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Shaye Mistry

Shaye graduated from MSc Security Studies in 2022 and is now a Stakeholder Engagement Officer in the Department of Business and Trade, working on ‘Technical Barriers to Trade’.

University College London alum Shaye Mistry.

Please share a brief introduction to your career path, from graduation to where you are now.  

I graduated UCL in 2022, anxious and scared about ‘the world of work’ and the fact I would be committing my life away. I took a pause after graduation. After working three odd jobs, I went travelling to India and Nepal. When I came back, I was invited to help the UCL Political Science Careers team organise their Careers Week (as I had worked on it when I was a student). After doing this, UCL Careers reached out and asked if I could assist on a stakeholder engagement campaign for UCL East and for the Careers website.

I am extremely confident that my 6 months working at UCL helped me gain employment into the Civil Service. It gave me behaviours and competencies from being in the workplace.

Using UCL’s extensive network, I reached out to alumni who worked across the Civil Service and was able to have friendly chats that provided me with lots of advice on how to tackle the job process!

Provide a brief summary of your core duties and describe what skills are important to your role.

Produce Briefings and Engagement materials:

  • I lead and deliver briefings for the Chief Negotiator and Director General that include qualitative evidence to present recommendations on how stakeholder views support wider UK-India FTA objectives.

External Stakeholder mapping in UK:

  • Source business case studies, civil society and trade associations for UK negotiators, and use this to strategically inform the Chief Negotiator.
  • Relationship building and clear communication skills are key.

Deliver Closed Chapter Text Sharing Sessions:

  • Lead and engage stakeholders on closed FTA chapter text getting to grip with policy.
  •  Strategic thinking and the desire to learn something new.

Reactive Engagement:

  • Maintain and ensure relationships across DBT teams and external stakeholders to ascertain policy and stakeholder views when changes in negotiation tone occur.

Cross Whitehall & HMG Post Engagement:

  • Identify/work with HMG departments (DEFRA, HMT, FCDO), Parliament and HMG International networks to ensure adequate strategic stakeholder engagement is taking place.

How did your time at UCL prepare you for the workplace?

UCL prepared me in lots of ways.

1) Being a part of a global community helps you to be able to engage and work with individuals across the globe with different thoughts, ways of working and at times, work with an impasse in communication. I noticed my skills really being honed, which has helped me in the work place.

2) I took part in the Cyber 9/12 Strategy Competition during my post grad; this gave me a feel for the policy world and whilst it wasn’t the main driver for me applying for the Civil Service, it definitely reaffirmed my interest to work in the public sector.

3) UCL Careers services are the best thing you can lean onto. They have the best advice on LinkedIn, how to reach out to alumni, engaging events, and they really know their stuff and really helped me. The UCL Political Science Careers week helped me to expand my network and gave me industry insights that I would not have otherwise been party to!

Were there any challenges in your job hunt? How did you overcome these?

Lots of challenges – some set backs, rejections and just a lot of waiting around. To overcome this, I just kept busy with my work at UCL Careers; this helped to take my mind off of the whole job hunt. Don’t be phased about your friends getting jobs before you, just always remind yourself the right thing for you will come your way – so keep that resilience and keep plugging away.

Top tips for current students: List up to 3 short quick tips that you would like to share with current students.

  • Leverage your networks – this is as simple as getting to know your cohort better (you never know where they may end up), but the world of work is all about calling upon your network. You don’t need to be the loudest person in the room, creating networks is as simple as asking for someone’s card or asking a question - getting your face and name out there is a massive asset.
  • Your ideal career is never the first job you get – strategically think about jobs as giving you the tools and skills to get to that dream job so find opportunities that allow you to do this.
  • Alumni – ask alumni questions about the work place reach out to them (we do love it when people reach out) - they are there to help you.