WIT Video

Women in tech

Attended local schools and colleges to raise our employer brand.

Careers Fairs

stem career speed dating

Met with 45 female students to discuss their STEM career aspirations. While few initially considered IT, our WIT team’s presentation of fulfilling technical roles at Zen encouraged some to reconsider their career paths and get excited about working in tech.

We welcomed 30 female students to our offices, where they gained an overview of the different roles at Zen and insight into what its like to work in technology. They also had a session on how to stay safe online and how to prepare for their first job interview.

Workplace safari

Female mentoring

We launched our mentoring scheme for IT and Business students. Mentees now at University studying Business & Progamming.

-Amara – IT student Mentee, now planning to apply for a job at Zen after University

“I’ve enjoyed everything, I’ve gone from being shy to being more direct.I’ve loved having the mentoring sessions online and in person, and I liked travelling to the office."

Office and Datacentre tours

We provided students with the opportunity to visit Zen's offices and have a tour of our Data Centre.

Delivered several technical sessions including IT concepts and Cybersecurity.

Sessions

Mock interviews

We put local students through their paces in mock interviews, focusing on competency based questions to gain interview and CV writing skills.

We ran pre-employment training for local students, which led to us employing 3 students into our Technical Support teams.

Zen discover programme

step into tech

Free pre-employment programme aimed at bringing more women into technical roles, it led to us increasing the gender balance from 5%-16% in our Technical Support team. Now 50% of the women have been promoted in to other roles.

- Alys Buggie – Step into Tech delegate, employed into Technical Support and now progressed into Team Leader role

"The programme has really opened up a new door for me in my life and I’m really looking forward to gaining confidence and getting my teeth stuck into my new role."

We went back to school and ran 2 hr coding sessions for year 10 children and shared our career journeys.

Inspiring the next generation of coders

65 kids across junior to senior age groups, creating games, building and coding robots and cars.

Zen's Summer code club

Work experience

57 students totalling 1047 work experience hours. We tasked students with practical work tasks to get a flavour of working life. Many have asked to come back to shadow specific roles.

Teachers Work Experience

We didn't forget the teachers! The IT teachers were put through their paces teacher work experience to provide industry work examples that helped to shape sessions and curriculum.