Careers in tech: How Equal Experts works with HMRC to reach out to the data engineers of the future

How does the UK government find great people to take on important data engineering roles that support critical national infrastructure? How do schools encourage students to consider a career in technology? And what does each of these questions have in common?

At Equal Experts we believe in inspiring young people to become the developers and data engineers of the future and we have this in common with our customers at HMRC, for whom sourcing future engineering talent is a key activity. As part of our social value work with HMRC, we’ve helped establish a stimulating day-long workshop for schools to inspire students to consider a career in technology and showcase the exciting career opportunities – like service design and testing – available within the civil service. The work is enabled via HMRC’s Strategic Supplier Relationship Management.

During the day, we explain how coding works, and how the students rely on data in everyday life, without even knowing it. Then we give them a series of challenges to get them used to coding and designing with users in mind, as well as an introduction to agile ways of working.

Growing talent and increasing diversity in the civil service

Joint Value Initiatives (JVIs) are a mechanism for suppliers to propose and try out experiments or timeboxed pieces of work that can help clients with their goals; initiatives that go ‘beyond the code’ and add more value than we are contracted to deliver day-to-day. As part of Equal Experts’ social value work with HMRC, we wanted to support their goal of growing talent and diversity in the civil service to secure the long-term integrity and capacity of its data operations.

Helping schools showcase IT careers to students

Both Equal Experts and HMRC are committed to increasing representation of women in tech, so it was particularly exciting to test the first of our day-long workshops – in partnership with Star Academies – with the girls in year 7 at Eden School for Girls in Manchester. Here’s what we did:

The day started with a couple of talks from Equal Experts to give students a flavour of what it’s like to work in the tech industry. We got the ball rolling showcasing some of the customers we’ve helped, then had one of our developers speak about her personal career journey. She likened coding to baking a cake, which made it easy for students to engage and understand.

That set the tone for the day, and the girls got busy in groups to have some fun trying out different roles within the tech industry, working together to solve the typical IT challenges we set them:

• A noughts and crosses session, where the objective was to ‘think like a programmer’, and be specific with instructions. Asked to play a game of noughts and crosses without any control or instructions, the students had to come up with sets of instructions and then continue to improve on these until there was one overall winning team. This made them think about the iterative nature of the solutions we build.
• Design for users every time: the aim here was to get the girls to put themselves in the shoes of the user. No matter what you create, you are not the user, you are the maker. They were given a problem to solve and then had to present their solution to the rest of the group using the crazy 8’s brainstorming method. Some of their ideas were fantastic!
• A coding session using Sphero robots – the groups were tasked with coding bots to instruct them to follow a track which we’d laid out in the school hall. The teams initially followed a waterfall method, but were then asked to try an agile way of working. The objective was to compare and contrast two approaches to writing and testing code to achieve a given outcome. This session was a winner – everyone loved the Spheros!
• Agile ways of working: a fun and interactive session making paper planes to show the benefits of cross functional teams who can support one another to deliver smaller batches of value rather than delivering everything in one go.

Breaking down barriers to understanding of tech is a key theme during our workshops. As well as helping students to grasp the concept of coding in everyday life, HMRC delivered a ‘Junior Tax Facts’ overview in our next school, and explained how that links into the world of Digital and Tech in Government. The children at West Didsbury C of E Primary gave extremely positive feedback:

“.. a brilliant day for our year 6 children last week. They were absolutely raving about it, learned tons and came away inspired! They all also talked so highly of all the adults they interacted with, repeatedly saying how fun and friendly everyone was.”

Our third school was equally enthused about their day with us:

“This was a brilliant, well organised day which the children really enjoyed and it helped highlight the range of roles which are available within the technology industry and HMRC, which otherwise they may not have had access to.” Headteacher, St Peter’s RC High School, Manchester.

We continue to iterate (as we would on a tech delivery!) to build on this foundation. Having started in the north, we’re now working with HMRC to expand the programme into more schools across the UK. We’re excited to inspire more young people to see beyond the classroom and envisage a future career in tech.