Career mentorship to hosting an internship – one alum’s journey

Alum Peter Sueref (BSc 2002), co-founder and CTO of Empirisys mentored student Ritika Srivastava (MSc 2024) before offering her an internship. Here, Peter reflects on his experience as a mentor and how the programme has benefitted both him and his business.

What has been your connection with Cardiff University?

I’m Cardiff born and raised and the son of fish and chip shop owners. I stayed in Cardiff to do my degree because I was still working in the family business. I’ve been around Cathays and the University for pretty much most of my life.

I graduated with an MSc in Computer Science in 2002 and immediately landed a job at British Gas doing software development, software engineering, and data engineering and stayed there for most of my career. In 2015/2016, I got back in touch with Cardiff University and the Computer Science department and started to reconnect. Since then, I’ve worked almost constantly with the University and had a whole stream of students come through the company, some of which have become permanent members of staff.

How did you get involved in the Career Mentoring Programme?

It was quite opportunistic, but really it was a result of having received mentoring myself a couple of times early on in my career. I just found it the most useful thing to have someone more senior who was willing to listen and give me sensible advice.

Any advice for other alumni thinking about volunteering on the programme?

The thing that might have put me off is whether I actually have enough knowledge to share with someone, and will they listen to me? Maybe that’s imposter syndrome kicking in, but I’m really glad I did it. The way I looked at it is, I might not have experience in particular areas, but I definitely know what it’s like to run a project, I definitely know what it’s like to start a business, I know what it’s like to deal with clients – so even if I can’t do any of the other things, I can impart knowledge in those areas. I think there’s probably not thousands of people putting their hands up to be mentors either, we don’t have a glut of them, so even if I’m not going to be the best mentor in the world, maybe just the fact I’m throwing my hand up and trying to help is enough.

How did mentoring lead to an internship for Ritika?

In our mentoring sessions one of the things we discussed were the subjects Ritika was looking at for her dissertation, which were around analysing data and coming up with an interesting story behind the data. Luckily Empirisys had the opportunity to work on a project for a very big client who wanted some data analysed. So the stars aligned and we managed to land the opportunity for Ritika to work on this flagship project directly, contributing to a live client project that was also supporting her dissertation. She was the right person at the right time. We could make it work because of the funding through Santander Universities, which for a small business was a substantial amount of money. As a consultancy business, we live and die by the projects we bring in, so we’re constantly looking for the next one. The funding was enough that we could say this really makes sense now to bring Ritika in and get her working on a client project.

What has been the impact of hosting a student on an internship?

It’s been really positive as the work landed so well with the client that they want to extend into a slightly different project. So it was really useful for us as it’s helped strengthen our relationship with them. The work also ended up in an industry-wide white paper, so it’s had widespread impact.

Why would you recommend other SMEs get involved in these sort of student employability projects?

I’d almost flip the question around and say why wouldn’t you want to do this? Why wouldn’t you want to bring talent into your organisation to work on projects, that could then either join your business or go and make the whole industry better? How do you start off in your working life if not through something like this? Even if it doesn’t work, everyone’s learned something from it at the at the very least. Empirisys has benefitted from Ritika doing a particular project that we couldn’t have done if she wasn’t here. That’s helped the relationship with the client and is giving Ritika experience as well. It just feels like it’s win-win for everybody.

Ritika – how has your journey from mentoring to internship benefitted you?

When I applied for the mentoring programme, I didn’t know that it could land you a work experience opportunity too. My intention was just to learn as much as I could from my mentor.
I was looking at a career change and wanted guidance on entering a new industry. When I met with Peter for the first time, I told him right away that I was also looking for some work experience, so he knew that was one of my goals. The Career Mentoring Programme really helped me find both the guidance and experience I needed.
During the internship I was able to develop skills using software I hadn’t used before. Learning something new and then working on a real-time, real-world project and applying my skills, was very much a wish come true for me. Now I have my own project I can show to employers and recruiters, and I have work experience in the UK which is really going to help me. I’m just so lucky that I applied for this scheme, and I was matched with the right person. I’d recommend it to anyone.

Call for alumni mentors

Are you interested in volunteering to support the next generation of professionals in your sector and share your knowledge, skills, and experience? We’re looking for Cardiff University alumni to support current students to gain valuable advice and insights that help them build confidence in their career choices through our online Career Mentoring Programme. The deadline for applications is the 20 October.

There are also lots of other ways you can volunteer your time and expertise to help inspire and support the next generation of Cardiff University students and alumni.