - Software engineers do!)

    Beyonce quote - "Who runs the world? Girls!"

I also tried to keep them engaged with:

  • Funny animations
  • Poking fun at how old I am compared to them
  • Showing them the simplest form of Software "Hello World!", but on a Commodore C64 my first computer. (no time to get the real one working, so used an online emulator).

All of these seemed to work well, as the kids really engaged, and there were so many questions asked:

  • Why did I get into it?
  • Do I enjoy it?
  • How big is my house?
  • Do I write games?
  • Do I know "Diego" (I am still confused about this one, it is possibly a YouTuber!)

What I hope I made them think about:

  • Computers are everywhere
  • Software is everywhere
  • Software is important as those computers don't do anything without it
  • It can be a lucrative career
  • It is an exciting career

In all, I think the event as a whole went brilliantly, the kids were very engaged, and some were so interested they wanted to ask me more questions during their play time.

No matter what field you work in, I suggest you reach out to your nearest school to see if you can go and show the children what you do, and why you like it.

If you want to take a look at the slides I made, then check them out here.

Thank you for your time.

If you want to reach out, catch me on Twitter!