SubscribeMicro Nav Ltd have a special working relationship with Bournemouth University. Every year Micro Nav Ltd offer the opportunity for students to join the company for their one year placement.
They are fully integrated into the company’s operations and development teams. The students benefit by gaining experience in real software and IT work in a lively commercial environment.
A number of placement students have been offered full time employment following their graduation and are now key members of the Micro Nav staff.
Recently we have featured in the University’s quarterly publication of Services to Business Newsletter.
South-West Business Support - ICT Services
One of the keystrengths of Bournemouth University is its record on graduate employment, with a graduate employment rate well in excess of the national average. The case of Micro Nav Ltd. illustrates the importance of vocational degrees, in areas such as Software Engineering, and the industrial placement year to both employers and graduates.
Micro Nav was established in 1988 by the current joint managing directors, Mike Male and Fred Johnson. The company is based in Bournemouth and develop air traffic control simulation systems.
Micro Nav enjoys a good relationship with Bournemouth University, as detailed by Mike Male: "At Mirco Nav we employ 6 graduates from Bournemouth and have 2 students on placement this year. All our graduates are involved in the development and maintenance of our air traffic control simulation system."
Ian Broadhurst, one of the company's 6 Bournemouth graduates, provides an example of what this work entails:
"The type of work I am now engaged in is general bug fixing and new features to the Aircraft Control Simulator suite. My main area has been the Communication and Voice Recognition system which transmits human or computer speech from one machine to another, mimicking the interaction between Controller and Pilots."
All at Micro Nav have found the industrial placement year crucial in creating a successful match between business and graduate when recruiting.
Mike Male said, "We have always found Bournemouth University very easy to deal with and have found the students to be of good quality during the placement year - that placement year giving us great opportunity th assess the capabilities of those students for the future with full time employment in mind."
Five of the graduates have studied the Software Engineering Management course at Bournemouth University. Mark Oliver believes the course is highly beneficial to career development:
"The Software Engineering Management course at Bournemouth allows easy access into the software engineering world, and opens a wide industry to you. The degree allows a vast number of different careers to be achieved, from a Management level, all the way down to the software development and testing level. It is surprising the different careers that people have entered because of the SEM course."