Graduate pathway
Marcel's story
A degree in hand, hundreds of applications sent, and no way through the door - until TechStart.
Age 23 · South London
"I had the degree. What I didn't have was anyone in industry who would take a call. TechStart changed that in a fortnight."
After graduation
Marcel graduated with a 2:1 in computer science and expected the offers to follow. Nine months and more than two hundred applications later, he had a stack of automated rejections and two failed final-round interviews. He was working shifts in a warehouse to cover rent.
Filling the gap
TechStart's graduate pathway focused on the pieces university had not covered - system design, real-world Git workflows, writing production-quality tests, and interviewing well. Marcel joined a small graduate cohort meeting twice a week, with mock interviews recorded and reviewed.
The portfolio push
Instead of another tutorial project, Marcel shipped a full open-source contribution to a tool his mentor used at work. He wrote up the process on his blog. Two weeks later, a hiring manager referenced that exact write-up in a first-round interview.
The offer
Marcel took a graduate engineer role at a health-tech scale-up. TechStart supported him through salary negotiation and the first ninety days, when the jump from student to professional felt steepest.