August 24, 2017, by Postgraduate Placements Nottingham

Getting well-placed for career progression

This week we caught up with San Ha, a postgraduate placement student, and his placement host Geoff Baker of International Celebrity Networks Apps (ICN).


A placement is often the first ‘real world’ experience a student will get of a prospective career. For Ha though, a PhD candidate in Computer Science, a postgraduate placement was a chance to broaden the existing skill set he had already started to develop during an earlier 2 month undergraduate internship.

Undertaking a paid, postgraduate placement with an international firm like ICN gave Ha the opportunity to expand his App development work cross-platform, gaining development hours working on iOS Apple Apps to add to his existing Android Windows Phone App experience. It was also a great opportunity for Ha, an international student from Vietnam, to work with a diverse team of people from the Americas, Asia and Europe, all communicating in English as the common language.

“The placement involved me helping ICN improve and expand its Apps portfolio. It really helped me to enhance my programming skills, learn how to build strong working relationships within a development team, and gain more experiences. It was also a unique opportunity to understand how a real-world industry and business work outside of the school. It was an honour to be part of the University of Nottingham’s placement project hosted by ICN.”

~ San Ha, Postgraduate Placement Student (PHD Candidate, Computer Science)

“It was great for us that Ha was available for placement just at a time when we were well placed to take advantage of some new financing and develop our portfolio of apps. You know, Ha has a real gift with mobile development and as a business we’ve been lucky to be both an enabler and beneficiary of that.

Purely on the human level though, it’s been great to see Ha immerse himself with the team at ICN and they we’ve all benefitted from the richness of the cultural exchange. He’s becoming a truly cross platform app developer and going forward in his career he’s got a strong portfolio of work that he’ll be able to share with prospective employers.”

~ Geoff Baker, ICN (Placement Host Business)


If you are a business interested in offering a postgraduate placement please visit our webpage for more information.

If you’re a student interested in doing a postgraduate placement visit our webpage for more information, or check out current opportunities at the Placements Portal.

Posted in Placements