- Name: Jake Hoskins
- Role: Technology Intern
- University: University of Nottingham
- Degree: Computer Science
Description:
1. How did you come across the position? e.g. through your university, RateMyPlacement, own research
Found the position looking on a placement website.
2. What was the interview process like?
Had an initial telephone interview first and then was invited to a face to face interview. This lasted around an hour and mainly involved technical questions. I was also given a problem solving task in which I had to talk through my decision.
3. What advice would you give to someone applying for your role?
The interviewer will mainly want to test your technical knowledge and ability to solve problems; they are not expecting you to have loads of experience so as long as you know your stuff and are passionate about technology you will be fine!
4. What project have you been working on? What were the deliverables, what you have you achieved in 10 weeks?
The main project I have been working on is developing the Help App for the YouView box, which is scheduled for release in one of the next software releases.
5. What have you learned?
- How to work with other teams
- Ability to adapt to different coding standards
- Time management, working efficiently towards deadlines
- People skills and experience working in an office environment
- Presentation skills - I would give a demo every 2 weeks and I have even presented to some top tier companies like Sales Force and BT.
6. Why would you recommend this intern program to others?
- It is a great opportunity to use what you’ve learnt at university and put it into practice
- YouView is a relatively small but growing company so it is a great time to be working for them as you can get involved in really exciting projects
- Great chance to improve your technical skills which will be invaluable when applying for jobs after uni
- You get the chance to work on some high profile projects which could end up being in production across the UK.
- YouView have some great employees who are well respected in the industry and it’s a great opportunity to network with these people as well as hear what they have to say.
7. Any training, is so what?
All the interns had two sessions with Management Futures, focused on getting the most out of our internship and how to reflect on work achieve in order to learn and do even better next time. Most of my technical training was given on the job, people in my team were always happy to take the time out to explain and show me things. Some of my team member were invited to present at a tech conference so I went a long and actually learned a lot because these were leading industry professionals giving advice on what to do and what not to do when developing HTML5 for embedded devices.
8. What did you most enjoy about your role?
- Working as part of the CDI team
- Because of the project that I was involved in, I also had the opportunity to work with other teams including Cloud Services, Operations, UX and Service Management.
- The Help App that I worked on during my time at YouView was a high profile project which I really enjoyed. I could see the progress that I was making with it and therefore my job satisfaction was really high.
- I enjoyed working in an agile way, which allowed my project to evolve over time rather than sticking to a top down design. This allowed development and integration of important new features that product wanted - something that wouldn’t have been an option if we were practising a more traditional methodology.
9. What was the general atmosphere like in your office and amongst your team? Tell us about a typical day in your team (I’m keen to get a description of how the teams work e.g. stand ups, cluster teams etc)
Relaxed, but really hard working at the same time, everyone has a really good work ethic. Every morning I would have a Help app stand up and there would also be a daily CDI team stand up. I found the stand ups really useful because it gave you clear direction as to what you were working towards and also gives you the chance to hear about what other team members were working on. Once a week I had a meeting with the stakeholders in the help app this was always good fun and it’s a chance to get positive feedback.
10. Were there many opportunities to get involved in activities outside of work? If so what were they?
- 6 aside football every Monday evening after work which was a great opportunity to meet people across the company
- Charity Football tournament in which YouView competed against shareholder including BT and channel 4
- Charity 10K run
- Drinks in the city
