Finding WithYouWithMe has given me the opportunity to be part of a community of people that understand and value the skills that veterans bring to the table.
- Osagie Abifade
Meet Osagie
Osagie is a veteran of the British Armed Forces, where he worked as a Mechanical Engineer for the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Corp. After about 10 years of service, he wanted to try his hand at something new, so he left the Armed Forces and began exploring civilian career pathways.
“Upon leaving service, I quickly realised it was hard to translate the skills I had gained while serving in the military onto a single piece of paper for my CV.”
Osagie's journey
Osagie was initially fearful about leaving service, unsure of what opportunities would be out there for him. Despite this, he managed to embark on a successful career as a contractor working in luxury car production facilities.
As COVID began, Osagie decided he wanted to move away from engineering and try a new career in IT. He was introduced to WithYouWithMe by his brother and decided to attend an online event. Inspired by Founder, Tom Moore’s enthusiasm in his mission to solve veteran underemployment, Osagie signed up.
Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading businesses, governments and other organisations build their digital core, optimise their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services.
An introduction to IT
After completing his testing, Osagie attended a WithYouWithMe Job Accelerator and secured his first IT role as part of a squad being deployed into Accenture UK. Alongside other squad members, he began the training pathways to become a Pega Systems Architect and Pega Business Architect.
The training pathways took about 2 – 3 months to complete. As we all were coming from different career backgrounds, some people found it difficult at first, but the squad got stuck in and supported each other through.
Finding the right fit
Despite enjoying his role at Accenture, Osagie’s interest always lay in cloud architecture, and he truly found his feet when the opportunity arose for him to take a role as a Network Engineer at Leidos – a global technology solutions provider for civil, defence, health and intelligence.
The team at Leidos quickly learned what Osagie was capable of and gave him the autonomy to drive his own programs and even facilitate training for other employees.
Osagie is optimistic about his future career and plans to expand his cloud capabilities to further contribute to business success, maintain national security and ultimately reach a point where he can teach others to do the same.
Want to kickstart your new career?
Test and match your unique skills to tech roles then train for free.
