“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans,” is the famous John Lennon quote that many of us have experienced at different times in our life. For Nandini Sinha of NIIT University, it was at the worst possible moment, as she appeared for the Industry Practice selection process with gusto. Unfortunately, due to health reasons she had to drop out of the process and opt for self-IP. Interestingly, that worked out as a blessing in disguise when she got an opportunity to work with Ahmadabad based Scaletech Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Interning as Software Engineer – Backend Developer, the BTech Computer Science and Engineering student is getting valuable hands-on experience on projects that are pushing her to the limit. But as she says, the challenges also drive her to achieve professional excellence, and are preparing her for the road ahead. We talk about the Industry Practice, the revitalizing pit stop in her journey to career success.
You had to drop out of the University’s placement process, so how did your industry practice come about?
I had to opt for self-IP and our university’s CIC representatives stood by me, supporting me. Since Scaletech Solutions Pvt. Ltd. was offering internships in Development as Backend Nodejs Developer, I was asked questions about JAVA, Python, Redis, MongoDB, Git, Jenkins and a few data structure algorithms in the technical interview rounds. It was largely a technical process.
When you got selected, how prepared did you feel for the responsibilities you had to take on during your industry practice?
I was quite prepared for the responsibilities that are conventionally expected from the role, I got to learn a lot about professionally presenting my work, managing time and tasks allotted to me. Though my mentors expected me to take two months for my Java, Python (Django, Flask, CGI), NodeJs and data structure algorithms training, I finished it within a month and a half.
How was that received by the organization and did it result in positive feedback?
The training helped me prove my performance abilities using different approaches. That’s probably why my company’s director assigned me a project. I had to make a bot in Slack Platform to assess and improve the cognitive skills of the employees. I am the only intern developing and handling the aptitude data along with the administration side of the app.
How are you handling this responsibility and did you feel out of depth at any point?
For the project, I had to learn ExpressJS and convert my whole work using Slack’s Web API and the limited features it provides for interactive components, all in two weeks. Although I managed it on time, it wasn’t exactly what was expected because Slack has its own way of functioning. So I learnt a few more interactive solutions to present better and got praised for the decision.
What have been the main takeaways from the project for you?
The company’s director always says that one should never stick to any domain or programming language but be quick to adapt to project requirements. I have learned the importance of agile thinking and experienced it firsthand. The project I worked on deals with requirements of the company’s quality employment growth. Its future scope is to hire freshers using this microservice. It is like cognitive ability assessing platforms but more efficient and effective.
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