Levelling up a career in cybersecurity

“Colleagues from Robert Bosch told me that UTS was a great university as it had hands-on courses required by industry. It is also near the Sydney CBD where I can get professional jobs easily which I did during my studies. Before accepting my UTS offer, I almost chose a Group of Eight university that offered partial scholarships and had a higher university QS ranking. However, I knew that UTS offered courses based on market and industry needs. I wanted to get hands-on skills to expand my cybersecurity expertise and that’s why I chose UTS.”

For Sheng’s UTS subject Industry Project, he had the opportunity to work as a Business Analyst with LIXI Limited, a not-for-profit company in Sydney that develops data message transaction standards for the Australian mortgage processing industry. 

“My role at LIXI was to build the Business Loan Application Form and standardise all the forms into one across all the banks in Australia. Despite only having 10 weeks on the project, I completed the form on time. During my project, I learned how to build the form using JSON/XML and other programming languages that generate the forms.”

Practice-orientated learning gives international students an opportunity to gain local work experience in Australia before graduation. In addition to learning technical skills, students have the opportunity to get their first taste of Australian work culture, develop soft skills, and start to build a local network. 

Building a local network became key to Sheng jumpstarting his cybersecurity career in Sydney. Sheng participated in StudyNSW Interchange – an employability program to build career confidence and provide students with critical work experience for their resumes and future job applications. He also served as Cultural Director for UTS MASSA (Malaysia and Singapore Students Association) where he shared Malaysian culture with the broader UTS community. Through networking, Sheng finally managed to secure a job after graduation.

“I faced challenges in getting a full-time job in Australia since I was an international student. While applying for jobs during my last semester, I had an interview with KordaMentha. While researching the company I found the hiring manager’s LinkedIn profile. It turned out that he was a guest speaker for one of my cybersecurity subjects at UTS. I asked him insightful questions related to cybersecurity during the Q&A session and also added his LinkedIn after the lecture in my first semester back in  2021. He recognised my skills, work experience and saw that I was fit for the role. I was offered the job as a Senior Cybersecurity Analyst.”