Meet Joe

Introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you've done since graduating

I'm Joe and I graduated from Newcastle during lockdown in 2020. After struggling to find companies hiring during lockdown, I went back to the Spanish town I stayed in on my year abroad to teach English for half a year.

After coming back, I applied for a job as an Assistant Accountant at Univar Solutions' European Finance Centre, where they were looking for European language speakers. I've now been there for four years.

I currently work there as a Continuous Improvement Accountant and will soon finish my CIMA qualification with the company's study support.

Find out more about my course, Modern Languages BA

Why did you choose to study at Newcastle University?

A combination of ranking, location and balanced course content. The course seemed to have a good balance of useful technical content and interesting cultural topics. The Modern Languages school also had very good facilities compared to other Universities.

Newcastle seemed a very friendly city and the University was in a great location right in the centre.

How do you think your course prepared you for your chosen career? 

The year abroad definitely helped build up my skills working in a multilingual environment. I was able to work with people from different cultures and gain experience looking for jobs.

For part of my year abroad, I did a translation internship working for a Portuguese solicitor. This comes in handy when translating lease agreements at work and understanding legal terminology in other languages.

Parts of the course, such as certain linguistics modules, were very helpful in developing analytical and pattern recognition skills. These come in very handy now when working with big sets of data. Knowing multiple languages in general is very useful nowadays, as many multinational companies now handle their accounting from a single shared service centre, so it's a great skill to have.

What did you enjoy most about your time at Newcastle University? 

The city itself was a great place to live, there was loads to do and people were very friendly.  

Describe your time at Newcastle University in three words 

Fun, engaging, challenging.