My course has not only developed me academically, it has taught me very useful skills including critical and logical thinking, teamwork and analytical skills. Studying a joint honours course enabled me to develop mathematical concepts and then apply them to economic lectures – it has really helped consolidate my understanding.

I started by researching companies offering placement programmes to applicants with a mathematical background. In some cases employers specified the degree they preferred the applicant to be studying and where it was Mathematics or Economics, I felt this gave me a real advantage.

I then attended the Graduate and Placement Fair at Loughborough which was great. It gave me an insight into the roles that previous placement students from my department had completed. This enabled me to target potential placement programmes that I felt would utilise my mathematical background, develop me personally and at the same time be interesting. I had the opportunity to speak to potential placement employers about their recruitment process and the sort of roles they offered which I found very useful.

I had not considered purchasing as a potential route and naively thought Jaguar Land Rover would only be interested in engineering students. However, after speaking to them at the fair I began to understand the diversity of the roles that were available. It was on their website that I noticed the purchasing job and after reading more I realised that the department would be somewhere I could showcase existing skills and develop new ones - I genuinely believed I could thrive in the role.

Before securing my placement, I had amazing support from both the mathematics and placement departments. Firstly the maths department offered support through numerous mock assessment centres and numeracy practice tests. This supported me with several online assessments including the one I completed for Jaguar Land Rover. Secondly the placement department were extremely helpful in supporting me to edit and fine tune my CV until I finally felt confident that it was good enough to submit to employers. The changes I made, based upon their advice, really shaped my CV and helped me to secure my placement.