Khalid Hajinur Mohamed
Where did you study Business Information Systems?
I studied Business Information Systems at both Cardiff and Cardiff Metropolitan Universities between 2012 and 2018.
And what do you do now?
I am now a Software Engineer for the Civil Service, working for the Office for National Statistics.
How did studying business information systems at university prepare you for what you do today?
There are loads of links between what I studied at university and what I do now. The skills and knowledge I acquired studying BIS provided me with the technical tools needed to do my work today, in particular modules I took that helped with software development skills and methodologies and project management methodologies. My studies helped me to make connections between technical and business needs, to see a wider picture, which is very important to me today.
As a BIS student you can go down a more technical route or focus more on things like project management or business analysis. All of these are important.
What do you wish you had known as an information systems student? And what advice would you give to a current student of BIS?
I would advise current students to keep up to date with the latest trends in the sector – do your own reading around the subject area beyond what you learn in lecturers. Don’t just study for the exam, get interested in the industry and career side of things which will help you hone your skills.
What kinds of skills do you think employers are looking for in BIS graduates?
Employers like graduates who have studied a quite broad degree programme, i.e. not just computer science, just programming or just business. Studying BIS is ideal in this sense. They want to see hunger in an individual who’s graduated by also knows how to apply what they’ve learnt. They want you to be able to bridge the gap between technology and business; a person with technical knowledge who can illustrate that I the business sector and act as that middle person (e.g. communicating technical things to accounting).
What would you say are the most important hot topics in BIS at the moment?
Important trends at the moment include AI, Python and Big Data.
What are the best elements, and the biggest challenges, of your current job?
The biggest challenges are the programming side of my current job – BIS courses don’t involve much programming but this is something I’ve picked up later on. But this is also the best part as I like to learn on the job, and coming at this kind of thing afresh, rather than having already learnt how to do it in a particular way that has already changed, actually gives me an advantage.
