Switching From Advertising To A Career In Technology

Georgina Ryder is halfway through her twelve week _Nology course.

Written by Nology Team - 21.12.18

Georgina Ryder is halfway through her twelve week _Nology course.

She explains why she switched from wanting a career in advertising to one in tech.

I can still go into a creative career

Back when I was studying for my advertising degree at Southampton Uni, I would never have thought that a year later I’d be planning a career in tech. Before this course I knew absolutely nothing about code or building websites and one of the things that has been a nice surprise so far is that it’s possible to be really creative in tech. With _nology I can still go into a creative career – but in a different way. Not only that, but because there’s such a massive tech skills shortage, I’ll be in with a good chance of securing a job at the end of this course – and unfortunately not all of my Uni friends can say that. One friend has been applying for jobs in advertising for the last ten months. She’s only just got one, it doesn’t start until next year and she’ll have to move to London for it. Advertising jobs are hard to come across and there’s lots of competition. Whereas there are lots of jobs in technology out there – and not enough people with the skills to do them – that’s what appealed to me about this course.

Agile learning with plenty of networking opportunity…

I’m finding it intense, very intense – and it’s different to studying for a degree as we do Monday to Friday office hours. The course is also moulded around what we need to learn – so sometimes we change what we’re doing in the middle of the week. We generally have classroom learning in the morning and follow Craig our tutor on our laptops as he demonstrates and in the afternoon we’ll do project work. But Craig will change what he teaches us depending on what we need to learn for our projects, so it’s much more fluid than a degree – it’s really exciting. Also the project work we’re doing is for proper clients, so we’ve met and networked with a lot of potential employers already and are helping them develop ideas and come up with genuine solutions for them. So hopefully at the end of the course, with all this experience and the contacts I’ll have met, I’ll be picking the job I want rather than lots of my Uni friends who are having to take whatever is offered.

Front end development: I can still be fully creative

I always enjoyed the graphic design side of my advertising degree but now I’m using my design skills to create and control something for myself – like a website or the interactive CV I’ve just built. The course teaches you about the back end of a website which is the coding and the functionality – but also the front end which is how it looks and that’s the part I really love. I’ve seen my design concepts come to life in a way I’d never been able to do before this course – even as part of the graphic design part of my degree.

I was nervous before I started _nology as I’d never coded in my life, it was completely new to me, but I needn’t have worried. We all come from different backgrounds anyway – and we’re all learning in such an intense and fast-moving, project environment that it doesn’t feel like anyone has an advantage – we all pitch in and help out. So I’d say to anyone – if you think you ‘can’t’ do tech – you definitely can. Not only that but you can be really creative with it too.  


We value diversity and are always excited to take on people from different backgrounds and experience levels. Regardless of your personal experience, we would love to hear from you and how _nology can enrich your career into tech!

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