08/10/2021
Are internships really necessary?
This is one of the questions that most university students are asking when thinking about their future and careers.
A year ago, we employed our first five BSc Information Technology students as part of a three-month, paid Software Development internship. They were all still studying at the time and joined TransformIT in October during the final stretch of their last semester.
They would be allowed to take enough time off to focus on their studies, the other developers would be at their disposal to assist with any study-related questions, be it to help with exam preparation, assignments, etc. In the form of ad-hoc mini lectures, the senior developers would answer their questions and teach best practices with real world examples, often from the projects they are currently working on. The students would not be given too much responsibility and the focus would rather be placed on clarifying and instilling agile principals and best practices for writing clean, readable, and maintainable code. A strong focus would be placed on work ethics and learning to become a respectable and effective team player.
Allowing these interns to be interns, focusing on their growth in a corporate environment rather than trying to get as much value out of them from the get-go, resulted in the development of some of the best Junior developers I have ever had the pleasure of working with.
In the last 12 months, these 5 initial intern developers have played a vital role in the development of 5 web applications and 4 mobile apps. We have since employed many more interns and are in the process of recruiting another batch of students that are graduating this year.
Happy Anniversary Enrico, Trevor, Katleho, Hennie and Ninno, it is an absolute pleasure working with you, you have shown immense growth and I’m sure that the best is yet to come!