A year?

It has been a year since I joined DFC ­ – Time flies!?

Nah, probably not during the lockdown! Trust me, even the first 14 days of quarantine in the UK felt like months!! Well, I must also admit that the last couple of months have gone pretty quick 😉

Tour of my DFC Experience

Joining DFC has been an amazing journey. I met Gemma and Anna at a fire safety industrial day at the University of Edinburgh. I learnt about the graduate opportunities and was eager to apply.

After submitting my application, I moved to Queensland for my final semester of IMFSE. I had my first interview via teams from the University of Queensland campus. It was one of the best interview experiences I have ever had. The questions were well-formulated, and there was enough time to express myself, and they wanted me to learn more about DFC.

I was quite confident after the first interview so I eagerly waited for the second one. The second interview followed a technical exercise sent to me an hour before the interview. I prepared my responses and discussed them during the interview. I did feel a little nervous while writing down my responses because I wasn’t sure of the answer. But during the interview I was told that they were more interested in my approach towards the answer rather than the actual answer – that was a relief for me.

One of the best things about the DFC application process was communication. I received my offer in March 2020. However, there were a lot of uncertainties hovering around because of the pandemic. Yet thanks to the team’s apt communication I never felt disconnected from DFC. I received regular updates from Tina and Gemma and already started feeling like a member of the team.

Since I didn’t have any preference for the office location, I was offered a position in the Leeds office. I arrived in the UK  late August 2020 and had to quarantine. My IT equipment (Mac and iPhone) was delivered to my house so that I could start working during the quarantine. Staying busy helped a lot to pass my time.  This wasn’t how I imagined my job would start, but I had to adapt to the “new normal.” I met all the team members over MS Teams and felt so welcomed.

That was quite a journey. Want to know more about it? Well, let me give you a tour of my working environment here.

We gradates always want to say “yes, we can do this“. We sometimes feel afraid to say that we still don’t understand something. Well, I felt the same. Here, however, came the vital advice of my mentors – they provided me the comfortable environment to ask the details I did not understand.

The first few months were mostly working from home. It was not the best time to start as a graduate when you have a steep learning curve ahead and need a lot of support. However, everyone was very supportive in the best way possible. Whenever I got a new task I was given a brief and was allocated enough time to understand and do the background reading of the work. The focus was on learning and developing, not just producing reports.

Everyone encouraged me to reach out whenever I was struggling with something. A senior colleague told me that it would be their failure if I was not getting the support I needed. This all encouraged me to ask for support whenever I was struggling. Although I have only been here one year so far, I am happy to say that I had the opportunity to get involved in some very exciting projects.

One more thing that I love here: there is a career plan review to keep me on track with my targets. There is no specific timeline; I can modify it as and when required. I am always encouraged to have catchups more often to ensure I am getting the support and discuss any concerns I have. I had my career plan chat every three months for the first year and it motivated me to learn, push my limits, and plan for the long term.

As the restrictions started to relax, some team members started coming to the office a few times a week. I like being in the office environment – away from home distractions. Although everyone was super lovely over video chats, I must admit, the level of frankness developed in person can never be attained virtually. Now I enjoy going to the office almost every day and I look forward to amazing experiences ahead.