Last week, Co-op Digital sponsored the Manchester Digital Skills Festival, an event that promotes careers and collaboration in tech, digital and design. Students, graduates and educators from local schools and universities had the chance to meet more than 180 digital organisations from across the north west.
Co-op Digital contributed to an experience day where a group of 13-14 year old pupils from a local Co-op Academy came into The Federation; a talent day for students and graduates with an interest in the industry and a conference day aimed at starting conversations between digital organisations and educators.
Getting young people interested in digital
During the festival the need for digital organisations to engage with people at a younger age was flagged (again) as a good way of improving diversity in the industry.
With this in mind, we invited pupils from a local Co-op Academy into The Federation. We gave them an opportunity to get a feel for what it’s like to work in the tech community by spending time with some of our communities of practice. They also took part in user research, coding and agile delivery workshops.
There was a chance for digital organisations to talk to educators from local schools and universities. The 2017 skills audit was a big talking point and Rob Bowley, Head of Engineering, was part of a panel discussing key issues flagged in the report.
Bringing more digital people to the Co-op
Principal Engineer Gemma Cameron talked about the Co-op’s culture and values and how they help us build products and services that meet the needs of our members, customers and communities.
Over the past year and a bit Co-op Digital has attracted loads of fantastic digital talent. People who care about doing the right thing for our Co-op colleagues, members and their communities. We’re looking to encourage diversity in the digital and design community, and we’ll be recruiting more great people throughout 2017.
You can find out more about a career at Co-op Digital and follow Co-op Digital on Twitter.