Navigating university life and early career opportunities

Philosophy Politics & Economics with Social Data Science student Alexander shares his perspectives of navigating the job market while at UCL. Written by Alexander Maximilien Simon-K.

I'm Alexander, a penultimate year Philosophy Politics & Economics with Social Data Science student, graduating in 2026. I'm fortunate to represent Windo as their early careers consultant part-time while studying at UCL. I wrote this article to highlight how Windo has positively impacted my navigation of the job market and that others can gain that same clarity by using the platform too!

When I arrived at university, the stress of A-level exam results and university decisions faded away. I felt like I had finally made it—a Philosophy, Politics & Economics student at UCL with a clear path set in stone. This feeling remained until my first economics class when I started hearing phrases like “spring weeks” and “IB internships.” Suddenly, I was exposed to the competitive world of internships and how exclusive they were. It felt like I had no choice but to apply.

Discovering an Alternative Path: HeadstartGlobal

I initially fell into this bubble of applying for internships without any clear goal or understanding. However, I soon discovered HeadstartGlobal, a platform aimed at giving students opportunities to work with startups and gain valuable experience in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment. Notably, it was in that startup eco-system that I found a fascinating startup called Windō.

Introducing Windō: A Game-Changer for Opportunity Tracking

Windō came to HeadStart with a mission to grow their comprehensive opportunity tracker for students. Oli Coles and Ken Janssens, Co-Founders of Windō, explained how they had created a platform which aggregated and simplified all the sustainability data for leading graduate employers and wanted to leverage this data to attribute value-based filters for early career opportunities alongside many more comprehensive features. I was astonished by the statistics that illustrated how there were such large discrepancies between many of the current trackers on the market and how Windō was the most encompassing one of all. When looking at other finance trackers, I saw how competitors had at best, 30% of the entries when compared with the opportunities available on Windō. I understood that Windō aimed to be as transparent as possible on their tracker, giving students the best opportunity to find the right role for themselves.

Revisiting the Internship World with a New Perspective

With this exciting project on my plate, it was time to revisit the internship world. Working with Windō transformed my mental approach to internships. As we populated the Early Career Opportunities Tracker, we learned the intricacies of early career departments and this resulted in the tracker growing from 300 opportunities in July to over 650 by August, covering four sectors: Consulting, Finance, Law, and Technology, across 83 companies. Today, the Windō tracker has more than 1,700 early career opportunities spanning school level, apprenticeships, insight days, internships, placements and full time roles.

The team and I got exposed to the varying levels of transparency in firms’ efforts to host value-based opportunities alongside company wide efforts to recruit from diverse backgrounds. I found that Windō’s value-assignment system made it so easy for students just like me to understand a firm’s commitment to equality of opportunity and transparency. For instance, HSBC had five different opportunities promoting values such as gender equality and social mobility, which inspired me to share these opportunities with my university peers.

Understanding Different Types of Opportunities

One of the key lessons I learned through Windō was that internships and opportunities serve different purposes at different stages of education:

   •   School Level: Apprenticeships & Discovery Events

   •   Undergraduate Level: Internships, Placements, and Insight Days

   •   Postgraduate Level: Masters Apprenticeships & Internships

   •   Graduate Jobs: Full-time roles post-graduation

You can easily filter through these using our “opportunities” filter.

Taking a Purpose-Driven Approach to Applications

Windō helped me see that opportunities aren’t just flashy LinkedIn posts or CV fillers. I learned to approach internships with intention, leveraging Windō’s extensive database. As the saying goes, “You’ll never hit a target you’re not looking for.” I began asking myself what I truly wanted from an employer and an opportunity, and used Windō’s filters to narrow down my options. I developed a plan, tailoring cover letters and CVs, and set up notifications for relevant roles. I searched through the detailed, yet simplified employer profile database on Windō to understand the employers I was applying to and used some of the data points to back up my claims in the cover letters. Windō have since launched a resource that provides examples of how you can include the data that you find on Windō profiles to demonstrate in your cover letters that your values are aligned to the employer.

Throughout this process I maintained a 3-5 year mental time frame. I wanted to choose a company that had an impressive sustainability history but also ambitious goals for the near future – ones that I can potentially contribute to. Despite having a value-based employer chosen in mind, there was a final worry that I felt hadn’t been answered but I’ll return to this in a moment…

Joining Windō Part-Time and Innovating the Tracker

After the Headstart Project I was offered a part-time role at Windō. I accepted, eager to innovate and integrate web scraping technologies to keep the tracker up-to-date. In just a few days, I set up workflows that expanded the tracker from 650 opportunities in August to 1,650 by October. This growth further reinforced my belief in a purpose-led approach to internships as I had to be selective with the opportunities I selected for myself.

Being selective in the opportunities I applied to wasn’t always easy. I recall telling Ken, “ignorance is bliss”, when referencing the decision fatigue I felt from the numerous opportunities I had to scan over and add to the tracker.

However, I believe I was wrong.

Ignorance is temporary bliss. I realised that the work I was doing was helping supply early career opportunity transparency for students just like myself. With the help of Windō’s filters, students can now make more informed decisions on opportunities versus blindly applying without any perspective on what’s available and suitable for them. Hence now I believe:

“True long-term bliss comes from transparency - knowing what matters most. “

New Windō Feature

Now, let’s return to the passage in which I said I had one final worry when choosing early career opportunities. That concern can be summed up in one word – VISA. The team and I realised that we were promoting transparency in early career opportunities but we hadn’t addressed one concern thousands of students are limited by in their decision making…

That being said, I’m proud to announce the soft-launch of the “visa-sponsorship” value that can be filtered for in Windō as we begin to confirm the visa sponsorship eligibility across the 80+ companies on the opportunity tracker. This further informs our users (including me) as we can now find employers who will aid us in securing visa sponsorships for our chosen pathways. I’m pleased to say that one of Windō’s partners, Bloomberg, are the first to clearly label which of their opportunities have Visa Sponsorship attached to them.

Overcoming Rejection and Finding Success

Even with a purpose-driven strategy, rejections still hurt. I found myself most affected after the first few but you learn from each rejection until you get your first success! Eventually, I found success—I landed my first Insight Day event at JPMorgan in Asset Management. The lesson here? Persistence and alignment with your values will lead you to the right opportunity. Attending this opportunity did exactly what it was intended to do, providing me an insight into asset management which I later deciphered wasn’t something I was fully passionate about. Without my purpose-driven strategy I probably wouldn’t have been accepted and wouldn’t have learnt about my indifference to asset management.

Windō: A Tool for Your Success

Now, you don’t have to go through the same trials I faced during my first year. Windō’s tracker is live, updated daily, and filled with an extensive database of opportunities spanning apprenticeships, insight days, internships, placements and full time roles. Ultimately, your university journey is about finding what makes you tick—academically, professionally, and personally. So don’t just settle for any internship; instead, let Windō help you find opportunities that align with your interests and values. For me, this is my current role at Windō working amongst two inspiring leaders, fueling my entrepreneurial spirit whilst learning data-driven techniques I never knew I’d enjoy. Explore our tracker, set up notifications, and discover a role that truly excites you!