At ARC, we’re keen to provide opportunities to people from a wide range of backgrounds (i.e. more than just Ecology and Conservation students). Recently, ARC hosted Kiril, an IT student, to do a placement with our IT Manager, Johnny, for a month. Kiril had this to say about the placement:

 

“When I was looking for a work placement my main goal was to work for an IT company. Eventually, I received no responses, so I chose a company from the college work placement list. I had a choice between ARC and a few others. I did not expect a lot, working for a small charity. After a month of working with Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, I think I was lucky to work in this organization. The staff are nice, friendly, and kind. 

My manager Johnny Novy is a nice person with many years of experience in IT support. My friends from college said that their managers gave them the tasks and left them alone. However, despite the busy timetable Johnny could manage to dedicate a lot of his time to me. He taught me some valuable skills such as networking, brainstorming, SharePoint and more. My main job was to update Microsoft Windows and Office versions. This requires communication skills, and keeping Excel spreadsheets up to date (sometimes it can be messy). Between updating computers, I worked with other tools that I'd never worked on before such as Google Analytics, Power Automate and SharePoint. Working with these tools was a good challenge because their interface is not straight forward (especially Power Automate). Now I understand some of the ways IT is built inside of a business. 

   

When my work placement was coming to an end I had a small field trip with Johnny and Dorset Field Officer, James. We found several grass snakes and I even had a chance to hold one. Overall, it was a pleasure for me to do a work placement with Amphibian and Reptile conservation.”

 

  

We're glad to hear Kiril had such a good time with ARC, and look forward to taking on more students and individuals from a variety of sectors. Involving as many people as we can in the conservation of wildlife is our best route to a better future for amphibians and reptiles.

For any students looking to undertake a placement with ARC, take a look at our Working With ARC webpages. We’re always happy to discuss with interested individuals how they can best get involved with the conservation of our native species of amphibians and reptiles.