Front end developer Ben Oats talks about how getting practical experience at Clear Books was invaluable in helping him to supplement his university studies….
Why I chose Clear Books
I began working for Clear Books as a placement student back in July 2014.
I found my placement at Clear Books through my own efforts, as the placements offered through my university were not specialised in the area I wanted.
The placements my university offered me were good and some were big brand companies such as Apple and Microsoft, but for me they were general placements without speciality.
I wanted to learn more about front end development, as this is where I plan to work. I also wanted to find a company where I may be offered a job after my placement, a smaller company where I could really get stuck into big major projects and bring my own personal skills to the company.
Front end web development
For those who don’t know, front end web development is programming and coding using different languages such as HTML, JavaScript, Angular, SASS, PHP and other programming and coding languages to develop the part of the system you see and use.
The back end, or engineering side, uses PHP and other languages to build the system.
As a front end developer I have also worked on building the marketing site i.e. clearbooks.co.uk. All the pages you see on the site, including the interactive widgets and features throughout the website, have been built by myself or another front end developer at Clear Books. We also have a few other important stages in development, design, UX (user experience), marketing, and QA (quality experience).
Without all these stages of development the system itself would not be to the high standard that Clear Books expects.
My speciality SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
One of the things I have achieved at Clear Books is to find an area lacking and work on improving it and bringing overall awareness of it to the company— this area is SEO.
SEO means Search Engine Optimisation, it is a form of development and creativity which designs and develops parts of the marketing site to gain a better rank on Google and other search engines for the subject at hand.
SEO has changed a lot in the last few years though it is still a mystery to some, while others are still confused about how the search engines rank some content over others. During my year at Clear Books I have worked with a team of gifted co-workers in really driving the accessibility of our marketing site through search engines, and have helped define areas of the site to be more specific to help the user find the content they require through the search engines. This process of making the site more accessible has required help from all departments.
I feel that my year at Clear Books has really increased the awareness of correctly developing the site around SEO and user ability. I have presented to the company and to individual departments.
During my time in the company as a front end developer I feel that I have helped bring about changes in Clear Books. Due to my knowledge and research I have brought to the company with regards to SEO I have achieved one of my main goals in my placement year, that is to learn and to teach. I feel I have found my speciality and helped the company out, and in some way pushed the company further forward with this knowledge and passion I have had for SEO, and even on my departure from the company to go back to uni for my final year what I have done will be picked up by others and pushed forward.
My training and what I have learnt
When I first started at Clear Books I had completed two years of university where I achieved an on target grade for a first-class honours degree and I thought I understood a lot about front end and back end development, although I was not over confident and did not think I knew everything.
We covered all the basics at university such as JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, C# , HTML and CSS, and I have developed big projects and freelance work and even started a small LLP (limited liability partnership) with a few friends in development through different universities.
When I started at Clear Books I was really thrown in at the deep end with new technologies and languages that I had only used once or had read about. Everything I knew was just the basics and that was not good enough for Clear Books, I had a massive resource of people around me who could answer and explain anything I did not understand and help me learn and develop my skills further. That’s the thing I love about Clear Books — it’s the enthusiasm of the team and wide skill set they have, and everyone has a speciality knowledge or area in which they are really interested and are happy to pass on their knowledge.
Even with all this wealth of resource and knowledge that I can tap into and the Clear Books in-house library I can use, I still had very deep water I needed to wade through until I reached safe ground.
After around two months of taking notes on my iPad, reading many books, and taking part in lots of small and large projects I worked on with a team or as an individual, I finally felt I had caught up and learnt what I needed to know to do my job properly. By this time I felt I had learned so much more in three months than I had during my second year of university, although, with respect, it was only in one area and at university I had covered far more areas.
The training has been really hands on and I had to ask lots of questions, make use of the company library, and there has been two outside experts brought in to train me and a few others on SEO and conversion rate optimization. In addition, every Friday I, and other developers, watch a one hour training video on test driven development by ‘Uncle Bob’.
We could then use what we have learnt from these videos and put it into practice and discuss the videos and methods further. We have also had many other forms of training such as presentation skills, design, clean code, and use of advanced technologies.
In all, I have learned a lot from this year, I’ve passed on my knowledge to others and feel much better equipped than a student who has not done a placement to seek a better position in a company and also develop a much better dissertation in my final year of university.
Clear Books has really made a big impact on my CV and will lead to far better job prospects on completion of my hons degree.
Are you studying computer science or a related subject? Get in touch to ask about a practical work placement with Clear Books!
