Hullo!!
Here's another life update: Currently in the middle of my second year of uni (only got 1 months left) until the uni year ends! (Uni ends mid Nov, and then the summer holidays begin)
A couple of weeks ago, I saw an ad for internship/job opportunities at a web dev place that I had never heard of before. But turns out that a friend of mine works there and that pushed me to apply. Worst comes to worst, at least I'll be able to talk through the process with the friend who obviously went through the process herself.
Turns out, I applied and got a call back the same day. Super fast. I ended up going for an interview the next day (they were super urgent about the whole thing) and gave a non technical interview, which was a relief but also made it lower the standards almost if that makes sense. And not just the standard that they expect from us, but almost my expectation of them. That they seem to take absolutely anyone.
Anyways, I got the internship, I asked a bunch of questions about what I'd be doing and it seemed interesting. At least I'd be able to count this towards my 12 week compulsory work placement requirement.
Two weeks later, I rock up and meet two other interns. I'm not going to go into detail about what happens completely, but after the urgency of the phone calls and interviews, what they got us to do seemed terribly useless.
I will admit that the group of interns including myself didn't have the best knowledge base, and were slow. However we were eager to do work. Especially at the beginning. But they didn't have a list of jobs that they wanted us to do. It was so badly organised. And the main boss basically handed over the responsibility to handle interns to that friend I was talking about. How is she supposed to give us jobs to do.
Firstly, it was an unpaid internship, so they cannot really make us do anything that would make them money or they have to start paying us. So it was an odd predicament. None of us interns could have waited any longer for those painful 2 weeks to end.
Not to say that I didn't learn anything, because I did improve my CSS skills and refreshed HTML and Javascript too. But it was more about how I would have preferred to spend my time in other ways. Or at least if I wasn't 'working' 8:30-5:30 coz lets be honest we were wasting most of our time there. This same internship would have improved ten fold if there was simply some more direction given to us in the first main task we were given (so we wouldn't have had to redo it completely and waste time) and also if they had a list of tasks to do so that any spare moment we got, we had things to do.
Because it was such a small company with barely 6-10 employees, they were based in a house. They did not have enough table space for everyone so for the first few days we were sitting in a high table in the corridor. Later two of us moved into proper seats which at least made it feel more like a real job. That environment of the people coming in and going out, clients coming in etc was the most I got out of this. I just wish there was more I learnt. But I suppose for 2 weeks of my time, for my first internship, at least now I have some idea. And that's valuable to me. It's meant to be work experience and this definitely was an experience. It wasn't the worst, nor the best. It's good to get a feel of different work environments for sure.
Nonetheless, I would not recommend this 'internship' to anyone. I hope to find another internship or two that would make up the entirety of the 12 week placement.
Until next time,
Nehal
A couple of weeks ago, I saw an ad for internship/job opportunities at a web dev place that I had never heard of before. But turns out that a friend of mine works there and that pushed me to apply. Worst comes to worst, at least I'll be able to talk through the process with the friend who obviously went through the process herself.
Turns out, I applied and got a call back the same day. Super fast. I ended up going for an interview the next day (they were super urgent about the whole thing) and gave a non technical interview, which was a relief but also made it lower the standards almost if that makes sense. And not just the standard that they expect from us, but almost my expectation of them. That they seem to take absolutely anyone.
Anyways, I got the internship, I asked a bunch of questions about what I'd be doing and it seemed interesting. At least I'd be able to count this towards my 12 week compulsory work placement requirement.
Two weeks later, I rock up and meet two other interns. I'm not going to go into detail about what happens completely, but after the urgency of the phone calls and interviews, what they got us to do seemed terribly useless.
I will admit that the group of interns including myself didn't have the best knowledge base, and were slow. However we were eager to do work. Especially at the beginning. But they didn't have a list of jobs that they wanted us to do. It was so badly organised. And the main boss basically handed over the responsibility to handle interns to that friend I was talking about. How is she supposed to give us jobs to do.
Firstly, it was an unpaid internship, so they cannot really make us do anything that would make them money or they have to start paying us. So it was an odd predicament. None of us interns could have waited any longer for those painful 2 weeks to end.
Not to say that I didn't learn anything, because I did improve my CSS skills and refreshed HTML and Javascript too. But it was more about how I would have preferred to spend my time in other ways. Or at least if I wasn't 'working' 8:30-5:30 coz lets be honest we were wasting most of our time there. This same internship would have improved ten fold if there was simply some more direction given to us in the first main task we were given (so we wouldn't have had to redo it completely and waste time) and also if they had a list of tasks to do so that any spare moment we got, we had things to do.
Because it was such a small company with barely 6-10 employees, they were based in a house. They did not have enough table space for everyone so for the first few days we were sitting in a high table in the corridor. Later two of us moved into proper seats which at least made it feel more like a real job. That environment of the people coming in and going out, clients coming in etc was the most I got out of this. I just wish there was more I learnt. But I suppose for 2 weeks of my time, for my first internship, at least now I have some idea. And that's valuable to me. It's meant to be work experience and this definitely was an experience. It wasn't the worst, nor the best. It's good to get a feel of different work environments for sure.
Nonetheless, I would not recommend this 'internship' to anyone. I hope to find another internship or two that would make up the entirety of the 12 week placement.
Until next time,
Nehal
Hey Nehal! Too bad about the internship :( it's cool to hear from you!
ReplyDeleteYeah, oh well we learn from our experiences!
DeleteHope you're doing well :)