Each summer, AbleTech (and it’s sister companies) look to hire 5-6 students for internship roles. These seven steps will substantially increase the chances of getting one of these sought after positions.
1. Build your own website
Having your own website tells us a lot about you:
- You know about the Internet and how to use it – you know something about DNS records, and how to register and configure your own domain,
- You’ve already learnt a little about HTML and CSS – essential skills in a company like ours,
- You can show off a little by applying some funky, yet appropriate JavaScript,
- The actual content gives you an opportunity to impress us with further understanding of applying technology.
Most importantly, we’ll have a way to communicate with you.
2. Develop a website for someone else
Building a simple website for someone else shows an employer that you can understand their requirements, and translate those into something real. It shows that you can speak the language of the customer, and deliver a product that they are happy with.
Make sure you link to these projects from your personal website.
3. Contribute to an Open Source project
When hiring a new staff member, we are always keen to see some of their code. The kind of code that a person writes says a lot about them. Questions we’re looking to answer are:
- Is it clean and tidy?
- Is it well structured?
- Does it demonstrate an understanding?
- Have they over-complicated a simple problem?
- Is the implementation a bit too “smarty-pants” where it’s difficult to understand?
There is plenty of opportunity these days to contribute to many different open source projects. Obviously GitHub is a natural starting point.
4. Participate in the community
Become involved in the local tech scene. We’re involved with many local groups such as WellRailed, WellingtonJS, Open Government Data Day, Summer of Tech and more.
Join online communities such as StackOverflow and participate. Become involved in open source projects that you’re interested in, and contribute. A starting point might be to write tests or documentation for one of your favourite projects.
Participating in the community raises your profile, and makes you stand out of the crowd. You’ll be noticed and valued as a person who gives back to the community.
5. Give Ruby on Rails a go
It should be pretty obvious from our website that we think Ruby on Rails is pretty sweet. Many of us have come from backgrounds in Enterprise IT and it’s use of tech such as Java and .Net. We made a strategic decision in 2005 to move away from technologies that were inefficient when compared to modern languages such as Ruby. In hindsight, this was an incredibly important move – and exactly the right choice.
So, we’re sold on Rails. You should give it a go. In fact, if you’ve given it a go – and can demonstrate a running Rails app that does something of use – then we’d love to hear from you.
There are a few ways that you can try out Ruby on Rails for free. Heroku offer a free plan where you can host an app at no cost. Other option is prgmr.com for dirt-cheap VPS hosting.
6. Enrol in Summer of Tech
We’ll be making our shortlist mostly from candidates from the Summer of Tech website. We will be at most of the events that Summer of Tech organise, such as the Bootcamps, Hackfests and obviously the Meet n Greet.
7. Make contact with us
We’d love to meet you, and to hear about what you’re doing. Come and chat with our people at the events we attend. Make it easy for us to choose you by talking to us. Also, chat to Cameron Fowler who is in his final year at Vic about his experiences with us last year.
If you are wanting to land a summer internship with us then these seven steps give you the inside running on things we will be looking at when considering applicants. So good luck! And we look forward to meeting you at the upcoming Summer of Tech events.
