How often do you take the time to invest in your future? For most of us, as life kicks into full gear, the opportunities seem fewer and farther between.
Yet as many of you will also know well, no better time for change exists than in the pivotal years of our youth. This is when a single miscalculated move could quickly spell the difference between a burgeoning career in something you love and a lifetime of hopeless disappointment.
For nearly a decade now, it is precisely this awareness which has formed the basis for one of Software Planet’s most beloved projects of all: our internship programme.
A course in thinking
While you’d be forgiven to suspect that our programme would primarily be centred around code, our main goal, in reality, is to teach junior developers how to think.
In fact, one of the principal things we do when first recruiting young talent is to check whether or not our candidates will be able to meet our requirements — in addition to adequate programming knowledge, soft skills like good teamwork and communication and advanced, competent English.
From there, we teach graduates fresh out of uni how to uncover the root cause of an issue, communicate in new and effective ways, ask clients sharp and pertinent questions and crucially, how to develop the Agile way.
Not for lazy types
Unfortunately, however, because IT universities today are failing to satisfactorily prepare their students for life outside of campus, at least until now, we have felt the need to fill in the educational gaps.
As a result, while this programme does present interns with a fantastic chance to refine and improve their skills, it is certainly not for the faint of heart.
Thrice a year, up to 10 prospects — typically aged between 19 and 22 — are carefully selected to take part in our paid internship, in the hope of one day becoming SPG employees.
Yet in order to succeed, students must work just as hard as their permanent counterparts, grafting full-time on true-to-life projects, complete with similar challenges to our actual commercial activities and even the occasional mock customer interview. This, of course, all under the direct supervision of our experienced mentors, who at any point in time, are able to stop what they are doing and make any explanations deemed necessary.
What the future holds
Moving forward, we hope to reach a point when we are able to skip over these needless introductions and dive right into development head first.
On the other hand, our current programme is flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of interests, and this we wish to uphold. Like the company itself, we do not strive to focus on a single technology, but rather to always seek the best possible solution.
Why this matters
Software Planet’s internship programme is a vital component to our company’s success. By guiding employees from their very first steps into our organisation, we are able to build an unrivalled corporate culture in a strong, tight-knit community.
In this way, as newcomers arrive, they are taught immediately to truly value our customers and act not as conventional developers, overly concerned with completing tasks and compiling code, but first and foremost as your genuine business partners.
