Lynn Moran
I loved Maynooth, working on my final year project was fun. The lecturers were generally interested and engaged with the undergrads. I'm still friends with a large number of the people I met there.
The atmosphere of the university being the size it is in the town the size of Maynooth, makes for a fantastic place to live and/or study for a few years!
After PhD (Physics, UCD) did Postdoc (European Space Agency contract in University of Southampton), then lectured at University of Liverpool for 7 years. Then decided to change career path and searched for a graduate entry role. I attended lots of campus events and applied to lots of top companies. I was offered roles with PWC and others, but chose Ericsson Ireland.
Keep CV simple and rewrite bits to make it relevant to the specific job, in order to get called to interview. Put in extra time at home in first few weeks in job to learn the job quickly. For coders specifically - write code whenever possible, companies like to you to share samples through GitHub, or even better work on an open source project!
What are the key skills/knowledge that you use in your job?
Program management, project management, problem solving, stakeholder management.
(updated October 2018)