I supervised the Alumni Destinations and Careers Research intern, Miriam George, on her summer research project as part of the Information Services internship scheme. Her project investigated the career pathways of past ISG interns, and found out more about the professional development our internships offer. You can read more about her research and findings below.
Background
Women make up only 29% of the technology industry (Office for National Statistics, 2025). Gender bias and lack of representation and mentorship for women makes it difficult for female students to enter the industry after graduation. One aim of the ISG internships is to support female students and students from other underrepresented groups (for example, students of colour) pursue careers in IT. This research aims to evaluate the extent to which this aim is achieved. The following research questions were investigated:
- How effective are ISG internships at facilitating entry into technology-related career paths?
- In what ways do ISG internships contribute to professional development?
To research these questions, Miriam reached out to past ISG interns through line manager connections and LinkedIn networks. She interviewed 10 alumni, who all completed ISG internships between 2015 and 2024, as well as 6 current interns, in order to evaluate the impact these internships have had on career pathways and professional development.
Research Findings
Of the 10 alumni interviewed, 5 currently held IT positions, while the other 5 held roles with tech-related responsibilities. Four of the alumni reported that their internship influenced their career path. The interviews explored the current responsibilities of alumni, their internship experiences, how they thing they benefited from the internship, and how it informed their career choices, if at all. Read what some of the alumni had to say.
“I think [the internship] was very useful [in preparing me for my current role]. I think the main thing it helped was in the sort of like softer skills… it really helped with writing and preparing documentation and guides was a big thing like took away from that…I think if I didn’t have the internship, I wouldn’t have had any experience. And I think that I just wouldn’t have gotten a job.”
“When I got my internship, I just wanted an internship. I wasn’t thinking much of my career path…[In my internship] I received training from learning technologists around the university that made me see that it is not just about like a platform or application, there’s a lot more to it. It’s a very complex field, I would say, and I was definitely not aware of that before my internship, even though I was a student and I was using learning technology daily” [Currently a learning technologist]
“The internship made me realise that there’s also other things that are involved in the job that you don’t necessarily think about…So yeah, it definitely got my feet a little bit wet and then I started understanding the sector more”
“I can’t remember who it was, but someone on the team at ISG said, ‘oh, you seem to have, like, a knack for communications, if you’ve really enjoyed this, that you should look into communication roles’, and I was like ‘oh, I’d never even thought of that as like a career path, I don’t really know what that is.’ So I did a bit more research and ended up working at a PR agency after that…Some advice that I was given through the internship helped me to kind of steer what my skills were into a career”
Answering the second research question relied on interviews with both current and past ISG interns, focussing on skill development, confidence, corporate experience, industry knowledge, work environment, and impacts of the internships for students from underrepresented backgrounds.
All 10 alumni said the skills they developed during their internships proved useful in their careers. Figure 1 shows some of the many skills mentioned in the interviews.
“I think one main thing that I picked up was the ability to work with and talk with a wider range of people. I was definitely more confident in my abilities to learn and just communicate and work within a team, and that was mainly because I was treated as a staff member, and not a student.”
Many of the alumni also mentioned gaining corporate experience, industry knowledge, and networks through the internship. There was an even greater impact for underrepresented groups, with Widening Participation students mentioning the benefit of exposure to an office environment, international students mentioning connections with the UK job market, and female students mentioning the usefulness of gaining specific tech experience.
“[The office environment] was really helpful for me because I was a Widening Participation student, and so, no one that I know works in an office…. And it sounds silly, but I think the internship is a great chance to develop those skills and it will give you so much more confidence to go into an interview and to apply for jobs”
“A lot of international students, will not necessarily have connections who work in the UK at all, or who work in office environments in the UK. So I think demystifying some of that’s really good; I know that a lot of students will come in with expectations of okay, I can’t leave the office until my manager leaves because that is the norm in quite a few other countries.”
“If I was going into tech without this experience, I’d worry that I would be seen as less because it’s a male dominated field. But now that I have experience with specific analytics tools, I think my skills will set me apart”
Overall, Miriam’s research has shown that the internships ISG has offered over the past 10 years have been very useful to University of Edinburgh students, providing them with a variety of skills, and often influencing their career choice and pathway. ISG’s interns are a very diverse group and come from a range of subject backgrounds. This research therefore demonstrates how vital these internships are for diversifying the tech sector as a whole, confirming that they do often act as pipelines into tech for our students.
“So it was a really helpful stepping stone and was a really big confidence boost to be to prove to myself that yes, I had the skills to be employed”
This research was conducted and analysed by Miriam George. This blog was written by her line manager, Katie Grieve, based on interview quotes picked out by Miriam.
References
Office for National Statistics. (2025). Employment by Industry. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/employmentbyindustryemp13/current (Accessed: 20 September 2025).
