Welcome back to another episode of the internship series.
When you’re looking to find a position with any company, it’s important to find the
people who work there and communicate with them.
In my case, I attended the Black Career Conference in 2019 and one of the sponsors was the Bank
of Montreal, BMO.
Here I met the recruiter, Kristina, who spoke highly of the bank and all the opportunities
for career growth in it.
After briefly talking with each other, she asked me to send her a digital copy of my
resume and she’d forward it to managers who are looking to hire.
Eventually, I had my interview set with the manager of a team that was doing some really
interesting work that I knew would build my skill set and would allow me to stand out
to future employers.
Here are 5 things I spoke about that would get me the developer position at BMO:
Previous internship experience Extracurriculars
Hackathons Research assistant
Previous internship experience
In my previous roles as a Web UX Developer and Test Engineer Intern, I was faced with
new technologies that I’ve never worked with and appeared intimidating to me since
there was no clear way I could practice ahead of time.
Eventually, I would overcome these obstacles by working on smaller assignments that would
get me comfortable for the larger, more complicated project.
I was able to understand the strength and weaknesses of the tools I was using and could
develop novel ways to solve problems that I was facing.
Secondly, having a respectful and empathetic team around me gave me the communication tools
to critically think through problems faster.
If I couldn't verbally articulate the issue that I was having, then it was perfectly ok
to draw diagrams for other developers to see what Im trying to accomplish.
What I learned from these roles was proficiency through experimentation and precise communication.
Extracurriculars
The next thing I mentioned in the interview with the manager was my role in being a mentor
for organizations like Black Boys Code
As a mentor, I’d work with boys between the ages of 8 through 17 and would teach them
how to use computational thinking to solve technical and everyday problems.
One of the best ways I found to test my own understanding of web development technology
was to teach others.
By demonstrating to them how languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript come together to
build exciting and interactive websites or apps they use, I became more proficient in
reading and writing code.
The lessons I learned from working in this role are being organized, inquisitive, and
reflective.
Hackathons
Hackathons are a great way to demonstrate what you know ( or don't know ) in a short
amount of time.
I spoke to the manager about a couple of the hackathon projects I worked on and won.
The first project was to remove the implicit bias in the hiring process and the second
project was a privacy-focused data collection tool for corporations.
In these roles, I was the front-end developer using web coding languages.
The first project I mentioned used React, JS while my teammates used Google cloud computing
backend Firebase.
The second project I worked on was written in VueJs and JS with the backend being written
in the ethereum blockchain language Solidity.
From these wins and prizes, I explained to the hiring manager what I learned from these
experiences.
These were setting a book and prioritizing goals because time constraints 1 and focusing
on the big picture which was addressing the hackathon's theme.
Research Assistant
Getting a research assistant role was one of the most interesting roles I got to do
because of the journey to get it.
The story behind getting this position came down to me attending having a guest lecturer
for one of my courses.
The way the prof described his research and how it was being used in tech really captivated
me to learn more about his work.
After class, we spoke more about how he got into his line of research and even though
he didn't have an open position in his lab at the moment, we’d keep in touch.
One of the things I did to stand out was send him articles or content that I believe would
interest him or be relevant to his research which he liked.
When the opportunity opened up, the professor reached out to me and asked if I'm still interested
in working with him and his PhD student to which I said yes.
The lesson and experience I learned from going through this is respectful persistence and
demonstrating curiosity.
People who are in their professions for long periods tend to like their work and want to
work with people who show some type of enthusiasm about the field.
proficiency through experimentation and precise communication.
being organized, inquisitive and reflective.
were setting and prioritizing goals because of time constraints and to focusing on the
big picture
persistence and demonstrating curiosity
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next episode