I came to WePurpose Technology who provide IT support, web development, Cyber Security services from their Inverness office. Enable Scotland helped me find work experience at WePurpose. I wanted to learn about what different work takes place in the computing industry and experience some for myself.
First experience of work
The first thing I worked on with WePurpose was thinking about and creating test data for a statistics page they had set up. This page collected reviews and displayed data using these reviews. To see if it was working as intended test needed to carried out. Data from the previous 30 days had a percentage of good/bad reviews. This needed to be compared to the 30 days before and a percentage increase or decrease given out.
To begin with I struggled to understand exactly what I needed to do. I made my initial set of data with random days from the previous 60. David reminded me that I had to consider the extremes of the data so that the test data would be helpful . So, with new guidance, I set out to make the data better fit its purpose.
And there is more
The problem with my second set of data was it was too general. The data I had to make had to go back 60 days. It had to include the day leading up to the 60th day, the 30th day and the current day. This had to be to the minute, 61 days previous 23:59:00 and 60 at 00:00:00 for example. In my second set I had only considered the date and not time of the day. We finally tested my third set of data because it looked more like the sample described above.
My next task
This page is actually part of my work experience in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) which aims to get higher in online search results. I started by reading up on ways to climb the Google ladder. I learned, when reading about SEO, that Google looks for various criteria when placing a page in the rankings. They look for things such as having your key word appearing multiple times on your page. They also look for texts of appropriate length that don’t contain repeated sentences. Finally they like to see the key phrase in specific places like the title and introduction. Word Press was also very useful in helping to identify areas where my writing could be more effective from an SEO stand point.
The conclusion of my work experience
During my work experience I have learned some new skills, got an insight in to working on computers in a small office environment and been able to demonstrate previous knowledge.
My time on work experience at WePurpose has been useful as I have had a chance to try some actual work and I have acquired skills. I can take away new skills apply them if I come back to computing as a job in the future which is definitely a possibility after this work experience. Work experience is something I would recommend to anyone looking into any career path as it allows you to see working in the career is actually like.
