Indian-born Raj is also a first-class student who managed to get five 'A's at A-level which won him a scholarship to ECS.

Growing up in Thailand, Raj had a big interest in the design of cars, which led him to choose Electromechanical Engineering.

When it came to choosing a company for his industrial placement year, he had hoped to work at Rolls Royce, Jaguar or Land Rover, and was disappointed initially when he did not manage to secure a placement.

When he came across an advert for a placement at IBM through the Graduate Recruitment Bureau, he sent in an application and was offered a placement role as a laboratory technician within the customer support department for IBM Cognos Software.

"I wondered if I should accept it as the placement was not directly linked to electromechanical engineering," he said. I sought advice and the people I asked generally said "Go for it", and that getting IBM on my CV is gold."

Now, almost six months after he completed his 12-month placement, Raj is very glad that he listened to this advice.

He loved his placement. He started in July 2009 in Bracknell at Cognos, a company recently acquired by IBM where he spent six months. He then spent the second six months at IBM Bedfont in Feltham.

At Cognos, he was a laboratory technician who created test environments for the customer analysts across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

"I am so glad I accepted this placement," he said. "I learned so much about presenting, communicating, dressing smartly, time management - all the things you don't necessarily learn at university."

The placement also gave Raj an opportunity to develop some computer networking, virtualisation and programming skills.

A highlight of his year was when he met Stephen Leonard, General Manager of IBM UK and Ireland.

"This was great," he said. "The amount of contacts I made was amazing. I think I got more out of IBM than they got out of me, but they don't agree."

Raj's experience at IBM gave him a completely new perspective on how companies assess people's skills during the recruitment process; he learned that rather than basing assessments on individual disciplines, they look at analytical and theoretical skills.

"I thought I would never be able to do a consulting role because I was an electromechanical engineer," he said. "What I found was that I could go into a completely different role as long as I could tick the core competencies; my view before this could have limited my opportunities."

Raj would like to work at IBM once he has finished his degree and was encouraged to apply, but knows that he will not automatically get a job there just because he completed a work placement with them.

His long-term plan now is to work in consultancy with a company like IBM or McKinsey and in an ideal world where time and money is no object, he would be a Formula One driver.

In the meantime, he is back in his third year at university and working on a new algorithm to reduce downtime for assembly line robots which perform the same task repetitively.

Once he finishes this year, he will review his career plan.

“Once I finish my third year, I can finish my degree,” he said. “If I get a job offer, I will make a decision then. Now, my whole perspective has changed and I am no longer just interested in the car industry and I ask myself why my vision was so narrow before. It has really expanded now.”