Alena - Dublin Technical Intern Summer 2006

Can you tell us a little bit about you? (where are you from? what did you study? final year project, etc?)
Originally I am from Minsk, Belarus. I came to Ireland as an exchange student to study Computer Systems and graduated with First Class Honours degree from the University of Limerick.
My final year project was about processing C# source code and calculating metrics for it, which can help to evaluate and improve the quality of the code.
I’ve just started to work as a Software Engineer in IBM LanguageWare and will continue dealing with language processing, but now it will be natural languages, not the programming once.

Why did you apply for the Extreme Blue internship?
I have always wanted to work for a big company which is a leader in the IT industry. At the beginning of my 4-th year in college I started to look for the opportunities for graduates and came across the Extreme Blue internship. From what I read about this program, it seemed like a great chance to start my career in a company with a name and to do something interesting and challenging in Summer.

How do you think your background and experience prepared you for the internship?
To my mind, it would be impossible to become an IT intern without a technical background, because working on an Extreme Blue project requires programming skills and knowledge of various technologies and programming languages. So my degree in Computer Systems was a “necessary condition” to become a technical intern. But the university provided me with more that just a set of useful skills and a great amount of information. I also got experience of working in a team while doing group projects. And teamwork is essential for Extreme Blue, because all projects are done in a group of four people, so collaboration is very important. And during two previous Summers, I also got some work experience, which prepared me for facing real-world tasks and working on real projects.

What have you learned from your Extreme Blue experience?
First of all, Extreme Blue gave me an insight into what it’s really like to work in IBM. I learned about different groups, projects, got acquainted with various people. I also learned a lot from a technical skills point of view. And I improved my presentation skills as well, while doing weekly presentations in front of other interns and mentors. It was a good practice, because when it came to the final Extreme Blue Expo in Nice I didn’t feel nervous any more and enjoyed presenting to a big audience.

Is there anything about the Extreme Blue program that surprised you?
One thing that surprised me was the fact that other people in IBM took our work seriously, not as a student project just to keep us occupied for 12 weeks, which is of no real use to the company.
The people we communicated with seemed to be really interested in our progress and possible applications of the results of our work. And they were also very approachable, eager to help and to give advice.

Would you recommend the program to other students and why?
I would definitely recommend the program to other students because I really enjoyed it myself and because I think that this program gives you a good chance to test your abilities to face real-world tasks, to start your career and develop your technical skills and your personality.

Is there something you wish you had known ahead of time? What other advice can you offer future interviewees?
I can’t say that there is anything I wish I had known in advance, because there is a lot of information about Extreme Blue and IBM in general in the Internet, so I was aware of what I was going to face even before applying for the position.