Mentoring the talent of tomorrow

At Razor, we’re passionate about tech and take every opportunity to demonstrate just what an enabler it can be.

Recently, we’ve been sharing our expertise and experience with the students at UTC Sheffield.

Our team have been mentoring students, giving talks, providing advice and setting project challenges in order to give a valuable insight into what our industry is like. Sheffield has a thriving tech sector, and as a successful Sheffield headquartered business, we wanted to share our experience and knowledge with those looking to establish a career in the industry.

We set the students a number of tasks, in-line with what we do at Razor, including the ‘tech radar’ task. As a technology company, we’re continually trialling, testing, reviewing, adopting, and sometimes rejecting new and current technologies. To help us keep track of emerging technologies, or ones we have used or tested previously, we use a ‘tech radar’. This is vital so that we have a broad view of the tools we can use to benefit our clients.

We asked the students to create their own ‘tech radar’.

This really helped them to explore and evaluate different technologies and their effectiveness and usefulness. As well as this, it provided an opportunity to practice important client-facing skills such as managing expectations, identifying client requirements and needs, establishing set objectives and budgeting.

The students did a fantastic job, their work was first-rate and up to a professional standard. They worked as a team, taking different roles within the project, and overcame obstacles. We also welcomed the UTC students into our offices, where we gave them a presentation to give them a flavour of what it’s like working at a digital agency and working with clients. We did a requirements-gathering exercise with them, where we role-played the client.

We believe that it’s incredibly important to invest time and resources in the talent of tomorrow, and as businesses continue to invest more in and realise the potential of technology and digitalisation, ensuring that we have the right people and the necessary skills as an industry is vital.

At Razor, we’re excited about tech and what it allows businesses to do, it’s this kind of attitude, mentoring and experience that helps to engage the next generation and attracts new people and new ideas into businesses such as our own. It’s great to support people who will be working in our industry in the future and to give them a helping hand along the way.