Not only technical skills, right work attitude is equally significant – InterviewStreet
Shravan, Solution Engineer at InterviewStreet, one of the very well known technology start-ups in India, shares his the experience of having interns on board. Shravan eloquently discusses the benefits, pain points, and other ideas related to interns and internship programme. Below are the excerpts of our discussion.
Q. What is your philosophy of having an internship programme at InterviewStreet?
Well, we’re are always in a constant need of smart developers, people who are really passionate about technology. So, I would say our basic philosophy of having an internship programme is, finding good coders and moulding them into great coders.
Q. Have you ever done any important project in which interns played a critical role? Please elaborate.
To tell you the truth, our expectations from our interns are no less than what we expect from a regular employee. And yes, interns have played critical roles in many projects. The ‘Admin Interface’ (a module of InterviewStreet) has been written by an intern only, and it’s still in use. Also, many problem statements which are still in use have been developed by one of the interns.
Q. While hiring interns, what are the skills/attributes that you look for in a candidate?
The first thing we look for is, of course, whether the candidate has good programming and problem solving skills. Apart from good coding skills, we also look for right work attitude, diligence and passion for technology. We look for candidates who are really serious towards their work and have passion to leave a mark behind.
Q. Have you ever made mistakes while hiring and ended up hiring totally wrong candidate(s)? What were those mistakes? And in your opinion, what are the common pain points of intern hiring?
Yes, in past we have made mistakes and hired wrong candidates. Not that the interns didn’t have technical expertise but their attitude towards work was not appreciable. So I would say the mistake we made was, we only considered their technical expertise and could not properly assess their attitude towards the work.
In my opinion, finding a candidate with good technical skills as well as right work attitude is a challenge.
Q. A message that would you like give to the companies/start-ups running internship programmes?
Interns should be assigned meaningful tasks so that they don’t feel their time is being wasted. Apart from meaningful assignments, interns should be provided with an environment that helps them become more professional and industry ready.
Q. What is your message to students who are looking for internships?
Participate in more open source projects, acquire more knowledge. As there is a huge gap between what industry needs and what you learn in college.
If you’re an employer and want to share your experience of running an internship programme, drop a line at shadab@internshala.com. We’d love to hear from you.
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