We believe that work experience placements give students the opportunity to learn new skills, and the confidence to decide on their next steps.
Students approach us with a variety of reasons as to why they wish to complete work experience at Conn3cted. With high school students, it’s a mandatory component of a VET course. For university students, they want to get some hands on experience in what they’re studying and to also gain a broader understanding of the workings of a tech agency.
Whatever your reason, we’ve written a summary of what you can expect when completing work experience at Conn3cted!
Introductions and admin
On the first day, the student is introduced to the team. Our team members provide an overview of their role and what they do – these introductions give a ‘taste’ of the diverse range of roles that exist within a tech company.
A tour of the office, some paperwork and initial setup of laptops and logins usually follow. This is a good time for the student to settle in, read some policies and get to know some of the systems we use to manage, complete and report on projects – such as JIRA and Confluence.
Jira and Confluence are software that the Conn3cted team use every day.
Choosing the learning plan
We often have some background knowledge of the student before work experience starts, whether they have existing technology skills, or none at all and are keen to learn more. Regardless of skill level, our directors like to sit with them to get to know them better and discover what area they’re most interested in learning more about.
The student is assigned a buddy, who makes themselves available to assist with anything from downloading required programs that they need to complete for their learning tasks, through to answering any questions the student may have.
Day-to-day workplace activities
Not only do students/interns get to build their skillset, they also get a feel for how a tech agency operates on a day to day basis.
Here, they have exposure to:
- Daily scrums: Skype meetings with external clients and internally, where we run through the progress of projects.
- Flexible work hours: Our working day is 8 hours, but start and finish times are flexible based on the team member’s role and other commitments.
- Smart casual dress: Our dress code is smart casual – no suits!
Team culture
Students become familiar with a few of our team rituals:
- Friday afternoon games: Each Friday, we play a board game. We have a running scoreboard for those who play, that is updated on Confluence each week. It gets very competitive!
- Birthdays: When it is a team member’s birthday, they bring ice cream to the office for the team to share.
Games day Fridays!
Ice cream solves everything!